Erich Koch-Weser

Erich Koch (before 1919)

The Müller-Franken cabinet in 1928. Erich Koch-Weser sits in the front left.

Erich Friedrich Ludwig Koch-Weser (born February 26, 1875 in Bremerhaven , † October 19, 1944 on the Fazenda Janeta in Rolândia , Paraná state , Brazil ) was a German lawyer and politician ( DDP ). He was a minister in the Weimar Republic .

biography

Career and curriculum vitae

Erich Koch (the origin-indicating part of the name Weser he only acquired in 1927 to distinguish himself from other members of the Reichstag with the same name) was the son of the senior teacher Anton Koch (1836–1876), a Protestant school principal in Bremerhaven, and Minna Löwenstein (1841–1930 ), Daughter of a Jewish merchant from Burhave .

He attended from 1884 to 1893, the old school in Oldenburg and studied after the Abitur 1893-1897 Law and Economics at the University of Lausanne , the University of Bonn , the University of Munich and the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin and received his doctorate Dr. jur. In Munich he made friends with Thomas Mann . From 1897 to 1898 he did his military service as a one-year volunteer and from 1898 to 1902 he was a trainee lawyer and assessor in Oldenburg. In 1909 he became city ​​director of Bremerhaven as the successor to Adolf Hagemann .

From 1913 to 1919 he was Lord Mayor of Kassel . In 1919 he became - still under the name Erich Koch (Cassel) - for the DDP a member of the constituent German national assembly in Weimar and belonged there to the committee for the preliminary consultation of the constitution of the German Reich . In 1920 he was elected a member of the Reichstag in the Weser-Ems constituency. He was up to the May 4, 1921 of 3 October 1919 in multiple cabinets Minister of the Interior ( Bauer cabinet , cabinet Müller I , Fehrenbach ) and 27 March 1920 to 21 June 1920 Cabinet Müller I also vice chancellor and From June 28, 1928 to April 13, 1929 he was Reich Minister of Justice in the Müller II cabinet . Among other things, he campaigned for legal equality for women, for a reform of divorce law and for the abolition of the death penalty.

After leaving the Ministry of the Interior in 1921 and finally leaving politics in 1930, he worked as a lawyer and notary in Berlin - finally in a joint law firm with his son Reimer . Because of his mother's Jewish descent, Koch-Weser was dismissed as a notary by the National Socialists on July 14, 1933 . On August 1 of the same year, he also lost his license to practice law. He received this back on August 26th through the intercession of the Reich President Paul von Hindenburg .

His book And yet upwards , published in 1933 . A German post-war report in which he critically examined the influence of the parties in the Weimar Republic was initially banned in February 1933 and fell victim to the book burnings in May 1933 .

At the end of 1933 he embarked with his wife Irma and four sons in his home town of Bremerhaven on the Lloyd steamer Madrid for South America and emigrated to Brazil. Here he bought a 100 hectare coffee plantation - the Fazenda Janeta - in the province of Northern Paraná in the state of Paraná near the town of Rolândia , a well-known colony of German settlers , founded by his friend, the tropical farmer Oswald Nixdorf . 400 German families lived in this jungle plantation - named after the landmark Bremer Roland . Koch-Weser played a major role in the development of the settlement. He also advised the Brazilian government ( Getúlio Vargas ruled as president from 1930 to 1945 ).

His last visits to Germany were made in 1935, 1936 and 1937, so he traveled to Berlin and Leipzig. At the beginning of the 1940s, Koch-Weser wrote various papers on the past and future of Germany. They were marked by a deep distrust of the parties, whose role he severely curtailed in his draft constitution for a new German republic after the Second World War . Instead, he now advocated professional representation and an expansion of the powers of the Reich President in a decentralized unitary state. His proposals were only partially published after his death.

politics

Political party

Erich Koch helped found the DDP in 1918 and was party chairman of the DDP in the Reich from 1924 to 1930. He belonged to the Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold .

In July 1930, Koch-Weser - without the knowledge of the DDP parliamentary group - led merger negotiations with the Young German Order of Artur Mahraun , which led to the founding of the German State Party . In view of the defeat of his party in the Reichstag elections , Koch-Weser resigned from party leadership and from all other political offices in October 1930.

MP

Mayor (10) on a trip to the Principality of Lübeck (1907)

From 1901 to 1909 Koch was a member of the Oldenburg Landtag . From 1909 to 1913 he was a member of the Bremen citizenship . From 1913 to 1918 he was also a member of the Prussian mansion through his office as Lord Mayor of Kassel . He acted in this body as rapporteur for the bill to introduce universal suffrage in Prussia, for which he strongly advocated.

From 1919 he sat - with the local suffix "Cassel" in his name - for the DDP in the Weimar National Assembly , where he was a member of the committee that had the task of preparing the draft constitution.

In 1920 he was elected to the Reichstag in the Weser-Ems constituency. He was a member of it until October 1930, from 1924 to 1928 as chairman of the DDP parliamentary group.

Public offices

After Erich Koch had already represented the sick mayor Otto Willms in the summer of 1900 , he himself became mayor of Delmenhorst between 1901 and 1909 after his death . From April 2, 1909, he served as city director in Bremerhaven and from 1913 to 1919 as Lord Mayor of Kassel and was involved in the Hessian municipal and provincial assembly as well as on the boards of the Prussian and German assembly of cities .

Erich Koch served from October 3, 1919 to May 4, 1921 as Reich Minister of the Interior in the Bauer cabinet , in the Müller I cabinet (here also as Vice Chancellor) and in the Fehrenbach cabinet .

After the failure of the Luther I cabinet , President Hindenburg commissioned Koch to form a government in December 1925. However, it failed because of the unwillingness of the SPD to join the government.

In June 1928 Koch-Weser was appointed Reich Minister of Justice to the Müller II cabinet . In doing so, he supported the SPD Chancellor Müller-Franken , although the SPD had prevented Koch's own government from forming three years earlier. However, Koch-Weser saw the alliance of workers and bourgeoisie as the basis for maintaining democracy and avoided points of contention that could have led to a break in the coalition.

As one of the first laws for the May elections passed the long-demanded and highly competitive " Koch-amnesty " for political offenders of 14 July 1928. Reichstag, to the so-called " Reich amnesties " of the Weimar Republic belongs and after cooking Minister Weser is named, to which it essentially goes back. As a result of the sentence, the communist Max Hölz and the spy Gustav Wölkerling were also released, the Rathenau murderers Ernst Werner Techow and Wilhelm Günther . Following the ideas of his party colleague and predecessor Eugen Schiffer , Koch-Weser took the first steps during his short term in office to implement a so-called “major judicial reform”. These efforts came to an end with his resignation on April 13, 1929. Even before that, Koch-Weser, a staunch supporter of the republic, was increasingly resigned in his statements. During the reshuffle of the government, he lost his ministerial office to Theodor von Guérard from the center , as the DDP, with only 4.9% of the votes, was no longer able to claim two cabinet posts due to its weak position.

When new Reichstag elections were scheduled for September 1930 in July 1930 , Koch-Weser and a few other democrats merged the DDP with the People's National Association of the Young German Order to form the German State Party . The union took place unprepared and hastily, and so the party committees of the Democrats, who had only been informed of the union afterwards, followed only with displeasure. As a result, the new party also failed in the elections and only received 3.8 percent of the vote. The alliance broke up a short time later. In October 1930, Koch-Weser initially resigned the party chairmanship and later also his seat in the Reichstag.

family

Erich Koch was married twice: first from 1903 to 1923 with Berta geb. Fortmann (1880–1923), daughter of the higher regional judge August Fortmann (1846–1935), and after her death from 1925 to 1944 with Irma née. von Blanquet (1897–1970), daughter of Lieutenant General Otto von Blanquet (1848–1913). The first marriage had four sons and a daughter, and the second two sons. Two of his nephews were also politically active at times: Ekhard Koch (1902–2000) became the Oldenburg administration president and was previously State Secretary in Hanover; Harald Koch (1907–1992) was Oldenburg Finance Minister, Hessian Economics and Transport Minister and SPD member of the Bundestag.

Former World Bank Vice President and State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance Caio Koch-Weser is his grandson.

Honors

Monument in Bremerhaven

• First honorary citizen of Delmenhorst (May 22, 1928)
• Bürgermeister-Koch-Strasse in Delmenhorst-Düsternort
• Erich-Koch-Weser-Platz at the Columbus-Center Bremerhaven
• Bronze bust in Bremerhaven

Works (selection)

• The food supply in the Great War, Kassel, 1915.
• The redesign of the two houses of the Landtag, published in: Schmoller's Yearbook for Legislation, Administration and Economics of the German Reich, 42, 1918, pp. 93–128.
• The tasks of the Reich Office of the Interior, without a location, 1919.
• Unified State and Self-Administration, Berlin, without year, with the title From the small state to the Reich and to the large German unitary state , also in: Anton Erkelenz (Ed.): Ten years of the German Republic. A manual for republican politics , Berlin 1928, pp. 42–97.
• The demarcation of jurisdiction between Reich and Länder , Berlin / Karlsruhe / Düsseldorf, 1929.
• Germany's foreign policy in the post-war period, Berlin, 1929.
• Russia today - travel diary of a politician, Dresden, 1929, reprint from Aschenbeck & Holstein Verlag, Delmenhorst / Berlin, 2003.
• And yet upwards - A German post-war balance sheet, Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, 1933.
• Hitler and beyond. A German testament , A. Knopf, New York, 1945.

Remarks

1. ↑ According to § 3 of the National Socialist Act to Restore the Civil Service .
2. ↑ According to § 1 of the National Socialist Law on Admission to the Bar .

literature

• Attila Chanady: Erich Koch-Weser's political apprenticeship. In: Yearbook 61 of the Men of the Morning Star. Bremerhaven 1982, pp. 377-387.
• Harry Gabcke : Erich Koch-Weser (1875-1944). Local politician. Reich Minister. Vice Chancellor (= Small Writings of the Bremerhaven City Archives, Vol. 3). Bremerhaven 1986.
• Beatrix Herlemann , Helga Schatz: Biographical Lexicon of Lower Saxony Parliamentarians 1919–1945 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. Volume 222). Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 2004, ISBN 3-7752-6022-6 , pp. 196–197.
• Ludwig Luckemeyer: Erich Koch-Weser. In: Ders .: Kassel Liberals in Two Centuries. Commemorative publication on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the election of the Lord Mayor of Kassel Erich Koch-Weser as a member of the German constitutional assembly as a member of the German Democratic Party. Kassel 1979, pp. 39-44.
• Walter Mühlhausen: The community as the original cell of the state - Erich Koch-Weser as a local politician. In: Yearbook for Liberalism Research 18 (2006), pp. 79-100.
• Walter Mühlhausen, Gerhard Papke (ed.): Local politics in the First World War. Erich Koch-Weser's diaries 1914-1918. R. Oldenbourg Verlag , Munich 1999, ISBN 3-486-56394-7 .
• Gerhard Papke: The liberal politician Erich Koch-Weser in the Weimar Republic. Nomos Verlag , Baden-Baden 1989, ISBN 3-7890-1638-1 .
• Martin Schumacher : "The man of respect": Erich Koch-Weser, the "Deutsche Blätter" and Udo Rukser 1943/44. A documentation of the correspondence with the editor of the “Revista Anti-Nazi” in Santiago de Chile, in: Yearbook for Liberalism Research 22 (2010), pp. 181-214.
• Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
• Werner Stephan : Erich Koch-Weser - fateful figure of the Weimar Republic. In: liberal 13 (1971), pp. 907-914.
• Ulrich Suttka: Koch-Weser, Erich. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 379-382 ( online ).
• Konstanze Wegner:  Koch-Weser, Erich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 280 f. ( Digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ bremerhaven.de: Grandson of a great Bremerhavener: Caio Koch-Weser visits place with the bronze bust of his grandfather. from October 10, 2007 (page no longer available)
2. ↑ Koch-Weser, Erich Friedrich Ludwig. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
3. ↑ Jürgen Christoph: The political Reich amnesties 1918 - 1933. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. [u. a.] 1988, pp. 254, 272 f.
4. ^ Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger murderer Heinrich Tillessen. A contribution to the history of the judiciary after 1945 (Contributions to the legal history of the 20th century, Volume 14). Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1995, p. 206 u. Note 189.
5. ↑ Jürgen W. Schmidt: The Perleberg spy Gustav Wölkerling. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Prignitz , Volume 5, Perleberg 2005, p. 73 u. Note 30.
6. ^ Hermann Wentker: Justice in the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945-1953: Transformation and role of their central institutions. Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, p. 46.

Web links

Commons : Erich Koch-Weser  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Erich Koch-Weser in the catalog of the German National Library
• Erich Koch-Weser in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Erich Koch-Weser in the files of the Reich Chancellery
• Federal archive, legacies in the central database: Erich Koch-Weser
• Newspaper article about Erich Koch-Weser in the press kit 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Liberal deadline for the archive of liberalism of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom on the 70th anniversary of Erich Koch-Weser's death ( memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
• Koch-Weser, Erich Friedrich Ludwig. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).