Erzberger-Helfferich trial

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The Erzberger-Helfferich trial was an insulting procedure that the Reich Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger brought against the former Minister of State Karl Helfferich .

The process lasted with interruptions from January 19 to March 12, 1920. The background was essentially made up of allegations of corruption , which Helfferich Erzberger made in a brochure. Although Helfferich was formally sentenced to a small fine, the court gave him the right. This meant the end of Erzberger's political career. Immediately after the verdict, Erzberger resigned as minister. He fought for rehabilitation until he was murdered . The event was a political scandal of the early Weimar Republic that kept the public busy. It also showed the anti-republican attitude in large parts of the judiciary of the time .

Matthias Erzberger
Karl Helfferich

Allegations and backgrounds

Karl Helfferich, who had been State Secretary during the Empire , appeared as a politician for the anti-republican DNVP after the November Revolution . As such, he attacked with great vehemence Erzberger, whom he called the "Reichsverderber". He published a brochure with the title “Fort mit Erzberger!” In this writing and previously in various articles for the Kreuzzeitung , he accused the leading center politician , who was then the Reich finance minister, not only with political errors, but also accused him of notoriously untruth to say and to combine his own economic interests and politics. In the brochure, Helfferich accused Erzberger of "violations of decency, habitual untruthfulness and the amalgamation of personal financial interests with political office."

For the political right, Erzberger was one of the most hated politicians in the new republic. He initiated the peace resolution in 1917 , signed the armistice in 1918 and initiated the tax and financial reform that was named after him . When Helfferich attacked Erzberger in his writing, he did so in order to hit the republic as a whole. In a way, this was his version of the stab in the back legend , as it distracted from the fact that during his tenure as State Secretary in the Reich Treasury in 1915/16 he was jointly responsible for the inflationary financing of the war (see German inflation 1914 to 1923 ).

Proceedings and other allegations

Erzberger took legal action against the script with a libel suit. The Bauer cabinet decided on September 1, 1919, to bring an action against Helfferich via the Prussian judiciary.

The trial began on January 19, 1920 and centered on Helfferich's claim that Erzberger mixed politics and private business before and during the war. Erzberger appeared in the process as a joint plaintiff. In support of his claims, Helfferich brought up a large number of witnesses.

When Erzberger was leaving the district court in Berlin-Moabit on January 26th, the former ensign Oltwig von Hirschfeld shot him twice; he was injured in the shoulder. The assassin was not sentenced for attempted murder , but only for dangerous bodily harm (to 18 months in prison), whereby the court approved of his ideal convictions as a mitigating circumstance. (Details here )

The dispute between Erzberger and Helfferich was exacerbated by parts of the press. The politically right-wing newspaper Hamburger Nachrichten published a tax return from Erzberger, which had been leaked to it by a tax officer. At first glance, this document seemed to indicate tax evasion by Erzberger. Erzberger bowed to public pressure and launched an investigation against himself. To this end, he temporarily suspended his office. The case was eventually dropped for lack of evidence. Even later, no knowingly tax evasion could be proven.

The tax evasion issue was not directly related to the trial, but the press linked the two issues. While the Erzberger-friendly papers saw it as a continuation of a campaign against the minister, the new allegations seemed to "fit into the picture" of his opponents.

The trial against Helfferich itself did not bring Erzberger the hoped-for relief, rather misconduct in some cases actually became apparent. As a member of parliament, he had campaigned several times for companies in whose supervisory boards he sat or whose shareholders he had been. He had probably also used insider knowledge for private business.

The public prosecutor largely accepted Helfferich's allegations. The court was also not impartial towards Erzberger. Helfferich was sentenced to a fine of 300 marks on March 12, 1920 for defamation and insult. The real loser was Erzberger. The court ruled that Helfferich had essentially not made any untrue allegations and had also acted for " patriotic reasons". Erzberger, on the other hand, was accused of perjury in two cases and of mixing politics and business interests in seven cases. Erzberger resigned as minister on the day of the verdict. The Kapp Putsch , which began one day after the verdict, diverted public attention from the verdict and resignation.

consequences

With Erzberger one of the central key figures of the republic was met. Ernst Troeltsch even called him the "secret chancellor". In any case, he was the hinge of the coalition of the SPD and the center. The verdict was not the first, but it was one of the most spectacular decisions of a strongly anti-republican judiciary.

Erzberger was politically discredited far into the republican camp by the judgment in the trial with Helfferich. His own party forced him to suspend his mandate for the time being. He tried to obtain a revision of the judgment at the Reichsgericht , which the court refused in December 1920. However, he was partially exonerated in the matter. He instituted perjury proceedings against himself. This was not even opened because the evidence was insufficient. In August 1921, immediately before his murder, Erzberger learned that a preliminary investigation into tax evasion and capital flight had exonerated him. At the same time as attempting legal rehabilitation, he also tried to gain a foothold politically. He won a seat in the Reichstag through the Württemberg state list. How controversial it continued to be is shown by an attack at an election meeting in Esslingen am Neckar in May 1920, during which Erzberger remained unharmed. He died in another attack on August 26, 1921.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger-Möders Heinrich Tillessen . Tübingen 1995, p. 13.
  2. ^ Cabinet meeting of September 1, 1919 in the files of the Reich Chancellery - online
  3. ^ Heinrich August Winkler : Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy . Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 117.
  4. ↑ Annika Klein: Hermes, Erzberger, Zeigner: "Corruption scandals in the Weimar Republic", in: Kristin Bulkow, Christer Petersen (ed.): Scandals. Structures and strategies for generating public attention . Wiesbaden 2011, p. 54.
  5. ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy . Frankfurt am Main 1993, pp. 117f. Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger murderer Heinrich Tillessen . Tübingen 1995, p. 14.
  6. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: The Weimar Republic . Munich 2002, p. 40.
  7. ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy . Frankfurt am Main 1993, pp. 117f. Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger murderer Heinrich Tillessen . Tübingen 1995, p. 14.

swell

  • The Erzberger Trial. Stenographic report on the negotiations in the insulting process of the Reich Finance Minister Erzberger against the Minister of State a. D. Dr. Karl Hellferich , Berlin, 1920 digitized

literature

  • Norman Domeier: The sensational process Erzberger-Helfferich: The amalgamation of political and economic interests in the Weimar Republic. In: House of History Baden-Württemberg (Ed.): Matthias Erzberger. A democrat in times of hatred. G. Braun Buchverlag, Karlsruhe 2013, pp. 158-183, 265-269, ISBN 978-3-765-08436-2
  • Annika Klein: Hermes, Erzberger, Zeigner: Corruption scandals in the Weimar Republic. In: Kristin Bulkow, Christer Petersen (Ed.): Scandals. Structures and strategies for generating public attention. Wiesbaden, 2011 pp. 49-66
  • Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Frankfurt am Main, 1993 p. 117f.
  • Norman Domeier: The Erzberger-Helfferich Trial (1919–1920). , in: Kurt Groenewold , Alexander Ignor, Arnd Koch (eds.): Lexicon of Political Criminal Trials , Online, as of January 2015

Web links

  • Erzberger, Matthias; 1875-1921. Personal archive of the ZBW - German Central Library for Economics, Leibniz Information Center for Economics (contains numerous contemporary newspaper reports on the process).