Max Hahn (lawyer)

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Max Hahn (born October 4, 1895 in Treis on the Moselle ; † May 12, 1939 in Munich ) was a doctor of law , in-house counsel for North Rhine-Westphalian heavy industry and managing director of the Central European Business Conference .

Live and act

Hahn was born the son of the notary Johann Hahn. He attended elementary school and secondary school in Trier until Easter 1914. Hahn volunteered to take part in the First World War , in which he was wounded in September 1914 and his left arm had to be amputated. With this, his ambitions to study a musical instrument were dashed. During the war he began and completed his studies in law and economics. He then completed a dissertation on the Moselle and Saar canalization , which he passed with summa cum laude.

Years of apprenticeship in heavy industry

In 1920 he joined the association for the protection of common economic interests in the Rhineland and Westphalia ( Langnam Association ) in Essen and with the north-western group of the iron and steel industry association . The focus of his area of ​​responsibility were trade and agricultural issues. He soon became the main employee of Max Schlenker , the managing director of the "Association for the Protection of Common Economic Interests in Rhineland and Westphalia", which was briefly referred to as the "Langnam Association". In the obituary of the series of publications of the economic and business management association in the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area, Hahn's “special merits” during the war on the Ruhr are emphasized without naming them in more detail. "His excellent collaboration in the planning and development of the" Reparations Department "in the Düsseldorf Economic Museum is also praised." Using graphics, he made it clear to everyone how, according to the Dawes Plan, American loans were used to pay German reparations made possible after the First World War . It is not clear from the brief information whether Hahn, in addition to the short-term benefit of an initially moderate reparation obligation, also referred to the medium-term risk of a debt trap caused by loan interest . Because this was the actual calculation of the Dawes Plan, which actually worked out successfully.

Lobbyist of the Central European Business Day

In the middle of the economic crisis, and thanks to it, a significant career leap took place in August 1931: he moved from the Ruhr area to the capital Berlin, where he took over the management of the Central European Economic Conference (MWT). The MWT was founded on the initiative of the Rhenish-Westphalian heavy industry; it was to become a political office for the interests of the entire German economy in Eastern Europe. In coordination with the Düsseldorf Stahlhof , under Hahn's aegis, the cooperation was expanded to include the entire German export industry and the large-scale agrarians. Due to the restrictions and sanctions of the post-war order, Hahn was convinced that German export and import interests should initially concentrate on Eastern Europe. The goal was a self-sufficient economic union . Because of the loss of German sources of raw materials overseas after the First World War and after the sudden restriction of access to many markets due to the forced foreign exchange economy established in August 1931, the Danube countries should now serve as a starting point for the desired hegemony in the world economy.

For this ambitious, discreet and far-reaching project, he carefully and industriously established a large number of contacts between Southeastern Europe and Germany and initiated just as many economic relationships. The victorious powers France and Great Britain were able to successfully prevent the establishment of a German-Austrian customs union under German control in 1931, so that Hahn now pushed ahead with his imperialist project of a much expanded German internal market in south-eastern Europe with all the greater discretion and sophistication. He acted in consultation with the relevant institutions and leading associations. The journalist Margret Boveri describes him as follows: “I imagine Hahn as a little black spider, ruling over a wide web of threads, unknown, invisible, secretive, omniscient. [...] The threads of the network included the information channels of the chemical association, the Langnam association , the electrical industry, the association of German mechanical engineering institutions , the Prussian main chamber of agriculture, the "Zweckverband der Industrie- und Handelskammern zu Bochum, Dortmund, Essen und Münster ", of the German Association of Cities ." This means that his work is comparable to that of Józef Retinger at the later Bilderberg conferences .

The self-sufficiency policy in the event of war, which was only pursued preventively and not from the outset by industry, also included the cultivation of soybeans and oil seeds in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary by IG Farben . This group was also responsible for the development and production of synthetic raw materials such as gasoline and rubber ( Buna ). As a MWT assistant scientist and unrecognized Marxist, Sohn-Rethel (1948, 20) gained the impression that IG Farben had “been assigned the entire raw material issue by secret treaty from the General Staff [the Reichswehr ].” Through Sohn-Rethel's publications are later some details about the discreetly acting MWT became known.

Personal

Hahn's sister Grete was a member of the KPD and lived in Schwerin . She was arrested in 1933 and he was only able to get her free again with great difficulty. Despite his partial use of the Hitler regime for big capitalist purposes, Hahn was, according to Freiherr von Wilmowsky, “a bitter Nazi opponent” and “permeated by the will to resist the system”. With this attitude he was in agreement with the leading industrialists in heavy industry as represented by the Düsseldorfer Stahlhof and the Ruhrlade . Hahn was overweight and died of kidney colic while traveling in Munich in 1939 . Bernhard Dietrich was his successor in the MWT, who soon lost influence due to the new primacy of warfare over economic policy.

Tilo von Wilmowsky , who was his superior in the MWT and the brother-in-law of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach , judged Hahn in his memoirs: “Dr. Hahn [...], who possessed economic imagination and a spirited organizational talent, [...] was an unusually gifted man, full of creative imagination, which was restrained by significant economic experience. He was passionately devoted to the Central European idea. He was not an easy-to-handle manager and was somewhat inclined to be ingenious in office operations. But for the task that we both had tackled as almost uncharted territory, it was perfect. "

Works

  • 1931: The economy in Central Europe , in: Volk und Reich. Political monthly issues 7, 115 - 124.
  • 1931: Central Europe as a goal of German politics , in: Volk und Reich 7, 563 - 572.
  • 1932: Zur Handelsppolitik der Gegenwart I , Rhein und Ruhr 13/39, 23 September 1932, 629 - 631.
    This essay was officially signed by Hahn's previous superior Max Schlenker, but according to Sohn-Rethel (1970, 32) it is Hahn the true writer. The article carefully formulates the laboriously determined balance of interests between large agrarians and large industry and made a dictatorship possible in the first place with this concept (ibid.). More under MWT .
  • 1934: Economic cooperation between Germany and the Southeast , in: Europäische Revue, special issue Balkan 10, issue 8, 487 - 492.
  • 1934: German Customs Union then, Central Europe today. On the centenary of the founding day of the German Customs Union , in: Volk und Reich 10, 1 - 7.
  • 1934: The German Empire and Italy in the Danube Region , in: Volk und Reich 10, 289-293.
→ The monthly magazine Volk und Reich was published by MWT.

literature

  • Alfred Sohn-Rethel : The political offices of large German industry . In: Look into the world . 15, 1948, pp. 20-22.
  • Fritz Pudor : Hahn, Max . in: ibid. (edit.), necrologist from the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area. Born 1939–1951. A. Bagel, Düsseldorf 1955, pp. 14-15.
  • Margret Boveri : Recalled speculations . In: New German Issues. Contributions to the European present . 16, 1969, 205-208.
  • Alfred Sohn-Rethel: The social reconsolidation of capitalism . First published anonymously in: Deutsche Führerbriefe (Berlin) . September 16 and 20, 1932, nos. 72 and 73. A comment after 38 years . In: Kursbuch Nr. 21, September 1970, 17–35.
  • "Some interruptions were really unnecessary." Conversation with Alfred Sohn-Rethel. In: Mathias Greffrath : The Destruction of a Future. Talks with emigrated social scientists . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-593-34076-3 . Pp. 213-262.
  • Alfred Sohn-Rethel: Industry and National Socialism. Notes from the "Central European Business Day". Ed. And incorporated. by Carl Freytag. Wagenbach, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-8031-2204-X .

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Sohn-Rethel 1992, 50
  2. ↑ Tilo von Wilmowsky: Looking back, I would like to say ... on the threshold of the 150th Krupp anniversary. Stalling, Oldenburg 1961, p. 190
  3. ↑ Wilmowsky, p. 195
personal data
SURNAME Hahn, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Treis on the Moselle
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1939
Place of death Munich