Richard Merton

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard Merton (born December 1, 1881 in Frankfurt am Main , † January 6, 1960 ibid) was a German industrialist , founder and politician.

life and work

Merton was the youngest child of the entrepreneur Wilhelm Merton and his wife Emma Ladenburg , daughter of Emil Ladenburg . Like his brother Alfred (1878–1954), Merton attended Lessing High School . After studying law and cameralistics , he joined Berg- und Metallbank in 1902 , a subsidiary of the Metallgesellschaft . He got to know the foreign branches of what was then a global group and was a member of the supervisory board from 1907 to 1911. In 1911 he was appointed to the board of directors of the metal company, after the death of his father in 1917, he was appointed chairman of the supervisory board of the metal company and the metal bank.

During the First World War , Merton was initially a front-line officer and later an adjutant in the military administration. In several memoranda, he advocated a mediating point of view on controversial issues of the war economy. For example, he advocated the compulsory state cultivation of food, the settlement with the trade unions and the limitation of entrepreneurial profits from war.

In 1919 he was a member of the German delegation to the peace negotiations in Versailles . Disappointed about the consequences of the Versailles Treaty for the economic situation in Germany, he withdrew from politics in the Reich and, together with his brother Alfred, concentrated on the management of the metal company. In 1928 the metal company merged with the metal bank and the metallurgical company . Merton became chairman of the board. In 1930 the metal company took over the United German Metalworks (VDM) under his leadership .

Merton continued his father's cultural and social initiatives during the Weimar Republic . As city councilor of the DVP (1928–1933), however, he was in political opposition to the then Frankfurt city administration under Lord Mayor Ludwig Landmann , whom he accused of withdrawing the foundation for social engagement in the interests of his father. Merton had been a member of the board of trustees of the University of Frankfurt , which his father had sponsored, since 1914 , but with a donation of millions he broke the obligation of his Institute for the Common Good to continuously subsidize the university. Merton also publicly opposed the expansion of communal societies, which he referred to as the Landmann system.

From November 1932 to March 1933 Merton was a member of the Reichstag for the DVP. Until 1936 he tried to adapt to the new rulers; In 1934 he acquired a painting by Reinhold Ewald that glorified Hitler through the institute : Honoring the work or greeting the German work and gave it to the city ​​of Frankfurt with the words (a) "permanent reminder of the historical period that we are experiencing" received very favorable comments from the media.

From 1936 he was gradually expelled from all public offices by the National Socialists due to his Jewish descent. In 1938 he was interned for three weeks in the Buchenwald concentration camp and his property was confiscated, including the neo-baroque Villa Merton built for him by Anton Eyssen in Frankfurt-Bockenheim in 1927 .

In 1939, with the help of his second wife Elisabeth, Princess zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg , née. Princess of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg , the flight to England. There he campaigned for Germany as a journalist and dealt with the possibilities of rebuilding the German economy after the war. In 1948 he returned to Frankfurt am Main. He received his fortune back, but his villa was partially destroyed by bombs in World War II and was initially confiscated by the Americans after the war and used as an officers' house.

Merton was proposed by the British occupying power as Minister of Economics to a future German government, but refused. Instead, he concentrated on rebuilding the metal company, of which he was chairman of the supervisory board from 1950 to 1955, and advocated international cooperation as a member of economic policy organizations. Merton was from 1949 to 1953 chairman of the donors' association for German science and from 1948 to 1955 president of the German group of the International Chamber of Commerce . In 1952 he founded the Frankfurt Society for Social Policy , in 1956 he founded a chair for social policy at the University of Frankfurt. After his death, his stepson Casimir Johannes Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg took over the shares in the Institute for the Common Good .

Honors

He received numerous honors for his socio-political commitment: in 1951 the University of Frankfurt made him an honorary senator and he received the Goethe plaque from the city of Frankfurt am Main . In 1956 he was granted honorary citizenship of his hometown. From the hand of Federal President Dr. Theodor Heuss received the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1951 . His grave is in the Frankfurt main cemetery (Gewann II GG 10-11).

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Exhibition catalog Reinhold Ewald , ed. Museums der Stadt Hanau, 2015, p. 115, with a small illustration. The picture was destroyed in the period up to 1945.
  2. ↑ Article Merton, Wilhelm. In: Paul Arnsberg: The history of the Frankfurt Jews since the French Revolution. Volume 3: Biographical lexicon of the Jews in the areas of: science, culture, education, public relations in Frankfurt am Main. Eduard Roether Verlag, Darmstadt 1983, ISBN 3-7929-0130-7 , pp. 306–309, here p. 308.
  3. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 3, No. 250, December 29, 1951.
  4. ↑ Guide to the graves of well-known personalities in Frankfurt cemeteries. Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 43
personal data
SURNAME Merton, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur, politician (DVP), MdR and honorary citizen of Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1960
Place of death Frankfurt am Main