Moritz Julius Bonn

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moritz Julius Bonn (born June 26, 1873 in Frankfurt am Main , † January 25, 1965 in London ) was a German economist .

Moritz Julius Bonn

family

The Jewish Bonn family lived in Frankfurt for four hundred years - their last descendant had to leave the city in 1939. The progenitor, Aaron Jacob Bonn zum Hirschen, died in 1556. His descendant Aron Bonn , head of the Jewish community, lived in the house of the cheerful man in Frankfurt's Judengasse . He also had a key for the gate that separated the ghetto from the city.

Grandfather Baruch Bonn (1810–1878) founded a bank in the early 1830s . Three of his four sons were also active in the banking industry: Philipp Bonn was a banker and member of the Chamber of Commerce in Frankfurt, Wilhelm Bonn was first head of the bank “Speyer & Co.” in New York , then partner in the Lazard Speyer-Ellissen banking house in Frankfurt am Main ; Leopold Bonn worked for the sister bank "Speyer Brothers" in London . The father of Moritz Julius Bonn, the last descendant of this Jewish family, died in February 1877. His wife (* 1847) gave birth to a girl a few months after the death of her husband. Moritz Julius Bonn's only sister was married to the painter Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860–1932).

The Jewish family tribe on the mother's side - they carried the name Wolf until 1813 and then the name Brunner - had been in Vorarlberg in the village of Sulz since 1685 , and in Hohenems since 1745 , where from 1909 the former Israelitengasse was named Brunnerstrasse. Jakob Brunner, the eldest son of his maternal grandfather Heinrich Brunner (1784–1867), founded a cotton trade in Trieste . The son Marco Brunner († 1888), married to a woman from Bolzano and the grandfather of Moritz Julius Bonn, relocated his business activities to St. Gallen (Switzerland) and his place of residence back to Hohenems after a stay in Trieste . The young Moritz Julius Bonn stayed here again and again during his summer holidays.

Life

Moritz Julius Bonn - born at Hanauer Landstrasse 45 - spent his childhood and school days in Frankfurt. However, in 1876 the family lived in London for a year on business. After the death of her father Marco Brunner, the widow Bonn was able to have a house built in Kronberg im Taunus around 1890 from the inheritance . The place became Bonn's focal point during his youth. After attending the Philanthropin and later the municipal grammar school , Bonn first studied the history of philosophy with Kuno Fischer at the University of Heidelberg for two semesters . Then he heard lectures from Karl Knies , a supporter of the historical school of economics . Moritz Julius Bonn moved in 1893 finally to the national economy and studied with Lujo Brentano at the University of Munich , where he in 1895 with a thesis on Spain's decline during the price revolution of the 16th century to rer doctor. pole. received his doctorate.

On the recommendation of Brentano and shortly before completing his doctorate, Bonn had completed a semester with Carl Menger at the University of Vienna . Through its membership in the social science student association, Bonn got to know the politician Engelbert Pernerstorfer , who became his mentor. After completing his doctorate, Bonn completed the winter semester of 1895/96 with Max Weber at the University of Freiburg .

From May 1896 to 1898 Moritz Julius Bonn studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which opened in the same year . During this time he began his intensive economic and historical research on English colonization in Ireland . In 1904/05, Bonn stayed in Italy, where he met the Englishwoman Theresa Cubitt, whom he married in London in 1905.

In Munich, Bonn completed his habilitation in 1905 with the work The English Colonization in Ireland . After a brief activity as a private lecturer, he went - together with his wife - to South Africa for a year in 1906 to study the penetration of a native economy by Western capitalism. In January 1907 the Bonn couple made the acquaintance of Philipp Kerr in the English Cape Colony . In the same year it traveled on to German South West Africa .

In the autumn of 1910, Bonn opened - meanwhile appointed associate professor - as director of the commercial college, a foundation of the city of Munich and the chamber of commerce. (The school was integrated into the Technical University of Munich as a technical and economic institute in 1922. ) In the summer of 1913, Bonn caused a considerable stir within the cultural bureaucracy when Tomáš Masaryk was invited to give a lecture at the commercial school at the end of the summer semester.

To exercise a visiting professorship in the USA, Moritz Julius Bonn boarded the passenger ship George Washington on July 26, 1914, together with his wife . During the crossing, the First World War began with the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia on July 28, 1914 . One day after arriving in New York on August 3, 1914, Germany and England were at war. In this precarious situation for the German-English couple, Bonn completed the following visiting professorships:

  1. Winter semester 1914/15: University of California ,
  2. Summer semester 1915: Carl Schurz Chair at the University of Wisconsin – Madison
  3. Winter semester 1915/16: Jakob Schiff Chair for German Culture at Cornell University .

In the spring of 1916 Moritz Julius Bonn contacted the German Embassy in New York, which was headed by Johann Heinrich Graf von Bernstorff . Here Bonn was able to start working as an assistant for currency and foreign exchange issues in the finance department of Privy Councilor Heinrich Albert . Patricia Clavin concludes from evidence that he was trying to convince the American public that America should not intervene in the war .

After diplomatic relations between the USA and Germany were broken off, the Bonn couple boarded the Danish passenger ship Frederik VIII on February 14, 1917, to return to Germany via Copenhagen and then on a ferry to Warnemünde . After a brief activity in the propaganda department of the Foreign Office in Berlin, Bonn was able to take over the management of the commercial college in Munich again.

Moritz Julius Bonn appointed Carl Schmitt as a lecturer at the Munich Commercial College in August 1919 . Bonn repeated this promotion of the academic career in 1928 in Berlin. Jens Hacke writes about this that the cosmopolitan Bonn, with its worldly experience, as the descendant of a Jewish banking family with its affinity for pragmatic Anglo-Saxon liberalism, embodies a type that fascinated Schmitt intellectually and which he hated in its anti- liberal and anti-Semitic tendencies.

In 1919 Moritz Julius Bonn was a member of the German delegation headed by the incumbent Foreign Minister Ulrich Graf Brockdorff-Rantzau and which was supposed to negotiate the Versailles Peace Treaty .

In the spring of 1920 Moritz Julius Bonn was appointed by the Reich Chancellery as advisor to Reich Chancellor Fehrenbach on reparations issues . In this capacity he attended the Spa Conference in July 1920 . The German delegation headed by Walter Simons also included Hugo Stinnes , Bonn's economic opponent. In his autobiography Bonn comments on his own work with the sentence: For two days I really helped make history - which was never repeated. After the conference, Bonn became a lecturer at the Handelshochschule Berlin and head of the Institute for Finance he founded. In the same year he participated in the founding of the German University of Politics .

In 1922 Bonn took part in the Genoa Conference as personal advisor to Chancellor Joseph Wirth . Here he was a member of the Finance Commission, which also included Reichsbank President Rudolf Havenstein . In 1929 Bonn consulted as an expert of the Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht the Young Plan was the international by a panel of financial experts in February negotiated in Paris until June 1929th

From the summer of 1930 to the spring of 1932 Bonn was active in the so-called gold delegation, which the League of Nations had set up to investigate the gold shortage and its effect on the gold currency . Bonn writes about this in his autobiography:

" The problem (of capital flight) was not a technical one - it was not the result of faulty designs in the gold currency mechanism - but the result of uncertain political and economic conditions. You cannot construct a currency system that can withstand severe political blows and survive extensive economic miscalculations can. "

After being elected by the colleagues, Moritz Julius Bonn was able to take over the rectorate of the Berlin commercial college on October 1, 1931.

Bonn was considered one of the leading economic experts in the Weimar Republic . As such, he was an early victim of the National Socialist policy of conformity and the law on civil servants : In April 1933, Moritz Julius Bonn resigned from his rectorate at the Berlin Commercial College and emigrated. His dismissal made headlines in the English and American press, as only Albert Einstein had similarly done .

From Berlin, Bonn first traveled to Starnberg and visited his cousin Emma Bonn († 1942 in Theresienstadt concentration camp ). From there he traveled to Austria. In the former village of Parsch - today a district of Salzburg - the Bonn couple bought a villa in early 1926. They lived here at first and then emigrated to London. Bonn was regularly involved in the summer schools of the Liberals in Cambridge and Oxford and a well-known member of the “ Reform Club ”, the heart of liberal England. He taught at the London School of Economics between 1933 and 1938 .

At the end of October 1939 Bonn traveled to the USA and Canada with the intention of fulfilling outstanding lecture commitments within three months. Contrary to his plans, Moritz Julius Bonn stayed as a visiting professor at various universities until 1946. At the same time, it is said to have been a mission in the service of English diplomacy: because of his cosmopolitanism, valued everywhere, he was trusted to act as an agent of influence to convince the Americans to join England in the Second World War against Germany. Because he was also familiar with America because of his numerous stays, for example through his cousin Max Warburg . He found audiences for his unofficial propaganda work in clubs like Rotary International , in church meetings; he also wrote for a number of newspapers and magazines. He insisted that a distinction should be made between Germany and the Nazi regime and between unteachable and teachable Germans.

Despite being part of the Anglo-American world, Bonn felt in exile , which was expressed in the fact that he presented himself as a cosmopolitan "wandering scholar", as he put it in a book from 1948: " Wandering Scholar " (1948). He had estranged himself from Germany: “The Germany of which I had been, I hope, not an unworthy part had inretrievably gone.” Moritz Julius Bonn lived in London until his death. In his will, he arranged the site of the Villa Bonn in Kronberg as the burial place of his urn .

position

Moritz Julius Bonn had a high international reputation until his emigration in 1933: Bonn was a financial policy advisor to many imperial governments during the Weimar Republic , and he represented Germany as envoy at international conferences. As an author, he was able to place leading articles in the Frankfurter and Vossische Zeitung as well as in the Berliner Tageblatt . According to its own statements, Bonn knew - with the exception of Kurt von Schleicher - all the chancellors of the Weimar government . In addition, the political scientist Jens Hacke writes :

"His memoirs and the wide-ranging correspondence with Walther Rathenau , Rudolf Hilferding , Julius Curtius , Joseph Wirth , Hans Luther , Hjalmar Schacht , Heinrich Brüning , but also with numerous state secretaries and ministerial officials in the Reich Chancellery, finance and foreign ministries document Bonn's prominent position."

But Bonn did not succeed in reconnecting to its former reputation from the interwar period after the end of the Second World War . In his analysis, Jens Hacke names the lack of a basic scientific work, the loss of ties to Germany after 1933 as a result of emigration and - paradoxically - the liberalism consistently advocated by Bonn .

membership

Moritz Julius Bonn was a member of the German Democratic Party .

Honors

Publications

Wilson
  • Spain's decline during the 16th century price revolution. An inductive attempt at the history of quantity theory . Cotta, Stuttgart 1896.
  • English colonization in Ireland . Cotta, Stuttgart 1906.
  • Native Politics in British South Africa . Simion, Berlin 1908.
  • Basic questions of the English economy . Together with Rudolf Leonhard , Theodor Vogelstein u. Edgar Jaffé . Duncker & Humblot , Munich 1913.
  • America as an enemy . Müller, Munich 1917.
  • What does Wilson want ? Brochure, 1917.
  • Ireland and the Irish question. Duncker & Humblot, Munich 1918.
  • Justice. Reinhardt, Munich 1919.
  • Domination Policy or Trade Policy? Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1919.
  • The dissolution of the modern state . Berlin 1921.
  • Stabilizing the marrow. Publishing house for politics and economy, Berlin 1922.
  • America and its problem . Meyer et al. Jessen, Munich 1925.
  • Crisis of European Democracy . Yale University Press, New Haven 1925.
    • German edition: The crisis of European democracy . Meyer & Jessen, Munich 1925.
    • Spanish edition: La crisis de la democracia europea . Madrid 1927.
  • The fate of German capitalism . Fischer, Berlin 1926.
  • Money and mind. On the nature and development of the American world . Fischer, Berlin 1927.
  • Exemption Policy or Lending Policy? Fischer, Berlin 1928.
  • The new plan as the basis of German economic policy . Publications by the Institute for Finance at the Berlin School of Management. Duncker & Humblot, Munich 1930.
  • The culture of the United States of America . People's Association of Book Friends . Wegweiser-Verlag, Berlin 1930.
  • Prosperity. Belief in miracles and reality in American economic life . Fischer, Berlin 1932.
  • Capitalism or feudalism? Fischer, Berlin 1932.
  • Currency projects - and why? Fischer, Berlin 1932.
  • Wandering Scholar . Cohen & West, London 1949.
    • German edition: How to make history. Balance of a life . Autobiography. List, Munich 1953.
  • Whither Europe - union or partnership? Cohen, London 1952.
  • On the crisis of democracy. Political writings in the Weimar Republic 1919–1932. Edited by Jens Hacke. de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2015, ISBN 978-3-05-006259-4 .

literature

  • Patricia Clavin: A 'Wandering Scholar' in Britain and the USA, 1933–1945. The Life and Work of Moritz Bonn . In: Anthony Grenville (Ed.): Refugees from the Third Reich in Britain (= Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Editions Rodopi BV ), Amsterdam-New York 2003, pp. 27–42, ISBN 9- 04201-104-1 .
  • Ewald Grothe , Jens Hacke (Hrsg.): Liberal thinking in the crisis of the world war era. Moritz Julius Bonn. Steiner, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3-515-12234-4 .
  • Jens Hacke: A forgotten legacy of German liberalism. About Moritz Julius Bonn . In: Merkur , Volume 65, Issue 11/2011, pp. 1077-1082.
  • Jens Hacke: Moritz Julius Bonn - a forgotten defender of reason. On liberalism in the crisis of the interwar period. In: Mittelweg 36 , No. 6, December 2010 / January 2011, pp. 26–59, ISBN 978-3-86854-705-4 .
  • Jens Hacke: Liberal Alternatives for the Crisis of Democracy. The economist Moritz Julius Bonn as a political thinker in the age of the world wars . In: Yearbook for Liberalism Research 26 (2014), pp. 295–318. ISBN 978-3-8487-1610-4 .
  • Jens Hacke: the existential crisis of democracy. On the political theory of liberalism in the interwar period. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-518-29850-3 .
  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Edited by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 1: Johannes Hürter : A – F. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2000, ISBN 3-506-71840-1 .
  • Ute Lotz-Heumann: A 'Wandering Scholar' and His Interpretation of Ireland. Moritz Julius Bonn and The English Colonization in Ireland . In: VP Carey, Ute Lotz-Heumann (Ed.): Taking Sides? Colonial and Confessional Mentalités in Early Modern Ireland. Essays in Honor of Karl S. Bottigheimer . Dublin 2003, pp. 291-303.
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.1. Saur, Munich 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 132.
  • Hans-Joachim Stadermann: Bonn, Moritz Julius. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Adler – Lehmann. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 60-64.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ (December * 7. 1902 in Frankfurt am Main - 1930 Salzburg) - Paul Arnold Hallgarten - The World War surviving only son of his cousin Yella Hallgarten (daughter of Philip Bonn and Auguste Rosette Oppenheim) was with the painter Marie Elisabeth Wrede married .
  2. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 17-22.
  3. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 25-27.
  4. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 56-58.
  5. ^ Patricia Clavin: A 'Wandering Scholar' in Britain and the USA, 1933–1945: The Life and Work of Moritz Bonn . In: Anthony Grenville (ed.), Refugees from the Third Reich in Britain (Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam-New York 2003), pp. 27-42.
  6. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 62-71.
  7. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 112-115.
  8. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 117–126.
  9. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, p. 144 u. 155 f.
  10. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 162-169.
  11. ^ Patricia Clavin: A 'Wandering Scholar' in Britain and the USA, 1933–1945: The Life and Work of Moritz Bonn . In: Anthony Grenville (ed.), Refugees from the Third Reich in Britain (Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam-New York 2003), p. 30.
  12. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 171-179.
  13. ^ Jens Hacke: Moritz Julius Bonn - a forgotten defender of reason. On liberalism in the crisis of the interwar period. In: Mittelweg 36 , issue 6, December 2010 / January 2011, p. 31.
  14. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 219-228.
  15. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, p. 244.
  16. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, p. 402.
  17. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, p. 309.
  18. ^ Jens Hacke: Moritz Julius Bonn - a forgotten defender of reason. On liberalism in the crisis of the interwar period. In: Mittelweg 36 , issue 6, December 2010 / January 2011, p. 26.
  19. ^ Patricia Clavin: A 'Wandering Scholar' in Britain and the USA, 1933–1945: The Life and Work of Moritz Bonn . In: Anthony Grenville (Ed.), Refugees from the Third Reich in Britain (Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam-New York 2003), p. 27.
  20. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, pp. 349-352.
  21. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, p. 374 ff.
  22. ^ Patricia Clavin: A 'Wandering Scholar' in Britain and the USA, 1933–1945: The Life and Work of Moritz Bonn . In: Anthony Grenville (ed.), Refugees from the Third Reich in Britain (Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam-New York 2003), pp. 34–36.
  23. ^ Patricia Clavin: A 'Wandering Scholar' in Britain and the USA, 1933–1945: The Life and Work of Moritz Bonn . In: Anthony Grenville (ed.), Refugees from the Third Reich in Britain (Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam-New York 2003), p. 37.
  24. ↑ Jens Hacke : A role model for the FDP . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from January 25, 2015, p. 18.
  25. ^ Jens Hacke: Moritz Julius Bonn - a forgotten defender of reason. On liberalism in the crisis of the interwar period. In: Mittelweg 36 , issue 6, December 2010 / January 2011, p. 32 f.
  26. ↑ a b Jens Hacke: Moritz Julius Bonn - a forgotten defender of reason. On liberalism in the crisis of the interwar period. In: Mittelweg 36 , issue 6, December 2010 / January 2011, p. 34.
  27. ↑ MJ Bonn: This is how you make history. Balance of a life . List, Munich 1953, p. 291.
personal data
SURNAME Bonn, Moritz Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Jewish political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1965
Place of death London