Walter Loeb

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Walter Josef Loeb (born May 12, 1895 in Mannheim , † March 28, 1948 in London ) was a German banker and politician ( SPD ).

Life

Loeb was born the son of the Jewish merchant Alfred Loeb. After attending high school, he completed a commercial apprenticeship. From 1910 to 1917 he was a commercial clerk and, among other things, worked for the Handelsbank Ladenburg & Thalmann in New York. In 1917 he worked for the Reichssackstelle in Berlin, which was supposed to meet the needs of the civilian population for sacks. From 1918 he was an authorized signatory in the Textilindustrie GmbH in Frankfurt.

After the end of World War I , Loeb became a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Frankfurt am Main. In addition, in 1919 he was the government representative in negotiations with American agencies. In the same year he joined the SPD. In 1922 he became director of the Süddeutsche Transportversicherung AG, which he later chaired the supervisory board. He then headed the Thuringian State Bank in Weimar, newly established by the State Bank Act of December 20, 1922, as President . 1923 was one of the founders of the Bank für Goldkredit AG in Weimar, which operated as the Thüringische Landes-Hypothekenbank from 1924. After public, anti-Semitic hostility, he had to resign as President of the State Bank in September 1924.

Loeb returned to Frankfurt and worked as an independent business consultant in the following years. From 1928 to 1932 he was an SPD city councilor in Frankfurt am Main. He sat on numerous supervisory boards, was a member of the Rhine Commission to investigate the profitability of Rhine shipping and a member of the board of the municipal Sparkasse Frankfurt am Main .

In 1933 Loeb emigrated to Amsterdam and, due to the German invasion in 1940, to London . The expatriation took place on July 14, 1938 . In London he met Lord Vansittart and became a major exponent of Vansittartism within the German political emigration. A memorandum from the International Secretary of the Labor Party , William Gillies , was drawn up in October 1941 with the help of Loeb. This saw the SPD and the trade unions as historical pillars of the expansive German nationalism. Curt Geyer and Loeb founded the publishing company " Fight for Freedom Editorial and Publishing Services, Ltd." in January 1942 with the support of leading Labor politicians as well as national and international trade unionists and used it as a journalistic mouthpiece for the Vansittartists in exile in Germany. With Fritz Bieligk , Curt Geyer, Carl Herz , Kurt Lorenz and Bernhard Menne , he signed a manifesto on March 2, 1942, that the social democratic labor movement was complicit in the rise of National Socialism and denied the existence of any significant opposition in Germany. This brought him into conflict with the SPD executive in exile around Hans Vogel and Erich Ollenhauer and subsequently led to his exclusion from the Union of German Socialist Organizations in Great Britain .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933-1945 Volume 1: Politics, Economy, Public Life. Saur, Munich 1980, p. 451.
  2. ↑ Federal Archives
personal data
SURNAME Loeb, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Loeb, Walter Josef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German banker and politician (SPD)
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH March 28, 1948
Place of death London