Franz Matt

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Minister of Education Franz Matt

Franz Matt (born September 9, 1860 in Offenbach an der Queich , Palatinate , † August 4, 1929 in Munich ) was a German lawyer and politician ( BVP ). As Bavarian Minister of Culture and Deputy Prime Minister, he played a key role in defining and implementing Bavarian cultural policy in post-revolutionary Bavaria from 1920 to 1926 .

Life

Franz Matt was the son of the Palatinate district school inspector Wendelin Matt and his wife Magdalena, nee Starck. He attended elementary school in Offenbach an der Queich,  where he was born, and high school in Speyer , after which he studied law at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and in Leipzig . In Munich Matt became a member of the Catholic student association KDStV Aenania Munich in the CV , later also the KDStV Gothia Würzburg and the KDStV Markomannia Würzburg , as well as the Catholic student association KDSt.V. Burgundia Leipzig in the CV. In 1922 he was one of those who founded the KDStV Trifels Munich out of the KDStV Aenania Munich. After receiving his doctorate in 1879, Franz Matt held numerous offices in the Bavarian civil service. In 1898 he was appointed District Administrator (Landrat) in Bogen . In March 1908 he was appointed to the Bavarian Ministry of Culture, where he took over the department for Catholic culture and teacher training institutions. As Ministerial Director of the State Ministry for Culture and School Affairs, he finally experienced the fall of the Bavarian monarchy. The cooperation with the new minister of culture of the Bavarian Republic proclaimed by Kurt Eisner , Johannes Hoffmann (SPD), turned out to be extremely difficult, as Franz Matt rejected Hoffmann's school reforms.

Matt became involved in the newly founded Bavarian People's Party and in 1920 - after Johannes Hoffmann resigned as prime minister - he was appointed minister of education by the new, non-party minister-president Gustav von Kahr .

In the period that followed, the man from Palatinate pursued a comprehensive course correction in school policy and reformed the entire higher education system in Bavaria. Although he was also responsible for Bavarian art policy, he did not provide any impulses in art matters. Matt created the conditions for a new regulation of the relationship between state and church. The 1924 Concordat with the Holy See as well as the contracts with the Protestant regional churches are largely due to Matt's determined policies. The concordat concluded at the time is still valid for Bavaria - with minor changes - to this day.

During the Hitler putsch of November 9, 1923, when Prime Minister Eugen von Knilling and two ministers were in the hands of the insurgents, Franz Matt, as Deputy Prime Minister, moved to Regensburg with a rump cabinet as a precautionary measure in order to secure legitimate government power. While still in Munich he issued an appeal to the population against the "Prussian Ludendorff " who, according to the Frankfurter Zeitung of August 5, 1929, contributed significantly to overcoming the attempted coup. The assumption spread by the National Socialists that Matt heard the news of the Hitler coup during a dinner with Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber and the Papal Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII. , was immediately denied by the minister (Schmidt, p. 74f.).

After several strokes, Matt had to give up his ministerial office on October 11, 1926 for health reasons and withdrew from politics. Goodbye Prime Minister wrote to him Heinrich Held : "With exemplary loyalty and devotion and with a rare manpower They have served more than 38 years to the country and achieved outstanding in all your positions." Even the social democratic " Munich post of the minister" suggested goodbye conciliatory tone to: “We were always fierce opponents of the Minister of Education Matt. But we part from him with the recognition that as a person he was an open and honest character. ” (Schmidt, p. 30).

Matt was involved in the Catholic lay movement and was the founder of the “Palatinate Society for the Advancement of Science”. He received several honorary doctorates and numerous awards, the highest of which was the Grand Cross of the Papal Order of St. Gregory . Various publications refer to him as the "father of the Bavarian Concordat". Franz Matt is buried in the Nordfriedhof in Munich.

literature

  • Lydia Schmidt: Minister of Culture Franz Matt (1920-1926): School, church and art policy in Bavaria after the upheaval of 1918 (series of publications on Bavarian national history) . CH Beck, 2000, ISBN 3-406-10707-9 .
  • Viktor Carl: Lexicon of Palatinate Personalities , Hennig Verlag Edenkoben, 2004, ISBN 3-9804668-5-X , page 561; (Page 562 Father and Family).

Web links

Commons : Franz Matt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cartell Association of Catholic German Student Associations (ed.), The honorary members, old men and students of the CV Vienna 1924, p. 356 u. P. 403.
personal data
SURNAME Matt, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bavarian minister of culture and deputy prime minister
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Offenbach an der Queich , Palatinate
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1929
Place of death Munich