Walter von Keudell

Walter von Keudell, 1924

General forest manager von Keudell on the wild boar hunt for winter aid in the State Forest Springe near Hanover on December 14, 1934

Walter von Keudell (born July 17, 1884 in Castellammare di Stabia ( Italy ), † May 7, 1973 in Bonn ) was a German forester , lawyer and politician ( DNVP , CNBLP , NSDAP and CDU ).

Live and act

Walter von Keudell was the son of Robert von Keudell and the older brother Otto von Keudell . After completing a practical basic training in agriculture and forestry and studying law , he entered the Prussian civil service, worked for the Reich grain department and in 1916 became district administrator for the Königsberg district. He was retired in 1920 in connection with the Kapp Putsch .

Keudell was a member of the German Reichstag from 1924 to 1930 . In the fourth Marx Cabinet he served from January 1927 to June 1928 as Minister of the Interior . In May 1928 the Reichsgericht rejected his application to ban the communist Red Front Fighters League.

In 1929 Keudell left the DNVP in protest against Alfred Hugenberg's course and became a member of the rural people .

From 1932 von Keudell began campaigning for Adolf Hitler's NSDAP, which he joined on March 1, 1933 at the request of Hermann Göring. After the National Socialists came to power, he was elected President of the District Assembly in March 1933 and appointed Prussian Oberlandforstmeister (Head of the Prussian State Forestry Administration) on August 4, 1933 and then General Forester and State Secretary in the Reich Forestry Office in Berlin under Reich Forest Master Hermann Göring on July 3, 1934 . From August 14, 1933, von Keudell was also the leader (from 1935 called "leader") of the German Forest Association . On November 1, 1937, he resigned from his position as general forest master. The resignation was preceded by a dispute over mandatory logging in private forests, in which Keudell opposed Göring's demands. Friedrich Alpers , who did not qualify for forestry, was appointed as his successor, and he succeeded him in 1938 as head of the forestry association. Keudell then received a position as general expert for silviculture at the Reich Forest Master without influence and was from 1937 a member of the Reich Traffic Council . From 1941 to 1943 he held office again as district administrator for the Königsberg / Nm district.

After the Second World War he became a member of the CDU in 1948 and was active in the field of expellee policy . In 1950 he signed the charter of the German expellees as spokesman for the Landsmannschaft Berlin-Mark Brandenburg . He also became the chairman of the United Compatriot of the Soviet Zone ( VLS ). In 1958 he was elected chairman of the Occidental Academy . Keudell belonged to the anti-communist committee Rainer Barzel and other CDU / CSU politicians founded in 1959 , whose presidency and association he took over after Barzel's resignation in 1960.

Honors

• January 18, 1923: Honorary doctorate in forest sciences , awarded by the Eberswalde Forest Academy
• 1930: Honorary doctorate from the Theological Faculty of the University of Greifswald
• 1937: Honorary membership of the Swedish Forest Association
• 1954: Large Federal Cross of Merit with star and shoulder ribbon
• Plaque of honor of the Federation of Expellees

literature

• Albrecht Milnik : Walter von Keudell . In Albrecht Milnik u. a. (Ed.): In the service of the forest: life paths and achievements of Brandenburg forest people. Brandenburg pictures of life. Verlag Kessel, Remagen-Oberwinter 2006, ISBN 3-935638-79-5 , pp. 297-301.
• Johannes Weck: Walter von Keudell 75 years. In: Forest Archive. 30th year, issue 7/1959, p. 135.
• Andreas Gautschi : The Reichsjägermeister. Facts and legends about Hermann Göring. 3rd edition, Nimrod, Hanstedt 2000, ISBN 3-927848-20-4 (also contains a lot of biographical details about von Keudell).
• Andreas Gautschi : Walter von Keudell. The eventful life of the Reich Minister and General Forester through four German epochs. CA Starke Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-7980-0587-7 .

Web links

Commons : Walter von Keudell  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Walter von Keudell in the catalog of the German National Library
• Walter von Keudell in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Walter von Keudell in the files of the Reich Chancellery
• Keudell, Walter von . In: East German Biography (Kulturportal West-Ost)
• Newspaper article about Walter von Keudell in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hohenlübbichow 2008 -. Natural forest management between transfiguration and reality. ( Memento of the original from January 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Publication of the Brandenburg State Forests 
2. ^ Message from the Neue Freie Presse from November 3, 1937
3. ^ Biography according to the Federal Archives
4. ↑ Johannes Weck: Walter von Keudell 75 years. In: Forest Archive. 30th year, issue 7/1959, p. 135.
5. ^ Albert Oeckl: Pocket book of public life . Festland Verlag GMBH, 1957, p. 315.
6. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: Max Hildebert Boehm: Radical order thinking from the First World War to the Federal Republic . Wallstein Verlag, September 30, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-2472-5 , p. 479.
7. ↑ Freedom with binoculars. In: Der Spiegel . 28/1960 (accessed May 9, 2014)

predecessor	Office	successor
Günther Reichsgraf Finck von Finckenstein	Dike captain of the Oderbruch 1918–1923	Peter Fritz Mengel