Johannes Rathje

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Johannes Rathje (born December 29, 1879 in Lüneburg , † December 16, 1956 in Peine ) was a German journalist and liberal politician .

Life during the Empire

Rathje studied history , German literature and economics in Kiel , Berlin and Göttingen . After that he initially worked as a journalist. Later (1905) he received his doctorate in Heidelberg under Erich Marcks with the thesis "The organization of authorities in the former Electoral Cologne Duchy of Westphalia ". phil.

Around 1902 he joined the National Social Association . A short time later he became a member of the "Association of Friends of the Christian World" around Martin Rade . When the National Social Association lost the Reichstag election of 1903 , Rathje, like other members of the National Social Association, converted to the Liberal Association . For this he worked for a short time as party secretary in central Germany. He then became editor of the liberally oriented "Halleschen Allgemeine Zeitung."

Rathje married Hanna Kolbatz (1881–1967) in 1906. The marriage had three children. He came to Nuremberg in 1913 through several professional positions such as Berlin, Kiel and Karlsruhe . There he took over the post of editor-in-chief of the democratically-minded "Franconian Courier." In addition, he was active in various associations. Politically, he was temporarily a member of the central leadership of the Progressive People's Party . In addition, from 1914 he was a board member of the Evangelical-Social Congress .

Weimar Republic

In 1918 Rathje went to Berlin and worked there for the German-Hannoversche Party until the November Revolution . From mid-November 1918 he was one of the founders of the German Democratic Party (DDP). In the party executive he was responsible for public relations. In a brochure Rathje defined the DDP as a rallying party of the bourgeois left. His area of ​​responsibility also included the publication of the “Democratic Party Correspondence”. This was not only the party's press service, but also provided space for political analysis by party leaders and their close intellectuals.

As early as March 1920, he gave up his position as press chief of the party to work as editor-in-chief for the Kieler Zeitung . However, he was still a member of management bodies of the DDP. So he was a member of the executive committee of the party. He was also chairman of the party in the province of Schleswig-Holstein from 1922.

In 1923 he switched to the Hannoversche Landeszeitung . This was close to the German-Hanoverian party and Rathje changed sides again. The decline of the German-Hanover Party led to the loss of his position.

time of the nationalsocialism

At the end of the 1930s he moved to Nordhausen am Harz and took a position as editor at the Nordhäuser Zeitung . In late summer 1938 he became a member of the NSDAP , but also belonged to the Confessing Church . Inwardly, the persecution of the Jews strengthened his rejection of the regime. With this in mind, he began working on Martin Rade in 1943 . In the same year he was deposed as editor of the Nordhäuser Zeitung and the paper was banned. His book was also a representation of the liberal Protestantism of the time before National Socialism.

Rathje lived in Osterstrasse (today Puschkinstrasse) and witnessed the air raids on Nordhausen in April 1945, an event that occupies a large part of his memoirs.

post war period

After the invasion of US troops, he was appointed to the five-member Nordhausen city council. A month later the Red Army moved into Nordhausen and Rathje came under pressure due to his NSDAP membership and cooperation with the Americans. He became a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany , but lost his pension.

Badly bad health, he fled to his son in Peine after a long pre-trial detention in Gräfentonna and threatened imprisonment . There he could finish his work on Rade. The book was published in 1952 by Ehrenfried Klotz-Verlag in Stuttgart, funded by the German Research Foundation; however, Rathje had to shorten his manuscript. The work met with a considerable response in the academic world. The theological faculty of the Philipps University of Marburg awarded the author an honorary doctorate in 1953.

Small parts of his estate are in the University Library of Marburg ( call number : MS 858). The main inventory is lost.

family

Johannes Rathje was born as the son of the royal Prussian court photographer Julius Rathje and his wife Wilhelmine Rathje (née Hoffmeister). He was married to Hanna Kolbatz (1881–1961).

His daughter Christine, born in 1910, married the lawyer Clemens de Maiziére (1906–1980) in 1936 in the Altendorfer Church in Nordhausen. Several children emerged from the marriage, including Lothar de Maizière, born in 1940 .

plant

  • The official organization in the former Electoral Cologne Duchy of Westphalia . Phil Diss. Heidelberg 1905.
  • German People's Party or German Democratic Party? Berlin 1919.
  • The world of free Protestantism. A contribution to the German-Protestant intellectual history. Depicted in the life and work of Martin Rade , Stuttgart 1952.
  • Personal information from Martin Rade , in: Free Christianity 5 (1953), No. 2, pp. 19-21.
  • My life. Recorded for my children and grandchildren . Edited and commented by Matthias Wolfes, in: Mitteilungen der Ernst-Troeltsch-Gesellschaft 10 (1997), pp. 12–170.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Nordhausen City Archives: Nordhausen personalities from eleven centuries . Geiger, Horb am Neckar 2009. p. 226.
personal data
SURNAME Rathje, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION liberal journalist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Luneburg
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1956
Place of death Torment