Gottfried Feder

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Gottfried Feder (1930)

Gottfried Feder (born January 27, 1883 in Würzburg , † September 24, 1941 in Murnau am Staffelsee ) was a German engineer and economic theorist . He was a member of the German Workers 'Party and the National Socialist German Workers' Party .

Life

Feder's father and grandfather were senior officials in the Kingdom of Bavaria . After being in Ansbach had taken his A-levels, studied spring construction with an emphasis on reinforced concrete construction at the technical universities in Munich , Charlottenburg and Zurich . He became a member of the Corps Isaria in 1901 and earned a reputation as a fencer. A skull injury sustained during a mensur made him unfit for military service.

Since 1905 engineering graduate , spring was in 1908 a partner and head of the Munich branch of the construction company Ackermann GmbH & Co. KG , for which he in Germany, Italy and Bulgaria as built warehouses and bridges large buildings, as well as in the First World War munitions centers and hangars. He also devoted himself to the construction of a ship made of reinforced concrete . Feder had to finance his work as a building contractor with loans. He began to deal autodidactically with questions of financial theory. In November 1918, under the impression of the German defeat, he wrote his manifesto , published the following year, on the breaking of the interest bondage of money , in which he formulated the idea that the root of all evil that had struck Germany was interest . It should be abolished.

“The idea of ​​loan interest is the diabolical invention of large-scale loan capital, it alone enables the lazy drone life of a minority of the wealthy at the expense of the creative peoples and their labor, it has led to the deep, irreconcilable contradictions, to class hatred, from which civil war and fratricidal war were born "

In addition, he spoke in favor of nationalizing the banks and the stock exchange . He hoped that this would enable the class struggle to be overcome . Feder was not a fundamental opponent of capital and private property, but made a distinction in the folkish - anti-Semitic sense between “collecting” and “creating” capital. By the former, he understood commercial and financial capital, which he saw concentrated in the hands of a few big capitalists like the Rothschilds . In contrast, the “creative capital” should in future be issued and controlled solely by the state. Germany should declare national bankruptcy and nationalize the monetary system in order to free itself from international bondage. Feder distanced himself from Marxism and postulated the common interests of workers and employers in the returns of the national economy. Although he saw “the conscious interaction of the power-hungry big capitalists of all peoples” as part of a Jewish world conspiracy , he subordinated the elimination of Judaism to his economic goals.

In the following years, Feder devoted himself to his political mission. He withdrew from his company and moved from Munich to Murnau am Staffelsee in 1920 . He earned his living as a lecturer. He came into contact with the Thule Society and the anti-Semitic writer Dietrich Eckart and worked as a speaker and trainer for the news, press and propaganda department of the Reichswehr Group Command 4 . In one of his courses in June 1919, Adolf Hitler was sitting , who was deeply impressed by Feder's theses and adapted them for his anti-Semitic agitation. Feder also took part in a meeting of the German Workers' Party in September 1919 and became its member. Around the same time (1919/20) he was one of the most important meeting speakers for the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund . Besides Alfred Rosenberg and Richard Euringer he worked for the weekly Auf gut deutsch published by Dietrich Eckart between 1918 and 1921 .

In the 25-point program of the NSDAP, Feder's demands were taken into account in points 10 and 11, namely the " breaking of interest bondage ". There is no clear evidence that Feder ( NSDAP membership number 531) was directly involved in the party program. Feder apparently remained an outsider in the party. In January 1920 he founded his own German Kampfbund to break interest bondage , but it had little effect. He therefore sought closer contact with the NSDAP again in 1922. As a kind of economic and financial policy spokesman, Feder appeared at the NSDAP party congress in January 1923 as a speaker right after Hitler. He served the party as a programmer, but met reservations from Hitler, who relied on counter-revolutionary actions and paid attention to his own claim to leadership.

During the Hitler putsch , Feder, together with Max Amann and other Nazi propaganda giants , set up a propaganda headquarters in the confiscated premises of the Bayerische Siedlungs- und Landbank in Kanalstrasse, where posters and edicts were drawn up and public meetings were planned. After the re-establishment of the NSDAP in February 1925, Feder received no official party office. From 1924 to 1936, however, he was a member of the German Reichstag for the nationalist faction and the NSDAP .

Feder increasingly acted as a "movement programmer". In the dispute with Gregor Straßer , who tried to clarify the 25 points, at the turn of the year 1925/26, Feder ensured that Hitler stopped attempts to set up an internal party forum for a program discussion. Hitler commissioned him to “maintain the programmatic foundations” of the NSDAP. In 1927, Feder was also the editor of the new party official series of publications, the National Socialist Library . However, he was not given executive powers within the party.

At the end of 1928, Feder took over four NS-Gau newspapers in southern Germany, including the editor of the Ingolstadt NS-Kampfblatt Der Donaubote . Economically, however, this turned out to be a failure, with Feder losing his private fortune over the next three years. During the expansion of the Reich leadership of the NSDAP , he was appointed head of the NSDAP Economic Council in November 1931, but competed with the economic policy department under Otto Wagener . Also in 1931, together with Paul Schultze-Naumburg , Feder founded the Kampfbund Deutscher Architekten und Ingenieure (KDAI), which gained 2,000 members within a year.

After the seizure of power of Hitler in 1933, the economic policies of the NSDAP turned from the anti-capitalist , but not from the anti-Semitic from entertainment Feder. In April 1933, Feder failed in his attempt to become chairman of the Association of German Engineers (VDI). In June 1933, contrary to his hopes, he was only appointed State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Economics , and with Hans Posse he was also appointed a second State Secretary from the ministerial bureaucracy. During this time, Feder published the book Kampf gegen die Hochfinanz , which contains a collection of his publications and speeches, as well as the inflammatory pamphlet Die Juden (1933). From March to December 1934, Feder was also Reich Commissioner for Settlements; in December 1934 he was given temporary retirement. In November 1934, Feder was appointed honorary professor at the Technical University of Berlin , and in 1936 he was appointed as a civil servant extraordinary professor at the Faculty of Construction at the TH Berlin. Feder was at the TH “Professor of Settlements, Spatial Planning and Urban Development (from 1940 for: Spatial planning, regional and urban planning)”. In addition, he was a member of the Academy for German Law founded by Hans Frank , which came into being in the course of bringing the legal system into line.

Publications

Book edition, 6th edition 1935
  • The manifesto for breaking the interest bondage of money , in: Kritische Rundschau (1919).
    • Extended new edition in: An Alle, Alle! No. 1 (1919).
  • The national bankruptcy the rescue , in: To all, all! No. 2 (1919).
  • The program of the NSDAP and its ideological basic ideas.
  • The housing shortage and the social construction and economic bank as a savior from housing misery, economic crisis and poor employment .
  • The German state on a national and social basis. (1923).
  • What does Adolf Hitler want? (1931).
  • Fight against high finance. (1933).
  • The organic economy. (1934).
  • The class concept in National Socialism .
  • Outline of a National Socialist economic theory.
  • with Ferdinand Werner , Ernst Graf zu Reventlow and others: The new Germany and the Jewish question. Contribution to the discussion . 228 S., Rüdiger (CE Krug), Leipzig 1933 (original title: The Jew is to blame )
  • The Jews. Central publishing house of the NSDAP, Frz. Rather follow-up, Munich 1933.
  • The new city. Attempt to found a new art of urban planning based on the social structure of the population. Published by Julius Springer, Berlin 1939.

literature

  • Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 .
  • Torsten Meyer: Gottfried Feder and the National Socialist discourse on technology. In: Werner Lorenz , Torsten Meyer (Hrsg.): Technology and responsibility under National Socialism. Waxmann, Münster / New York / Munich / Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-8309-1407-5 , pp. 79-107.
  • Sonja Noller:  Feder, Gottfried. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 42 ( digitized version ).
  • Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (Ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . WBG, Darmstadt 1989, pp. 28-40.

Web links

Commons : Gottfried Feder  - Collection of Images
Wikisource: Gottfried Feder  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (Ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . WBG, Darmstadt 1989, p. 28 f.
  2. ↑ Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician . In: Ronald Smelser and Rainer Zitelmann (eds.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1989, p. 29 f .; Angelika Benz: The Manifesto to Break the Bondage of Interest (Gottfried Feder, 1919) . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Vol. 6: Publications . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-030535-7 , p. 442 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  3. ↑ Quotation from: Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician . In: Ronald Smelser and Rainer Zitelmann (eds.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1989, p. 30.
  4. ↑ Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (Ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . WBG, Darmstadt 1989, pp. 30-32, cited above. 32; Angelika Benz: The Manifesto to Break the Bondage of Interest (Gottfried Feder, 1919) . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Vol. 6: Publications . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-030535-7 , p. 442 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  5. ↑ Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician . In: Ronald Smelser, Rainer Zitelmann (Ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . WBG, Darmstadt 1989, pp. 32-34.
  6. ↑ Uwe Lohalm: Völkischer Radikalismus: The history of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. 1919-1923 . Leibniz-Verlag, Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-87473-000-X , p. 127.
  7. ^ Ernst Piper : Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist . Munich 2005, ISBN 3-89667-148-0 , p. 76.
  8. ↑ Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician , in: Ronald Smelser , Rainer Zitelmann (ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft WBG, later new edition, Darmstadt 1989, p. 34. - The architect Franz Lawaczeck was a fellow campaigner in the Kampfbund
  9. ↑ a b Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (Ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . WBG, Darmstadt 1989, pp. 35-37.
  10. ↑ Harold J. Gordon Jr.: Hitler putsch 1923. Power struggle in Bavaria 1923–1924. Bernard & Graefe, Frankfurt / M. 1971, pp. 278, 295.
  11. ↑ Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (Ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . WBG, Darmstadt 1989, p. 37 f.
  12. ↑ Albrecht Tyrell: Gottfried Feder - The failed programmatician . In: Ronald Smelser u. Rainer Zitelmann (Ed.): The brown elite. 22 biographical sketches . WBG, Darmstadt 1989, p. 38 f.
  13. ^ Karl-Heinz Ludwig: The VDI as an object of party politics 1933 to 1945 . In: Karl-Heinz Ludwig (Ed.): Technology, Engineers and Society - History of the Association of German Engineers 1856–1981 . VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981, ISBN 3-18-400510-0 , p. 408 .
  14. ↑ Harold James : Germany in the Great Depression 1924-1936. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1988, p. 346.
  15. ↑ Joachim Lilla u. a .: extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, p. 133 f.
  16. ↑ Mechtild Rössler: "Science and living space". Geographical research on the East under National Socialism . Berlin / Hamburg 1990, p. 268; Erich Konter: Urban planning at the TU Berlin in the 1940s . In: Arch + 81, 1985, pp. 60-62; Arch + 84, 1986, pp. 88-90.
  17. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 145.
  18. ↑ Gottfried Feder: The organic economy. In: Theodore Fred Abel papers. Hoover Institution , 1934, accessed on November 17, 2017 (article in the newsletter of the Mommsen section ).
personal data
SURNAME Feder, Gottfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economic theorist and politician (DAP, NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1941
Place of death Murnau am Staffelsee