Johann von Dallwitz

Nikolaus Michael Louis Johann von Dallwitz

Nikolaus Michael Louis Johann (Hans) von Dallwitz (born September 29, 1855 in Breslau ; † August 2, 1919 at Gut Bossee near Westensee (Holstein)) was a Anhalt and Prussian politician , real secret council , Prime Minister of Anhalt , Minister of the Interior of the Kingdom of Prussia and imperial governor in the realm of Alsace-Lorraine . He was one of the few high-ranking politicians of his time who was critical of the Turkish leadership about the Armenian genocide .

Origin and family

Groß Leipe (Silesia)

Johann von Dallwitz came from the Dallwitz branch of the ancient Scof family and was a nephew of Sigismund von Dallwitz , a lawyer and member of the Frankfurt National Assembly . His parents were Wolff Friedrich Johannes von Dallwitz, Herr auf Groß-Leipe , Mangschütz etc. as well as Prussian Chamberlain and Franziska (Fanny) Ottlilie Charlotte Freiin von Plotho . Johann grew up on his parents' estate in Groß Leipe in Silesia. He had four sisters: Fanny, Anna von Lattorf, Marie Eva and Magdalene Countess von Roedern . He himself was not married and remained childless.

Young years

In Dresden he attended the Vitzthumsche Gymnasium and then studied law in Bonn and Strasbourg. In 1876 he became a member of the Corps Borussia Bonn .

Political life

In 1886 Johann von Dallwitz became district administrator for the district of Lüben . In 1894 he was elected to the Prussian House of Representatives for the constituency of Liegnitz 3 as a member of the Conservative Party and re-elected to the 19th legislative period. When he spoke out against the construction of the Mittelland Canal as a so-called canal rebel in 1899 , he was put up for disciplinary action as a district administrator.

In 1900 he was Councilor in Poznan . Because of this promotion, he had to give up his seat in the House of Representatives on January 7, 1900. In 1902 he became Minister of State of Anhalt and in 1909 President of the Province of Silesia . From 1903 to 1909 he was Prime Minister of Anhalt and from 1910 to 1914 Prussian Minister of the Interior . After a conflict with Chancellor Theobald v. Bethmann Hollweg to reform the electoral law, in which he took a conservative stance, he resigned from his office.

Johann (Hans) von Dallwitz

In 1914, Johann von Dallwitz was appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm II as the successor of Prince Karl von Wedels as civil governor in Alsace-Lorraine after the Zabern affair had made a change in the Reich necessary. He was one of the few high-ranking politicians of his time who was critical of the Armenian genocide . In 1917 it came between him and the Turkish heir to the throne Mehmed VI. as well as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk almost caused a scandal during their visit to Strasbourg. At a meal that he gave for them, he described the Armenians as "very good-willed people" and expressed his displeasure with the "rather bad attacks" by the Turks against the Armenians. Ataturk responded with the words: “How did you get the idea to speak in favor of the Armenians who claim to have existed at a, I do not know at what point in time and in what epoch [as a nation] To prove this existence anew, to deceive the world to the detriment of a Turkey, which is your ally and which puts its whole material and spiritual existence at risk for this alliance? "

During his tenure in Alsace-Lorraine, Johann von Dallwitz tried to unite the Reichsland with Prussia , because the constitutional status of an Reichsland seemed untenable to him. The First World War came before this and the further escalation of the conflict between Alsace-Lorraine and Prussia, as the governor had to be recalled on October 14, 1918.

literature

• Paul Wentzcke:  Dallwitz, Hans von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 493 ( digitized version ).
• Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Uradelige houses, eighth year, Verlag Justus Perthes, Gotha 1907
• Bernhard Mann : Biographical Handbook for the Prussian House of Representatives 1867-1918 (= Handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 3). Droste, Düsseldorf 1988, ISBN 3-7700-5146-7 , p. 101.
• A. von Mutius: From the estate of the former imperial governor von Dallwitz , in: Prussian year books, Volume 214 (1928)
• R. Schwander: The Reichsland government and the constitution , in: Das Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen, Bd. 2, 1, ed. v. G. Wolfram, 1936, p. 79 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1910, 19 , 501
2. ^ Michael Rademacher: German administrative history from the unification of the empire in 1871 to the reunification in 1990. Lüben district (Polish Lubin). (Online material for the dissertation, Osnabrück 2006). 
3. ^ Klaus Kreiser : A Turk on the road. In: DIE ZEIT, February 21, 2008