Walther von Etzdorf

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Gustav Max Ulrich Walther von Etzdorf (born October 11, 1892 in Charlottenburg near Berlin , † May 5, 1969 in Braunschweig ) was a German officer and writer.

Life

As a young man, Etzdorf embarked on an officer career. Most recently he was a member of the Kaiser-Alexander-Garde-Grenadier-Regiment . In 1918, during the First World War , Etzdorf was temporarily adjutant to the head of the War Office General Scheüch , in which the entire German war economy came together. Later he was a liaison officer of the Reichswehr Ministry to the Provisional Reich Economic Council . He also held the post of advisor in the Reich Ministry of Economics for economic mobilization for a long time . In this way he established close relationships with Kurt von Schleicher , among others , which was to gain importance in the years 1931 to 1933. After the First World War he retired as captain .

Around 1922 Etzdorf left the civil service to work as a businessman, including in Dresden .

At the beginning of the 1930s, against the background of the global economic crisis and mass unemployment , Etzdorf and Ludwig Herpel developed an ambitious program called the rural community program to support the restructuring of the German economy, which included extensive job creation programs in particular . Specifically, the plan propagated the idea of ​​initially providing the municipalities with unlimited financial means for the purpose of municipal job creation , which was to be realized in the form of a kind of second currency in the form of deposit money circulating outside the regular circulation , in order to provide the initial impetus for itself then to give more and more dynamic job creation by itself. Politically, Herpel and Etzdorf and their supporters grouped themselves mainly around the former district administrator Günther Gereke .

The compensation fund movement initiated by Etzdorf's friend Herpel expanded rapidly in the German Reich. At the end of 1932 there were around 45 regional compensation offices in the German Reich (also known as working groups) that created local bank money (so-called “emergency money”). These decentralized money creation initiatives were combated by means of several laws and finally finally stopped in 1934 by the law against the abuse of cashless payment transactions . In Switzerland, Herpel's idea of ​​the compensation fund was adopted by the WIR Wirtschaftsring-Genossenschaft , founded in December 1934 and which still exists today.

The economic program developed by Herpel and Etzdorf influenced, among other things, Kurt von Schleicher's immediate program and the National Socialist economic rehabilitation program presented by Gregor Strasser in 1932, as well as the measures actually implemented after 1933 to revitalize the German economy.

On October 31, 1931, Etzdorf, Herpel and five other men founded the German Compensation Fund cooperative in Berlin, of which Herpel was elected chairman. On May 22, 1932, Etzdorf became second chairman of the Combat League for Tax Exemption and Property Management, which Herpel also led. Gereke also describes Etzdorf in his memoirs as the head of the German Unemployment Association .

In the years 1931 to 1933 Etzdorf acted as a liaison between his comrade from the officer days Kurt von Schleicher and Günther Gerecke as well as between these two men and the trade unions, in particular with Josef Furtwängler from the AGDGB . In the critical phase towards the end of 1932, Etzdorf was one of the main supporters of the strategy of splitting the NSDAP by including the socially progressive wing around Gregor Strasser in a cross-front government led by Schleicher consisting of the Reichswehr, trade unions, moderate representatives of the NSDAP and exponents of the Bündische Jugend .

After the Second World War, Etzdorf lived in Braunschweig . At that time he published several books. He also worked with historians such as Thilo Vogelsang and Eberhard Czichon , to whom he gave information about the attempts at economic restructuring in the late phase of the Weimar Republic and about Kurt von Schleicher's political line and those around him in 1932 and 1933.

Publications

  • Brandenburg, Prussia . 1957.
  • Contribution to Thilo Vogelsang "Reichswehr, State and NSDAP" . Around 1960.
  • Dance of Death and Resurrection. A contribution to the knowledge of cosmobiological dependence of earthly events on the course of German history . Hamburg 1930.
it is uncertain whether this book was written by Etzdorf.

swell

  • Willy Buschak : Franz Josef Furtwängler. Trade unionists, travelers to India, resistance fighters. A political biography. 2010.
  • Genealogical handbook of noble houses. Vol. 118, p. 145.
  • Günter Gereke: I was a royal Prussian district administrator. 1970.
  • Adjutant in the Prussian War Ministry, June 1918 to October 1919. Records

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Death book of the Braunschweig registry office No. 1481/1969.
personal data
SURNAME Etzdorf, Walther von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Etzdorf, Gustav Max Ulrich Walther von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg near Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 5th May 1969
Place of death Braunschweig