Traugott von Jagow

Traugott von Jagow

Traugott Achatz von Jagow (born May 18, 1865 in Perleberg , Brandenburg , † June 15, 1941 in Berlin ) was a German administrative officer and politician.

Life

origin

Jagow was born as the son of the Prussian district administrator and politician Julius von Jagow and his wife Thekla Marie nee. Countess Wilamowitz-Möllendorf was born.

Career

After changing schools frequently, he finally passed his Abitur at Easter 1885 at the Gymnasium in Stendal. After attending school, he studied law and political science at the Georg-August University in Göttingen , in Halle and in Lausanne. In Göttingen, Traugott von Jagow received his doctorate in early 1889. jur. From 1885 he was a member, from 1935 honorary member of the Corps Saxonia Göttingen . Traugott von Jagow did his military service as a one-year volunteer and was then a reserve officer in various Prussian cavalry regiments, most recently Major d. R. in the Guard Cuirassier Regiment in Berlin. Traugott von Jagow first entered the Prussian judicial service, but shortly afterwards switched to the Prussian administrative service for the purpose of training as a senior administrative officer. After he had supported him as an assistant because of the serious illness of his father, he was district administrator of the Westprignitz district with his official seat in Perleberg, he became district administrator of the home district of Westprignitz in 1895 after his illness-related retirement . Here Traugott von Jagow proved to be a capable, hands-on and very initiative-rich administrative officer. Therefore, he was transferred in 1906 by skipping the rank as a government at once as a senior civil servant to the government district of Potsdam . Since the political, extremely conservative-minded Traugott von Jagow also excelled as a qualified civil servant in Potsdam, he received his appointment to the royal class on October 27, 1909. Police President of Berlin , an office which at the time was considered to be equivalent to that of the District President of an administrative district.

From 1909 to 1916 he was police chief in Berlin . His comment on the registration of a left-wing demonstration became a popular phrase: “The road belongs to the traffic. I warn the curious. ” Because of the increased volume of traffic, von Jagow had the world's first one-way street for automobiles set up in Berlin-Mitte : Friedrichstrasse was only allowed to be used in a southerly direction between Unter den Linden and Behrenstrasse. But Traugott von Jagow also provided modern training and equipment for the Berlin police.

In 1911, the journalist Alfred Kerr attacked in the magazine Pan Jagow in a return coach for the censorship of the magazine, which was officially incumbent on him: He made public that Jagow had harassed the wife of Kerr's publisher Paul Cassirer , Tilla Durieux . According to other sources, Traugott von Jagow, who had been single throughout his life, had a little affair with Tilla Durieux, which her jealous husband got behind because of an intercepted ticket. This private affair was amicably resolved by all concerned, and there was no need to touch it publicly. But Kerr turned a purely private one into a much discussed political affair in the empire. The incident did not affect Jagow's further professional career.

Of 2 June 1916 to November 1918 for Jagow was, however, only purely nominal, District President of the administrative district of Wroclaw , because he never took up his new post on a result of the call-up for military service. After his retirement in 1918 he was director of the Pomeranian Land Association .

As major d. R. counted Traugott von Jagow in 1920 to the initiators of the Kapp Putsch . In the short-lived “Government of Order, Freedom and Action” that was formed by Wolfgang Kapp during the putsch named after him (March 13-17, 1920), he was “Minister of the Interior” . After the failure of the coup, Traugott von Jagow was the only leading coup leader to face the authorities and at times expected to be sentenced to death for high treason. Despite his leading part in the Kapp Putsch, however, the court took into account the "selfless patriotism" Traugott's of Jagow and sentenced on December 21, 1921 not for treason, but only for complicity in treason to the minimum sentence of five years imprisonment , which he did in Pomeranian Gollnow served. In this judgment it was said on the one hand that Section 81 (I) No. 2 StGB (high treason) should protect the current constitution of the German Reich and thus also the new Weimar constitution. On the other hand it was said: "In the sentencing, the accused [meaning Traugott von Jagow], who under the spell of selfless patriotism and followed Kapp's call for a seductive moment, was granted mitigating circumstances." At the end of 1924 he was pardoned and released early from prison. After his release from prison, Jagow successfully sued the Reichsgericht retrospectively for his pension, even for the time of his treasonous activity. After serving his sentence, Traugott von Jagow, whom even political opponents always referred to as the “old gentleman”, lived in the quiet of maintaining the monarchical idea in Germany, which is why he participated in the Union of the Upright . In the Third Reich, Traugott von Jagow was not subject to any political persecution, but he was not officially rehabilitated, as he actually wanted, and was also viewed as a political reactionary because of his past. He died quietly and without any political function or official re-use in Berlin in 1941 and was buried at his own request in his native Perleberg. His brother was the Reichswehr General Walter von Jagow , who was retired as General of the Cavalry in 1927. D. resigned from the Reichswehr.

literature

• Jürgen W. Schmidt: The district administrators of the Westprignitz district from 1860–1920 . In: Mitteilungen des Verein für Geschichte der Prignitz , Vol. 12, Perleberg, 2012, pp. 5–60 (on Traugott von Jagow especially pp. 12–26)

Web links

• Literature by and about Traugott von Jagow in the catalog of the German National Library
• Traugott von Jagow in the online version of the Reich Chancellery Edition Files. Weimar Republic
• Newspaper article about Traugott von Jagow in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten , 45 , 365
2. ↑ Wolfgang von der Groeben: Directory of the members of the Corps Saxonia zu Göttingen 1844 to 2006 . Düsseldorf 2006