Otto by Brentano di Tremezzo

Otto Rudolf by Brentano di Tremezzo

Otto Rudolf von Brentano di Tremezzo (born December 9, 1855 in Darmstadt , Grand Duchy of Hesse , † July 21, 1927 in Darmstadt Weimar Republic ) was a German politician and member of the German Center Party .

family

Family origin

Otto Rudolf von Brentano di Tremezzo (around 1873)

Otto von Brentano di Tremezzo came from the well-known German-Italian politician and artist family Brentano , which had been based in Frankfurt am Main and Hessen-Darmstadt since the 18th century .

His father, Gustav Brentano, had been the Thurn und Taxis postmaster in Friedberg since 1864 and in 1871 was accepted into the service of the Reich. It was only shortly before his death in 1883 that he adopted the addition of di Tremezzo to his name .

Confirmation of the nobility letter

The sons of Gustav Brentano and his wife Auguste née Hofmann, including Otto Rudolf, had their Italian nobility confirmed in Rome, which was also recognized by the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1889 .

Otto von Brentano married on June 10, 1884 (wedding date according to the Pfeifer Chronicle July 9, 1884) Lilla Beata, née Schwerdt (1863–1948), the daughter of the classical philologist Franz Ignaz Schwerdt (1830–1916) and his wife Marie Agnes (1837–1918), née Brentano. Marie Agnes was the daughter of Georg Franz Melchior Brentano (1801-1852) and Lilla, b. Pfeifer (1813–1868), sister of the Cologne sugar manufacturer Emil Pfeifer . The marriage of Otto and Lilla had six children.

Three of her sons became well-known personalities:

• Clemens von Brentano (1886–1965) was the first ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Italy and San Marino after the Second World War .
• Bernard von Brentano (1901–1964) became a writer , poet , playwright , storyteller , novelist , essayist and journalist .
• Heinrich von Brentano (1904–1964) was Federal Foreign Minister from 1955 to 1961 .

Professional background

Otto von Brentano studied after attending the high schools in Büdingen and casting from 1874 to 1877 in Giessen and Munich law . He was a member of the Corps Teutonia Giessen and Franconia Munich . Following his legal clerkship at the Mainz Regional Court and his time as assessor, he settled as a lawyer in Friedberg. In 1891 he moved his law firm to Offenbach am Main and founded a partnership with the lawyer Siegfried Guggenheim , who came from an Offenbach merchant family . In 1900, the additional appointment to the notary . In 1902 he was appointed to the judiciary and in 1913 to the secret judicial council.

Public offices

Since 1893 Brentano was a member of the church council of the Catholic community in Offenbach and played a decisive role in the establishment of a second parish ( St. Marien ) in Offenbach's east town. In June 1896 the 4th Hessian Katholikentag took place under his chairmanship.

For several years, von Brentano di Tremezzo belonged to the city council of Offenbach am Main, where he appeared as the spokesman for the anti-socialist community list from the center and the middle class party. His main opponent in the city parliament was the later Social Democratic President Carl Ulrich .

In the 30th and 36th electoral terms (1897 to 1918) he was a member of the second chamber of the state estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse . In the estates he represented the electoral district Rheinhessen 10 / Gau-Algesheim ( Bingen- Land) until 1911 and then the electoral district Rheinhessen 11 / Bingen-Land.

From 1919 to 1927 he was a member of the Landtag of the People's State of Hesse .

After the First World War, Brentano was also active in imperial politics. In 1919/20 he was a member of the Weimar National Assembly and took an active part in the debates on the draft constitution. He was then a member of the Reichstag , a mandate that he resigned in 1924 because of the double burden of his ministerial offices in Hesse.

From 1918 to 1927 Brentano was Hessian Minister of Justice and from 1921 - as successor to Heinrich Fulda (SPD) - at the same time Minister of the Interior in the Ulrich cabinet . He received criticism with his idea of ​​a central Rhine federal state consisting of Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, the Palatinate and the Oldenburg Birkenfeld, about which he even negotiated with the separatist Hans Adam Dorten .

As Minister of Justice, he opposed excessive liberalization of the penal system. As Minister of the Interior, he pursued a committed policy against right-wing and left-wing extremist activities and in 1923 banned the German-Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and - after the Hitler putsch - the NSDAP and its branches in Hesse. In 1925 he stood up against Ulrich in the election of the new President of Hesse, but was unable to prevail.

Further tasks

Otto von Brentano was a member of the Monument Council for Hesse, the Supervisory Board of the Offenbach Bank Association, the small housing construction company and the trust and mortgage brokerage association.

Otto Rudolf von Brentano di Tremezzo year of death

Family grave of Brentano di Tremezzo. See also the following description of the burial site Tomb of Brentano di Tremezzo

Otto Rudolf von Brentano di Tremezzo made a trip to Rome at Easter 1927. It was to be his last trip. After his return from Rome, von Brentano di Tremezzo renounced all of his public offices. An acute gallbladder disease prevented him from continuing his political public office.

On July 21, 1927 von Brentano di Tremezzo died of a stroke. Brentano di Tremezzo was buried in the family grave. The grave is located in the Waldfriedhof in Darmstadt West. The tomb is a stonemason's work stylistically attributed to Expressionism .

literature

• Heinrich Philip Bartels: Chronicle of the Pfeifer family , around 1975 (only published in the family circle).
• Helma Brunck: Otto von Brentano di Tremezzo (1855–1927). A Hessian politician fighting right and left , Darmstadt u. a .: Self-published by the Hessian Historical Commission Darmstadt and the Historical Commission for Hesse 2019 (sources and research on Hessian history; 182), ISBN 978-3-88443-337-9 .
• Eckhart G. Franz : Otto Rudolf von Brentano (1855–1927). Hessian Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. In: Bernd Heidenreich (ed.): Spirit and power: The Brentanos. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-531-13477-9 , pp. 181-196.
• Jochen Lengemann : MdL Hessen. 1808-1996. Biographical index (= political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse. Vol. 14 = publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 7). Elwert, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-7708-1071-6 , p. 89.
• Klaus-Dieter Rack, Bernd Vielsmeier: Hessian MPs 1820–1933. Biographical evidence for the first and second chambers of the state estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse 1820–1918 and the state parliament of the People's State of Hesse 1919–1933 (= Political and parliamentary history of the State of Hesse. Vol. 19 = Work of the Hessian Historical Commission. NF Vol. 29) . Hessian Historical Commission, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-88443-052-1 , No. 87.
• Hans Georg Ruppel, Birgit Groß: Hessian MPs 1820–1933. Biographical evidence for the estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse (2nd Chamber) and the Landtag of the People's State of Hesse (= Darmstädter Archivschriften. Vol. 5). Verlag des Historisches Verein für Hessen, Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-922316-14-X , p. 74.

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto von Brentano di Tremezzo in the catalog of the German National Library
• Otto von Brentano di Tremezzo in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Brentano di Tremezzo, Otto Rudolf von. Hessian biography. (As of December 11, 2019). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 1891: A Geleitsstrasse house can tell. (No longer available online.) In: offenbach.de. Archived from the original on June 3, 2016 ; accessed on May 14, 2016 .