Eugen von Finckh

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Eugen Alexander Gustav Fritz Carl Emil von Finckh (born March 27, 1860 in Varel ; † July 13, 1930 in St. Blasien ) from the noble family of those von Finckh was a Privy Higher Government Council and independent Prime Minister of the Free State of Oldenburg from 1923 to 1930.

Gravestone at the Gertrudenfriedhof in Oldenburg

biography

Professional career

Finckh came from a respected Oldenburg family of officials. He was the son of the Supreme Court Director Johann Daniel von Finckh (1807–1867) and his wife Maria geb. von Schietter (1824–1907). In 1877 he put the Abitur at the Old Grammar School Oldenburg , and was a member of the student connection Camera obscura Oldenburgensis . From 1877 to 1881 he studied law at the Universities of Göttingen , Strasbourg and Berlin . After the usual preparatory service, he entered the Oldenburg state service in 1885, where he quickly made a career. He initially worked as an assistant judge in Vechta and was appointed district judge in Brake in 1890 , where he also became chairman of the Maritime Office in 1895 . In 1898 he came to Oldenburg as a district judge and on August 27, 1900, he became a lecturer in the State Ministry with the title of Ministerialrat . Like the other senior officials, Finckh was given a number of additional tasks. So he worked temporarily as a senior public prosecutor and in June 1900 became a member of the upper church council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg , whose chairmanship he took over in February 1904. In January 1910 he received the title of President of the Upper Church Council and was promoted to the Secret Upper Government Council .

Political career

Finckh was almost at the end of his professional career when, on April 17, 1923, he was unexpectedly appointed Prime Minister of the first government of the Free State of Oldenburg. This government had become necessary in order to overcome the political stalemate that had arisen after the resignation of the Tantzen cabinet in the Oldenburg state parliament , in which neither the political left ( SPD , DDP ) nor the political right ( DNVP , DVP ) could form a government without the center , but this was not ready to join forces with either group. The way out was the formation of a transitional ministry that would run the business until the new elections and then make room for a parliamentary government. This civil servant government was elected by the state parliament with 29 votes with 15 abstentions, which, under the chairmanship of Finckh as Prime Minister, also included the two ministerial councilors Heinrich Johannes Stein and Rudolf Weber . In addition to his work as Prime Minister, Finckh was also responsible for the areas of foreign affairs, justice, schools and churches.

The elections of June 1923 resulted in only minor shifts in the distribution of seats. The center, which was again responsible for forming a majority, now steered towards the formation of a grand coalition from the SPD to the DVP, in which, however, it claimed the office of prime minister. Again, there was no majority for this. So there was nothing left but to re-elect the resigned Finckh government as the interim ministry. The negotiations between the parties failed in the following months because of the fundamental dilemma that politically viable coalitions (SPD, DDP) did not have a majority, while the grand coalition sought by the center because of the incompatibility of political goals - the Oldenburg DVP was politically very far right - would hardly have been able to work. When the center and the DDP agreed in the spring of 1925 to form a minority cabinet that the SPD should tolerate, Finckh refused to give way to what he saw as a weak government. He took advantage of the opportunities offered by the constitution to the state ministry, asked the vote of confidence and, after it was rejected by the state parliament, dissolved parliament. The elections of May 1925 did not result in a clear majority.

The center now swiveled to the right and agreed with the two bourgeois parties DVP and DNVP, which are united in the state bloc, on the continued existence of the supposedly apolitical Finckh government, which, however, has been restructured. As a representative of the center, the Ministerialrat and MP Franz Driver entered the cabinet, while the state bloc sent the non-party, but politically close to the German National Council, Ministerialrat Bernhard Willers to the government, which thus got a quasi-parliamentary look and now has strong support in the government Landtag decreed.

Finckh's ministry did not see itself as the executive body of the new right-wing coalition, but continued to see itself as an "apolitical" specialist cabinet that stood above the parties and which it believed had long since shed the character of a provisional interim solution.

In 1928 there were new elections, after which Finckh firmly refused to resign, although his government had lost the support of the previous coalition. He remained in office until his death on July 13, 1930.

His motives for this are unclear, but the combination was probably decisive for two reasons: on the one hand, Finckh's fundamental aversion to government participation by the left parties, and on the other, the fear that these two parties might support the planned reform of the empire and thus endanger the independence of Oldenburg. In addition, there was no doubt that Finckh had meanwhile got used to exercising power and was no longer prepared to voluntarily renounce it.

It was in the nature of the civil servant government that Finckh did not develop any political initiatives of his own, but essentially limited himself to administering the country, especially since in the years after 1928 the global economic crisis severely restricted the government's already narrow scope for action. As his funerary inscription shows, he himself saw his main merit in defending the state of Oldenburg against the attempts to reform and reorganize the state, which began in 1927 and in which the fragmented small state of Oldenburg would have lost its independence in any case.

family

Finckh married Marie Charlotte Caroline born on May 26, 1887. Heye (1861–1944), the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Heye (1828–1899) and sister of the later Colonel General Wilhelm Heye , who was Chief of Army Command in the Weimar Republic from 1927 to 1930 . The couple had two daughters and a son Otto (1898–1918), who died in the last days of the First World War .

additional

In 1928 he became a corps bow bearer of the Brunsviga Göttingen .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 40/970.
personal data
SURNAME Finckh, Eugen von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Finckh, Eugen Alexander Gustav Fritz Carl Emil von; Finkh, Eugen von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician, Prime Minister of the Free State of Oldenburg
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Varel
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1930
Place of death St. Blasien