Paul Moldenhauer

Reich Ministry of Finance on Wilhelmplatz in Berlin in 1930

The first Brüning cabinet (photo from 1930): Paul Moldenhauer is in the second row, second from the right

Paul Moldenhauer (born December 2, 1876 in Cologne ; † February 1, 1947 there ) was a German lawyer , economist , university professor , politician ( DVP ) and Reich Minister of Finance .

Live and act

Moldenhauer was born as the son of the high school teacher Franz Moldenhauer . After graduating from high school in Cologne in 1896 , he studied law and political science at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn , where he joined the Corps Rhenania . He moved in 1898 to the Georg-August University Göttingen , received his doctorate there in October 1899. Dr. jur. and in the same year received the diploma for insurance experts. He then worked for insurance companies in Aachen and Cologne until 1902 . Moldenhauer completed his habilitation in 1901 in insurance business apprenticeship at the city's commercial college in Cologne , where he then taught as a private lecturer, since 1903 as an associate professor and since 1907 as a full professor. From 1914 to 1918 he took part in the First World War as a Landwehr officer. During the war he was awarded both Iron Crosses .

After the end of the war, Moldenhauer held the chair for insurance science, the first in Germany, at the University of Cologne in 1919 , to which the commercial college had been transferred. In the 1920s he made numerous study trips abroad. After his foray into politics, he did not return to his chair in Cologne. From 1931 to 1943 he taught as an honorary professor for insurance science at the Technical University of Berlin and at the Humboldt University in Berlin and worked as a consultant in the insurance industry.

Moldenhauer, who had been a member of the supervisory board of IG Farbenindustrie AG during the Weimar Republic , was appointed to the commission after 1945 by the American occupation authorities that was responsible for the dissolution of IG Farben. In particular, he organized the pension funds of the former company.

MP

Moldenhauer was a member of the Prussian State Constitutional Assembly from 1919 to 1921 . In the Reichstag election in June 1920 , he was elected to the German Reichstag , to which he was a member until July 1932.

Public offices

On November 11, 1929, Moldenhauer was appointed Reich Minister of Economics to the Reich government led by Chancellor Hermann Müller . In the course of a cabinet reshuffle, he was appointed Reich Minister of Finance on December 23, 1929 , while the Ministry of Economics was transferred to the SPD . He also belonged to the subsequent government led by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning . However, after his policy met with rejection within the DVP Reichstag parliamentary group, Moldenhauer resigned on June 21, 1930 and then resigned from the Reich government.

In 1932/33 Moldenhauer was a German delegation member at the Geneva Disarmament Conference .

literature

• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 2: Social politicians in the Weimar Republic and during National Socialism 1919 to 1945. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2018, ISBN 978-3-7376-0474-1 , p. 133 f. ( Online , PDF; 3.9 MB).
• Peter Koch:  Moldenhauer, Paul. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 722 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Horst Romeyk: Paul Moldenhauer (1876-1947). In: Rheinische Lebensbilder, Volume 7. Ed. By Bernhard Poll on behalf of the Society for Rheinische Geschichtskunde . Rheinland Verlag, Cologne 1977, pp. 253-270.

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Moldenhauer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Paul Moldenhauer in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Paul Moldenhauer in the online version of the Reich Chancellery Edition Files. Weimar Republic