Walter Matthaei

This article deals with the liberal Hamburg politician. For the eponymous founder of the Wiking-Jugend see Walter Matthaei (right-wing extremist)

Walter Matthaei (born December 22, 1874 in Hamburg ; † March 10, 1953 ) was a judge, Hamburg politician of the German Democratic Party (DDP) and senator.

Imperial Era and Weimar Republic

Walter Matthaei successfully attended the Johanneum School of Academics and then studied law in Halle (Saale) , Tübingen and Berlin, where he received his doctorate . In 1906 he became a district judge in Hamburg. From 1920 Matthaei worked as a regional court director.

From 1910 to 1929 Matthaei was a member of the Hamburg parliament and from March 23, 1921 to May 18, 1933 a senator (→ Hamburg Senate 1919–1933 ). As a supporter of Friedrich Naumann's socio-political reform ideas , he campaigned for the socially weaker sections of the population from the start. In 1912, for example, he submitted an application to introduce municipal unemployment insurance, which, however, failed due to the conservative majority of the citizens. In terms of party politics, he initially belonged (until 1919) to the faction of the United Liberals . In the Weimar Republic he was a member of the DDP and later of its successor party, the German State Party .

In 1922 Matthaei took over the office of Senator for Labor, which he held until June 28, 1929. From 1925 to 1928, as a senator, he was also responsible for the vocational schools. In 1929 he became the Senator for Finance, succeeding Carl Cohn . Curt Platen succeeded him as Senator for Labor .

National Socialism and the Post-War Period

Up until March 5, 1933, the German State Party rejected the National Socialists' coalition offers. Matthaei himself - like Christian Koch and Heinrich Landahl - took part in exploratory talks with the NSDAP, DNVP and DVP to form a government in January 1933. Like them, he was already in favor of a legal senate at that time, while Mayor Carl Wilhelm Petersen and state board members of the state party such as Friedrich Ablass rejected such a step. At the Senate elected on March 8, 1933 (→ Hamburg Senate under National Socialism ) under the leadership of the NSDAP , he then worked as a senator. According to Lüths, he apparently hoped to "prevent worse" with this collaboration.

In May 1933 he was dismissed from the Senate by Mayor Carl Vincent Krogmann on instructions from the NSDAP Reich leadership, although he had assured the new rulers of his loyalty and now also supported their goals. He relied on the fact that the National Socialists actually represented ideas similar to those of Friedrich Naumann earlier. In his memoirs in 1940 he wrote: “In addition to the political and economic, we have experienced a social revolution on a large scale, through which the social turmoil has largely been resolved. (...) There is much in the National Socialist thought that Naumann strived for with his National Socialist movement. (…) Bringing order into the social chaos was only possible through an authoritarian state and only through a revolution. In such an eventful time, that was impossible in parliamentary terms. "

In his job as a civil judge at the Hamburg Regional Court , he was able to continue working until he retired in 1941.

In the post-war period, Matthaei volunteered as a director of the Köster Foundation in Barmbek . It was 1946 by the FDP -Kreisverband Volksdorf accepted as a member, which - led to considerable resentment in other district organizations of the Hamburg FDP - because of his conduct during the period of National Socialism.

Idol

Similar to other DDP politicians (e.g. Carl Cohn ), the former mayor of Hamburg Carl Wilhelm Petersen was a role model for Matthaei. In a letter of condolence to Mrs. Petersen's on November 7, 1933, he wrote: “(...) If he was a leader to us from a young age, to whom we loved and followed with confidence, that was even more the case in the later years when he was at the head of the state and I was privileged to sit under him and with him in the Senate. (...) ".

literature

• Christof Brauers: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953. Start as a bourgeois left party. M-Press Meidenbauer, Munich 2007.
• Ursula Büttner , Werner Jochmann: Hamburg on the way to the Third Reich. Development years 1931-1933. State Center for Political Education Hamburg, Hamburg 1985.
• Erich Lüth : There were a lot of stones on the way. A crosshead reports. Hamburg 1966.
• Erich Lüth: Mayor Carl Petersen. 1868-1933. Hamburg 1971.

Individual evidence

For detailed references, see literature.

1. ^ Fuhrmann, Rainer: Distribution of offices in the Senate 1860-1945, typescript, Hamburg State Archives.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Brauers: FDP, page 95
3. ^ Lüth: Mayor, p. 139.
4. ↑ Overview of the senators in Hamburg during the Weimar period
5. ^ Büttner / Jochmann: Hamburg, pp. 62/63
6. ↑ Lüth: Much Stones, p. 92.
7. ↑ Walter Matthaei, Recollections, Hamburg 1940 (unpublished, available in the Marlies Noetzel / Walter Matthaei private archive), page 37 - quoted from: Christof Brauers, FDP, page 96.
8. ↑ Brauers: FDP, page 96.
9. ^ Edmund Matthaei: Heinrich and Caroline Köster Testament Foundation. The Foundation History from 1885 to 2008. .
10. ^ Lüth: Mayor, pp. 115/116.

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Matthaei in the catalog of the German National Library