Kuno from Westarp

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Kuno von Westarp at the banner consecration of the Neukölln branch of the DNVP (December 1924)

Kuno Friedrich Viktor Graf von Westarp (born August 12, 1864 in Ludom , Province of Posen , † July 30, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer , administrative officer and politician ( DkP , DNVP , KVP ).

origin

Kuno Graf von Westarp was born on August 12, 1864 in Ludom near Posen as the son of the Royal Prussian Chief Forester Viktor Graf von Westarp (* October 5, 1826 - May 28, 1868) and his wife Emma von Oven (1831-1910). Major General Adolf von Westarp (1854–1925) was his brother.

Life and work

After attending grammar school in Potsdam , he studied law at the universities of Tübingen , Breslau , Leipzig and Berlin from 1882 . In Tübingen he first joined the student association AV Igel zu Tübingen , but then switched to the Association of German Students in Breslau . In 1885 he finished his studies with the first state examination in law . In 1886 he did military service as a one-year volunteer in Breslau. Further exercises as a NCO and reserve officer took place on foot in Potsdam with the 1st Guard Regiment . At the beginning of the 20th century he was transferred to the Landwehr . Most recently he held the rank of lieutenant in the Guard Landwehr Infantry.

Westarp entered the Prussian administrative service in 1887, took up an activity as a trainee lawyer in the internal administration and worked as such in the Oberbarnim district under District Administrator Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg , who later became Chancellor of the Empire. After the second state law examination in March 1891, he took over as a government assessor representing the district administrator of the Gostyn district . In October 1891 he became an unskilled laborer for the district administrator of the district of Bomst , headed the district from the beginning of 1893 initially on a provisional basis and in October 1893 received the final appointment as district administrator there. From 1900 to 1904 he was the district administrator of the Randow district . At the same time he worked as a temporary assistant in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior from 1902 . Westarp was appointed police director in 1903 and served as police chief in Schöneberg and Wilmersdorf from 1904 to 1908 . Since April 1, 1908, he worked as a senior administrative judge at the Prussian higher administrative court . During the First World War , from 1914 to 1918 he was in charge of the voluntary nursing of the wounded transport of the military railroad service of the Berlin railways.

From January 1919 Westarp was again active as a senior administrative judge in Berlin until he retired in April 1920. From 1919 to 1932 he was a member of the supervisory board of the Kreuzzeitung , for which he also regularly wrote leading articles . In 1925 Westarp supported the Kreuzzeitung, which was on the verge of financial collapse after the hyperinflation of 1922/23 by buying up over 50% of the shares. In doing so, he saved the paper from being taken over by the Hugenberg Group .

Even during the Nazi era , Westarp remained active as a journalist and published contemporary historical studies and his memoirs. After the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , his home was searched. In June 1945 he was arrested by Soviet soldiers, but released shortly afterwards. Kuno Graf von Westarp died on July 30, 1945 in Berlin.

Westarp had been married to Ada Countess von Pfeil and Klein-Ellguth (1867–1943) since June 1, 1893 . From this marriage two daughters were born: Gertraude (1894–1975) and Adelgunde (1895–1960).

Westarp was a Protestant denomination and since 1904 a legal knight of the Order of St. John .

politics

Westarp joined the farmers' union in the 1890s and was seen as a proponent of the “ national struggle ”. He represented conservative and national interests and joined the German Conservative Party (DkP). On December 12, 1908, he was elected as a member of the Reichstag , of which he was a member until November 1918. In parliament he was first deputy chairman from 1912 and then from November 26, 1913 to 1918 chairman of the German Conservative Party. During the First World War, he resolutely fought all efforts for a mutual agreement and instead campaigned for the start of unrestricted submarine warfare . He fundamentally rejected a reform of the Prussian three-class suffrage.

Count von Westarp (middle) after resigning from the DNVP party chairmanship (July 1928)

After the November Revolution, Westarp participated in the founding of the German National People's Party (DNVP), which pursued a radically counter-revolutionary and anti-republican course. In the Reichstag election in 1920 he was elected to the German Reichstag . In parliament he represented constituency 3 (Potsdam II). Westarp was initially part of the Pan-German - ethnic wing of the DNVP and was the party's liaison in the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch .

Westarp saw the dominance of the victorious powers ("foreign rule") as the origin of the problems in Germany. At the same time he saw Jews as a "foreign race " and defined himself as a supporter of the racial ideologist Hans FK Günther . Accordingly, Westarp campaigned for the restriction of the immigration of Eastern European Jews and saw social democracy as a movement directed by Jews. In spite of these basic anti-Semitic convictions, like the party leadership of the DNVP, he opposed the exclusion of Jewish members. Nonetheless, he saw the DNVP as a conservative reservoir, to which the völkisch wing around von Graefe , Wulle and Henning should also belong. He even went so far as to want to strengthen Wulles and Graefe's position in the party and regarded von Graefe as an old friend. Westarp saw Graefes right-wing extremist agitation as a complement to his own, more state-supporting appearance. This position between the party leadership and good connections to the völkisch wing led Westarp to mediate between the two when the anti-Semitic Henning was expelled from the party and the split threatened. Westarp's mediation failed, however, which led to the founding of the DVFP in 1922 , which was henceforth led by Graefe.

In the mid-1920s he moderated his political stance and now advocated German national participation in government. From February 1925 to December 1929 he was chairman of the DNVP parliamentary group and from March 24, 1926 to October 20, 1928 party chairman of the DNVP. During his time as party and parliamentary group chairman, he mainly dealt with Christian issues. Westarp was at times a member of the board of the right-wing conservative Berlin National Club from 1919 .

Westarp was one of the losers in the power struggle at the head of the DNVP, in which the extreme group, led by the Pan-German publisher Alfred Hugenberg, succeeded from 1927 with massive support from the Stahlhelmbund and nationalist -right-wing extremist circles inside and outside the party, which was still shaped during the German Empire , monarchist displace -konservative elite of the party and to enable collaboration with the Nazis with their disempowerment, which determined the party in the final stages of the republic.

Because the party rejected his plans to support Heinrich Brüning's candidacy for Chancellor, and his successor Hugenberg aroused his displeasure with his sharply anti-republican policies, Westarp resigned from the party in July 1930. In the same year he participated together with Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus in the founding of the Conservative People's Party (KVP) , of which he was a member and for which he sat in the Reichstag until July 1932.

After the National Socialists came to power, Westarp withdrew from political life. Although he ideologically rejected the National Socialist dictatorship, he unreservedly agreed to the foreign and power political goals of the National Socialist war policy and viewed its successes up to the turn of the war in 1941/42 with satisfaction.

Fonts (selection)

  • Conservative politics in the last decade of the empire. First volume: From 1908 to 1914. Second volume: From 1914 to 1918. Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 1935.
  • Conservative politics in the transition from the German Empire to the Weimar Republic. Edited by Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen with the assistance of Karl J. Mayer and Reinhold Weber. In: Sources on the history of parliamentarism and political parties , third series, Vol. 10. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2001. ISBN 3-7700-5239-0 .
Essays
  • Order and subordination - not democratic egalitarianism (1916)
  • Self-government - not parliamentary democracy!

literature

  • Daniela Gasteiger: Kuno von Westarp (1864–1945): Parliamentarism, monarchism and power utopias in German conservatism (sources and representations on contemporary history, volume 117), De Gruyter, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-052905-0 .
  • Larry Eugene Jones, Wolfram Pyta (ed.): “I am the last Prussian.” The political life of the conservative politician Kuno Graf von Westarp (1864–1945) (Stuttgart historical research, vol. 3). Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-412-26805-3 .
  • Marc Zirlewagen: Kuno Graf v. Westarp. In: Marc Zirlewagen (Ed.): 1881–2006 - 125 years of German student associations. Vol. 1: A historical review. Academic Association Kyffhäuser, Pressburg 2006, ISBN 3-929953-06-4 , pp. 248-250.
  • Marc Zirlewagen:  Kuno from Westarp. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 27, Bautz, Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-88309-393-2 , Sp. 1527-1533.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the count's houses to the year 1876, p. 993 f.

Web links

Commons : Kuno von Westarp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Larry Eugene Jones, Wolfram Pyta: I am the last Prussian: the political life of the conservative politician Kuno Graf von Westarp. Böhlau Verlag, 2006. p. 29.
  2. ^ Daniela Gasteiger: Kuno von Westarp (1864-1945): Parliamentarism, monarchism and rule utopias in German conservatism . De Gruyter, Berlin.
  3. ^ Daniela Gasteiger: From Friends to Foes - Count Kuno von Westarp and the Transformation of the German Right . In: The German right in the Weimar Republic: studies in the history of German conservatism, nationalism, and antisemitism . Berghahn, New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-78238-353-6 , pp. 53-57 .
  4. ↑ a b Newly published in: Achim von Borries (Hrsg.): Preussen and the consequences. Dietz Verlag, Bonn u. a. 1981, ISBN 3-8012-0064-7 , pp. 88 f.
personal data
SURNAME Westarp, Kuno of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Westarp, Kuno Friedrich Viktor Graf von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, administrative officer and politician (DkP, DNVP, KVP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Ludom , Poznan Province
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1945
Place of death Berlin