Hans von Kanitz

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Hans Graf von Kanitz
Podangen manor around 1860, Alexander Duncker collection

Hans Wilhelm Alexander Graf von Kanitz-Podangen (born April 17, 1841 in Mednicken , East Prussia , † June 30, 1913 in Podangen ) from the noble family of those von Kanitz was a politician of the German Conservative Party .

Life

origin

Count Kanitz was the eldest son and the second of a total of twelve children of the General Landscape Director of East Prussia , a member of the Prussian House of Representatives and later of the Prussian Manor (1868–1877), Emil Carl Ferdinand Graf von Kanitz (1807–1877) and Charlotte von Sydow (1820–1868) from Stolzenfelde, Neumark.

Career

After initially receiving home tuition, he attended the monastery school in Roßleben , Thuringia, from 1856 to 1859 , where he obtained his university entrance qualification. After studying law at the universities of Berlin and Heidelberg , he was first auscultator at the Berlin Court of Justice in 1862 and then from 1864 to 1867 government trainee lawyer in Frankfurt (Oder) . In 1867 he was appointed provisional district administrator in Hirschberg in what was then the Prussian province of Silesia and from 1870 to 1877 he was district administrator of the Sprottau district in Silesia.

At the same time, Count Kanitz pursued a military career and was promoted to second lieutenant (lieutenant) in 1864 and premier lieutenant (first lieutenant) in 1873 . He took part in the wars against Austria-Hungary in 1866 and France in 1870/71 as an officer of the 3rd Heavy Landwehr Cavalry Regiment and in 1870 earned the Iron Cross (2nd class). When he left military service, he was made Rittmeister d. Res. Promoted.

In 1877, after the death of his father, he took over the Podangen manor , located in the Prussian-Holland district in East Prussia , which he managed together with the leased Mednicken estate near Königsberg , which the family had owned without interruption since 1491.

In addition, he began his political career as early as 1869 as a member of the Reichstag of the North German Confederation , of which he was a member until 1870. In 1885, as a member of the German Conservative Party , he became a member of the Prussian House of Representatives for the first time , to which he belonged until his death in 1913. In 18890 he also became a member of the Reichstag , in which he first represented the Reichstag constituency of Gumbinnen 2 and finally, after the Reichstag election in 1912, the Reichstag constituency of Königsberg 7 until his death .

Count Kanitz was an important representative of agricultural interest politics in the Wilhelmine era . As a member of the German Conservative Group , he advocated the creation of a protective tariff system and the interests of agriculture . In the context of his parliamentary work, he was particularly prominent through the application by Kanitz .

This was a draft law for the nationalization of grain imports and the establishment of grain reserves in case of war, which was unsuccessfully introduced into the Reichstag three times in the years 1894–1896 with the support of the Federation of Farmers founded in 1893, which triggered a lively public discussion. The reason for this project, which was criticized at the same time as reactionary and utopian or even "socialist", was the fall in producer prices for agricultural products, especially bread grain, and the resulting agricultural crisis, which was essentially attributed to the trade agreements concluded by Chancellor Caprivi with the Russian Empire intended to reduce import duties on agricultural products.

The slogan coined by the Association of Farmers has been handed down from that time: Without Kanitz, there are no boats . This establishes a political connection between the battle fleet construction operated by Kaiser Wilhelm II and the protective interests of the agricultural sector . Count Kanitz was critical of the Reich's naval policy anyway. He was of the opinion that Germany could not wear the strongest land armor and the strongest sea armor at the same time. He also considered it unwise to increase the number of Germany's opponents already existing at that time by adding England, which would be severely disturbed in its interests by German maritime competition.

Count Kanitz was also one of the canal rebels called opponents of the prestigious project pursued by Wilhelm II to build the Mittelland Canal , which in 1899 met with widespread resistance in parliament and administration. In 1904, he summarized his economic and socio-political concerns about the canal proposal that had been introduced into the Prussian House of Representatives and rejected there several times in an open letter to the Prussian government . He was also a member of a twenty-three-member Exchange Enquête Commission appointed to investigate the abuses of the exchange trading at the time , whose proposals (e.g. to restrict futures trading ) had a significant influence on the Exchange Act passed in 1896 . Count Kanitz was a member of the Customs Tariff Commission of the Reichstag. His extensive knowledge in the field of tariffs also prompted his appointment to the Prussian State Railroad Council, an advisory body created in 1882 for important transport issues.

In 1910 he was appointed Real Privy Councilor ( Excellency ) for his services . In 1913 he took over the chairmanship of the Reichstag parliamentary group of the German Conservative Party. He had been a member of the Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg since 1861 .

It should be noted that his younger brother Georg Carl Elias Graf von Kanitz (1842-1922) was also a member of the German Reichstag from 1893 until his resignation on March 14, 1894 for constituency 7 Schlochau - Flatow , Marienwerder district . Alexander Carl Richard Graf von Kanitz (1848–1940), another brother, was a member of the Prussian mansion from 1911 to 1918 . With Elard of Oldenburg Januschau , a prominent conservative politician of the Empire and the Weimar Republic , Kanitz was related.

family

Count Kanitz was married to Marie Freiin von Krassow (1854–1877), daughter of Count Carl Reinhold von Krassow (1812–1892) on Pansevitz , Rügen , and Clementine von Below . This marriage had two children:

  • Sigrid Charlotte Clementine Marie (1876–1967) ∞ Adolph Ernst Knoch (1874–1965), author of theological writings and Bible editor
  • Georg Karl Emil Count von Kanitz-Podangen (1877–1916), Rittmeister d. Res., Legation Councilor, Extraordinary Military Attaché in Persia (1915/1916)

The marriage with Countess Marie von Bismarck-Bohlen (1855–1929), daughter of Count Friedrich Alexander von Bismarck-Bohlen (1818–1894) in Karlsburg , Western Pomerania , and Pauline von Below (1825–1889) resulted in seven children :

  • Friedrich Hans Theodor Berndt Count von Kanitz-Mednicken (1880–1945), landowner, District Administrator ∞ Elisabeth Countess Finck von Finckenstein (1884–1968)
  • Elisabeth Pauline (1882–1958) ∞ Wilhelm von Dommes (1867–1959), major general (with the honorary rank of lieutenant general), authorized representative of the Prussian royal family
  • Werner Hans Otto Count von Kanitz (1883–1965)
  • Gerhard Theodor Alexander Graf von Kanitz-Podangen (1885–1949), landowner, Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture ∞ Valeska Freiin von Tiele-Winckler (1893–1948)
  • Paula Margarete Elisabeth (1888–1969) ∞ Bonaventure Count Finck von Finckenstein -Jäskendorf (1872–1951), landowner, captain, district administrator
  • Eleonore Marie (1891–1947) ∞ Maximilian Graf von Wiser (1861–1938), famous German ophthalmologist
  • Hans Theodor Friedrich Karl Graf von Kanitz (1893–1968), major general, founder of the “Sternbriefkreis” of Christian officers ∞ Karoline Princess zur Lippe adH Detmold (1905–2001), daughter of Prince Leopold IV. Zur Lippe

Publications

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to the information in the Biographical Manual for the Prussian House of Representatives from 1849 to 1867 by Bernd Haunfelder , Volume 5, Düsseldorf, 1994, No. 752, his activities included the following legislative periods: 1849–1852, 1859–1861, 1866/1867
  2. ^ Fritz Specht, Paul Schwabe: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1903. Statistics of the Reichstag elections together with the programs of the parties and a list of the elected representatives. 2nd Edition. Carl Heymann Verlag, Berlin 1904, p. 9; Imperial Statistical Office (Ed.): The Reichstag elections of 1912 . Issue 2. Berlin: Verlag von Puttkammer & Mühlbrecht, 1913, p. 83 (Statistics of the German Reich, vol. 250)
  3. ↑ Fundamental to this: Hans-Jürgen Puhle : Agrarian Interest Policy and Prussian Conservatism in the Wilhelmine Empire (1893-1914). Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1975; Cornelius Torp: The challenge of globalization, economy and politics in Germany (1860-1914) (= critical studies on historical science . Volume 168). Göttingen, 2005; Cornelius Torp: Max Weber and the Prussian Junkers. Tübingen, 1998
  4. ↑ Gustav v. Schmoller , Some words on the Kanitz application, in: Yearbook for Legislation, Administration and Economics in the German Empire, ed. by Gustav Schmoller, 19th year 1895, pp. 611–629; Max Weber , Complete Edition, Dept. 1, Vol. 4, ed. by Mommsen / Aldenhoff, half-vol. 2, 1993, p. 777, report of the Frankfurter Journal on the lecture "Agricultural protection and positive agricultural policy" on March 13, 1896 in Frankfurt / M .; F. Pichler, The Kanitz application, history, parliamentary treatment and appreciation of the same, 1895; Leo von Graß-Klanin , Kornhaus versus Kanitz, Berlin 1895; from the more recent literature cf. also: Der Spiegel, issue 13/1954, p. 12 ff. (cover story: “Der peasant heroism”); Aloys Winterling, “With the Kanitz application, the Caesars would still be on the throne today”, in: Archive for Art History, Cologne 1993/2001, vol. 83, p. 413 ff; Jürgen Backhaus , The Kanitz Act Proposal: European Agricultural Policy in Theoretical and Historical Perspective, Journal of Economic Studies, 26 (4/5) 1999, pp. 438–448.
  5. ↑ See Stenographic Reports of the Reichstag, Vol. 233, 1908, p. 6035 (C) Reichstag protocols . reichstagsprotocol.de. Retrieved September 17, 2012.
  6. ↑ Kanitz-Mednicken, Friedrich Graf von, in: Deutscher Aufstieg, Pictures from the Past and Present of Right-Wing Parties, ed. v. Arnim / v. Below, Berlin Leipzig Vienna Bern, 1925, p. 321ff. (324 ff.).
  7. ^ Kösener corps lists 1910, 120 , 573.
personal data
SURNAME Kanitz, Hans von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kanitz-Podangen, Hans Wilhelm Alexander Graf von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lawyer and politician, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Mednicken , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1913
Place of death Berlin