Friedrich von Berg
Friedrich Wilhelm Bernhard von Berg , also von Berg-Markienen , (born November 20, 1866 on the Markienen estate (near Bartenstein ); † March 9, 1939 there ) was a Prussian - German officer, civil servant, politician and very close confidante of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. From 1916 to 1918 he was high president in East Prussia. As head of the secret civil cabinet of Kaiser Wilhelm II and guardian of the interests of the Hohenzollern dynasty , he played an important role in German politics towards the end of the First World War .
origin
Friedrich von Berg came from the originally Brandenburg noble family of Berg . He was born in 1866 on his father's estate in Markienen (today Markiny ) near the East Prussian town of Bartenstein. His parents were the major of the Prussian Army Friedrich von Berg (* June 20, 1835, † April 30, 1888) and his wife Elisabeth von Pressentin called von Rautter (* January 14, 1842, † September 24, 1901).
His father had acquired the Markienen estate in 1863, which was to remain in the possession of the von Berg family until 1945.
Life
After attending grammar school, Berg entered the army as an officer candidate in 1885 . In July 1886 he became a lieutenant in the 1st Guards Regiment on foot , and in 1888 personal adjutant to Prince Friedrich Leopold of Prussia . In 1892 he resigned from the Prussian army and began studying law at the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Breslau and the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . In Bonn he became a member of the Corps Borussia in 1885 , to which Kaiser Wilhelm II also belonged.
In 1894 he entered the Prussian civil service, initially as a court trainee in his hometown of Bartenstein. In 1896 he moved to Danzig , where he passed the state examination in 1899. From 1899 Berg worked as a government assessor in Berlin and in the Niederbarnim district . In 1903 he became district administrator of the Goldap district .
In 1906 he moved to the Secret Civil Cabinet . After three years as lecturer and Privy Councilor mountain was governor of the province of East Prussia , ie head of the provincial administration Prussia . In 1916 he moved to the chair of the Upper President in East Prussia.
After Rudolf von Valentini had resigned under pressure from the Supreme Army Command under Ludendorff , Berg succeeded him on January 16, 1918 as the (last civilian) head of the Secret Civil Cabinet. When the new Chancellor, Prince Max von Baden , submitted the request for an armistice to the Entente Powers at the beginning of October , Berg was no longer tenable as an advocate of a victory peace. On October 11, 1918, he was replaced by Clemens von Delbrück .
With his extremely conservative worldview, Berg differed from his corps brother Adolf Tortilowicz von Batocki-Friebe in all essential questions . As close as he was to the emperor through his father, the corps and the hunt in Rominten , so clearly did he see the weaknesses of Wilhelm II . Berg nevertheless tried to steer the emperor in his sense of rigid adherence to the monarchical prerogative, to unconditional perseverance against the hostile superiority and the revolutionary forces in the country, so obviously in the idea that he, Berg, was called to be the monarch not to deviate from the path of 'honor and dignity' of the monarchy as he saw it. The liberal Richard v. Kühlmann described Berg as 'a gravedigger of the monarchy'. ” After leaving Berlin, Berg went back to East Prussia. In 1919 he was elected to the Provincial Parliament of the Province of East Prussia for the DNVP . There he was chairman of the provincial parliament from 1919 to 1933. In 1920 he was President of the East Prussian Provincial Synod . In the same year he became first chairman (Adelsmarschall) of the German Aristocratic Association , an office that he held until 1932. His monarchical faction could not prevail against the Volkish one.
From 1921 to 1926 Berg was head of the general administration of the formerly ruling Prussian royal family and authorized representative of the Hohenzollern and represented the former royal house together with the emperor's son August Wilhelm of Prussia in the disputes with the empire over property. After 1932 Berg withdrew from public life. He died in 1939 on his estate in Markienen.
Honors
- D. theol. hc from the Albertus University of Königsberg
- Honorary citizen of Allenstein
literature
- Reichs Handbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft , Vol. 1: A – K. Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 .
- Heinrich Potthoff (edit.): Friedrich von Berg as head of the secret civil cabinet in 1918 - memories from his estate . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1971 ( sources on the history of parliamentarism and political parties, first series, vol. 7)
- Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of noble houses for the year 1905, p. 80
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.ostpreussen.net/index.php?seite_id=12&kreis=15&stadt=03
- ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 11/687
- ↑ Potthoff, vd Groeben , 1993, pp. 165 ff.
- ^ Norbert Korfmacher: Provisional list of members of the East Prussian Provincial Parliament 1919 to 1933, 2018, p. 8, digitized .
- ^ Organization of the German Nobility Association , Institute for German Nobility Research
Heinrich Rickert (1876–1878) | Kurt von Saucken-Tarputschen (1878–1884) | Alfred von Gramatzki (1884–1887) | Klemens von Stockhausen (1888–1895) | Rudolf von Brandt (1896–1908) | Friedrich von Berg (1909–1916) | Manfred Graf von Brünneck-Bellschwitz (1916–1928) | Paul Blunk (1928–1936) | Helmuth von Wedelstädt (1936–1941)
Carl Wilhelm von Bötticher (1842–1848) | Rudolf von Auerswald (1848–1849) | Eduard von Flottwell (1849–1850) | Franz August Eichmann (1850–1868) | Karl von Horn (1869–1882) | Albrecht von Schlieckmann (1882–1891) | Udo zu Stolberg-Wernigerode (1891–1895) | Wilhelm von Bismarck (1895–1901) | Hugo Samuel von Richthofen (1901–1903) | Friedrich von Moltke (1903–1907) | Ludwig von Windheim (1907–1914) | Adolf Tortilowicz von Batocki-Friebe (1914–1916) | Friedrich von Berg (1916–1918) | Adolf Tortilowicz von Batocki-Friebe (1918–1919) | August Winnig (1919–1920) | Ernst Siehr (1920–1932) | Wilhelm Kutscher (1932–1933) | Erich Koch (1933–1945)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Berg, Friedrich von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Berg-Markienen, Friedrich von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German civil servant and politician, head of the secret civil cabinet of Kaiser Wilhelm II. |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 20, 1866 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Markings |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 9, 1939 |
| Place of death | Markings |