Werner Daitz

Werner Daitz

Werner Carl Otto Heinrich Daitz (born October 15, 1884 in Lübeck ; † May 5, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German chemist, medium-sized entrepreneur, economist of the NSDAP and member of the Reichstag (1936).

Education and positions in business

As the son of the businessman Helmut Daitz and his wife Elise Herricht, he grew up in Lübeck, where the address was given as Curtiusstraße 11. After attending a secondary school in Lübeck, he studied technical chemistry at the commercial and commercial college in Köthen . He also completed a degree in philosophy and technical chemistry at the University of Jena . He obtained his diploma as an engineer-chemist in 1907.

From 1907 to 1912 he held the position of Superintendent of Kaliwerke United Chemical factories Leopoldshall AG as head of the rubber -Gesellschaft Schön & Co. in Harburg , he served from 1912 to 1922, the company Harburg Chemical plants Schön & Co. AG was renamed which he then led as general manager. These works were later taken over by IG Farben .

In addition, during these years he worked for the following companies and headed them as general director:

• North German brown coal recovery company in Harburg
• Wiking Schiffahrts-Group, the contractual partner of the Hamburg-America-Line (HAL) and the bank MM Warburg
• German-American Shipping GmbH
• Daitz & Co. Limited partnership of the affiliated companies in Lübeck and Hamburg since 1919

He was also active in the export trade, construction and chemical industries. With his capital he invested in companies in the iron and steel industry. Already in the First World War his skills were shown in the fields of the chemical industry, construction (Hanseatische Baugeräte GmbH in Lübeck) and large-scale technical systems. In the field of politics, he published from 1915 writings and articles that advocated “national socialism”. A key message of this concept had the following statements and was noted by Richard Sasuly:

“A new type of state socialism appears on the scene, completely different from everything that each and every one of us has ever dreamed or thought up. In the economic field, neither private initiative nor private capitalism will be paralyzed, but state socialism will organize them according to its interests insofar as capital is concentrated in the national economy and directed outwards uniformly [...] This change in capitalism with all its inherent consequences rejects one Restoration of the previous counterbalance, international socialism. It will turn into a 'national socialism' whose election promise will be: more work - fewer phrases. "

When the NSDAP took power in 1933 , Daitz's writings were reissued and distributed by IG Farben . From 1919 onwards, as envoy, he began to promote the relations and entanglements between German industry and Russia and the USA.

Patent development and rapprochement with the National Socialists

As a result of this activity he published articles for newspapers and economic policy magazines as an employee. In addition, he developed patents for the salt, petroleum and pharmaceutical industries, which were later used in the course of the war economy. Politically, he came closer to the National Socialists and joined the NSDAP on February 1, 1931. As early as the end of 1929 he regularly took part in meetings of the economic circles of the NSDAP, at which u. a. Gottfried Feder , Otto Wagener , Dietrich Klagges and Adrian von Renteln were present. From these circles the economic policy department of the NSDAP was formed, which was led by Wagener. Daitz became their regional representative and in 1932 worked on elaborations on state-funded job creation measures .

NSDAP position, Reichstag, article and marriage

In 1931 he became a member of the Reich leadership of the NSDAP as a consultant for economic policy issues with the title of Reich Commissioner . There he headed the Foreign Trade Department in the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP . Alfred Rosenberg gave him a special assignment within this office. In the same year he joined the study society for money and credit . From November 1931 to September 1932 he was a member of the National Economic Council of the NSDAP. In April 1932 he took over the management of the shipping department in the Reich leadership of the NSDAP.

April 24, 1933 to 1937 he was Minister of Lübeck in Germany and until 1934 voting member of Luebeck in the Imperial Council , after media coverage of Lübeck by the Greater Hamburg Act was he from 1937 to 1945 managing director of the Representation of the Province of Schleswig-Holstein in Berlin .

In 1933 he became a member of the Reichstag . In the same year he also wrote articles for the magazine Schule der Freiheit. Journal for the organic design of culture, society and economy , which was founded in 1933 by Otto Lautenbach . Daitz published his views as an independent author in the journal Reich - Volksordnung - Lebensraum (RVL), which was published by Werner Best , Wilhelm Stuckart and Reinhard Höhn since autumn 1941 .

During his activities in Berlin he lived in Tiergartenstr. 13. He was married to Hella Lentz. The sons Wolf and Harald emerged from the marriage. The daughter Helga married the SS-Standartenführer Hans-Hendrik Neumann .

First organization of the conceptions

Since 1915 he has been active in the völkisch-national-conservative sense with his publications on economic-political topics. With the beginning of the Second World War , he began to give an organized form to his ideas of a large European economy under National Socialist leadership. In the first days of September 1939 he founded the Society for European Economic Planning and Large Area Economics (GeWG). which he had already conceived in a memorandum in 1934. The GeWG had a scientific advisory board to which u. a. and Carl Schmitt as a member of the Academy of German Law belonged.

As an offshoot of the GeWG, the Central Institute for National Economic Planning and Large- Scale Economics was established in Dresden in mid-February 1941 . Some time later this was renamed the Central Research Institute for National Economic Order and Greater Economics in Dresden. According to the statutes, the aim of this institute should be to scientifically justify the new German economic system and large-scale economics that arose during the National Socialist Revolution and to make it transmissible .

Effects of Daitz's propaganda

With these organizations, Daitz developed an essential propaganda of a popular large-scale economy in Europe . In 1941 , Arno Sölter took over the term family of nations in his book Das Großraumkartell von Daitz , which would form in Europe as a living community as a result of the NS economy in a flourishing peace community.

Reinhard Höhn , director of the Institute for State Research at the University of Berlin, referred to Daitz in his 1942 book Reich-Großraum-Großmacht when he raised the question of the classification of the peoples in Europe in the European metropolitan area under German leadership. According to Daitz, the peoples should organize themselves as in a planetary system, in which a freely moving system of unconstrained order arises, in which each people takes the position it deserves according to its 'performance weight' . According to Höhn, the nature of power creates a limitation .

Conception of the large-scale economy

By May 1940, however, Daitz had a precise idea of ​​the order in a large-scale European economy that he had designed:

“If we want to lead the European continent economically, as is absolutely necessary and will occur for reasons of the economic strengthening of the European continent as the core area of ​​the white race, then for understandable reasons we must not publicly declare it as a 'German' large-scale economy.
As a matter of principle, we only have to speak of Europe, because the German leadership results quite naturally from Germany's political, economic, cultural and technical heavyweight and its geographical location. Likewise, with the help of our German economic system, as it was created by the National Socialist Revolution, the mark will automatically assert itself as the standard currency with a skillful trade policy management, just as the pound, the dollar and the yen assert themselves as the standard currency in their economic sectors to have."

Concepts of a European socialism

Under the impression of the worsening military situation, Daitz referred to the “principles of European socialism” in a European Charter that was published in September 1944. In doing so, however, he distinguishes himself from other ideas about socialism and emphasizes a species of socialism . This socialism is based on the natural rights to life, self-assertion and self-determination. The peoples would have to live with one another, but not side by side, in order to develop a Europe without exploitation, neither internally nor externally in their worldview and culture.

He determined the position of the peoples to one another according to three criteria:

• Respect for their same ethnic honor and diversity of lifestyles
• Preference for the European peoples over other families of peoples in the areas of culture, politics and economy
• Defense of this "open plan life" against outside forces

If these three criteria were met, then the European family of peoples would have acquired the recognition and the right to enforce this social “peace between nations” against “powers alien to their species and space”. This would then become aware of a “biological moral law as a structural law”. He reduced his economic principles to the self-sufficiency of the population with food from their own metropolitan area.

The participation of the peoples in the family of peoples defined by Daitz results from the importance of the peoples in their performance. As in a planetary system, small peoples should revolve around a larger people. That would then result in the "overall order". This order of the peoples was to be achieved through international treaties. As a European “family council of peoples”, a European court of justice, proposing the Peace Palace in The Hague as the seat, should watch over the observance of order.

The fundamental rights and obligations of European socialism resulted from the obligations of the above three criteria, which the Court of Justice would be competent to observe. That would then be the "Basic Law of the European Constitution: 'European public interest takes precedence over chauvinistic self-interest that could damage or even destroy the community". This would also rule out the age of civil war among the European peoples in the future.

These theses by Daitz a few months before the end of the Nazi regime clearly show that the possibilities of the Nazi ideology at this point in time excluded any democratic development and were opposed to them. The details of his death towards the end of the war in May 1945 in the Bay of Lübeck are unknown; therefore a suicide cannot be completely ruled out.

Member of the Supervisory Board in 1935

• Blast furnace plant Lübeck AG in Herrenwyk
• Lübeck Flender-Werke AG in Lübeck
• Lübecker Hypothekenbank in Lübeck
• Machine factory Beth AG in Lübeck
• Iron foundry and machine factory Schetelig & Nölck AG in Lübeck
• German Society for International Law in Kiel

He was a member of the board of directors of the Hamburg Übersee-Club and the German Colonial League in Munich.

Other functions and offices

• November 1931 to September 1932: Member of the National Economic Council of the NSDAP
• April 1932: Head of the shipping department in the Reich leadership of the NSDAP
• 1932 to 1933: Representative of the Reich leadership of the NSDAP for the northern economic area
• April 1933 to April 1937: Envoy from the Hanseatic City of Lübeck to the Reich Government
• from September 1933: Member of the Great Council of the Nordic Society
• October 1939 to 1945: Head of the Society for European Economic Planning and Greater Economics
• Head of the Europa-Institut in Dresden
• Head of the NSDAP
• 1941 to 1943: editorial staff in the journal Reich-Volksordnung-Lebensraum
• 1944: Worked for the NSDAP commissioner for foreign policy issues in Potsdam

Fonts

• For separating the metals of the sulfur ammonium group. In: Journal for Analytical Chemistry . Vol. 45, Num. 2, Berlin, Heidelberg 1906.
• To rebuild the national and global economy. In: The free word. 16th year, No. 15/16 in November 1916.
• New foreign policy. In: Karl Anton Rahn (Ed.): European Review. 1925.
• with Hans Schroeder: The National Socialist Eastern Policy and the Hansa Canal. Berlin 1932.
• The economic philosophy and economic policy of National Socialism. In: National Socialist Economic Service. No. 32, Hamburg, December 5, 1932.
• The limits of productive credit creation. In: The German National Economy. 1. Special issue. Berlin 1932.
• Renewal of business ethics and economic order. In: The National Economy. 2, 1934, p. 382.
• Memorandum on the establishment of a society for European large-scale economy. 1934.
• Continental European Greater Economy and the Baltic Sea Region. In: The German National Economy. Issue 15, 1934.
• The renewal of business ethics - a revaluation of all values. In: Berliner Börsenzeitung. No. 467, October 5, 1934.
• Organic structure of national and large-scale economy. In: B erliner Börsenzeitung. No. 469, October 6, 1934.
• Memorandum on the establishment of a central office for European large-scale economy. 1936. In the Federal Archives under NS 43/6 and in: Reinhard Opitz : Europastrategien des Deutschen Kapitals 1900–1945. Cologne 1977, p. 629.
• Nordic and Mediterranean mindset - the foundations of Europe. 1937.
• The way to the national economy. Part 1 Germany's economic order from its own strength and its own space. Munich 1938.
• The way to the national economy. Part 2: Selected speeches and essays. Munich 1938.
• The European Greater Economy. In: The four-year plan. Episode 22/1939.
• Germany and European destiny. In: We and the world. 1939, pp. 11-13.
• Memorandum for the establishment of a Reich commissioner for large-scale economy. May 31, 1940.
• Autarky as a way of life and economy. In: NS-monthly books. 1940, pp. 739-746.
• Eastern Europe, Lifestyle and Agricultural Constitution. In: Bulletin of the Society for European Economic Planning and Greater Economy. No. 7/9, 1941.
• The way to the national economy and the European metropolitan economy. Dresden 1941.
• The New Europe - Contributions to the National Economic Order and Greater Economy. Editor: Society for European Economic Planning and Greater Berlin. Dresden 1941.
• The basics of the European market organization. In: The New Europe. Dresden 1941, pp. 19–28.
• Real and fake large spaces. In: National economic order and large-scale economy. Yearbook 1942, pp. 59–70.
• Lifestyle and space as structural elements of administration. In: German law. Issue 19/20, 1942, p. 698ff.
• The European moral law as the structural law of the European large-scale economy. In: NS-monthly books. 1942, pp. 270-278.
• Living space and just world order. Foundations of an anti-Atlantic charter. Selected essays by Werner Daitz. Amsterdam 1943.
• The way to the national economy, large-scale economy and large-scale politics. Dresden 1943.
• Völkischer Socialism - European Socialism. In: NS-monthly books. 1943, pp. 345-349.
• The rebirth of Europe through European socialism. Europe Charter. Published by the Central Research Institute for National Economic Order and Greater Economy. Dresden 1944.
• To crush the European Charter. 1944.
• The principles of European socialism. 1944.
• Napoleon's continental policy as a forerunner of the European policy of the empire . Lecture. 1944. In the Federal Archives under NS B / 224

literature

• Daitz, Werner, Carl, Otto, Heinrich. In: Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 , p. 293.
• Herrmann AL Degener : Who is it? Berlin 1935.
• Georg Wenzel: German business leader . Life courses of German business personalities. A reference book on 13,000 business figures of our time. Hanseatic Publishing House , Hamburg / Berlin / Leipzig 1929, DNB 948663294 .
• Erich Stockhorst: 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . 2nd Edition. Arndt-Verlag, Kiel 1985, ISBN 3-88741-117-X .
• Reinhard Opitz : European strategies of German capital 1900-1945. Cologne 1977
• Central European organizations 1904–1945. In: Dieter Fricke (Hrsg.): Lexicon for the history of parties. Volume 3. Leipzig 1985.
• Manfred Overesch : The III. Reich 1939–1949. A daily chronicle of politics - economy - culture. Augsburg 1991.
• Ulrich Herbert : Best. Biographical studies on radicalism, worldview and reason 1903–1989. Bonn 1996.
• Kurt Pätzold , Manfred Weißbecker : Adolf Hitler. A political biography. Leipzig 1995.
• Gerhard Schneider : Endangering and Loss of Statehood of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck and its Consequences ; Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1986 ISBN 3-7950-0452-7
• Wolfgang Schumann, Ludwig Nestler (ed.): World domination in sight. Berlin 1975.
• Richard Sasuly: IG Farben. 1947
• Joachim Lilla : The Reichsrat: Representation of the German states in the legislation and administration of the Reich 1919-1934. A biographical handbook with the involvement of the Federal Council Nov. 1918 - Febr. 1919 and the State Committee Feb. - Aug. 1919. Droste, Düsseldorf 2006 ISBN 3-7700-5279-X pp. 126–127

Web links

• Literature by and about Werner Daitz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Chronological biography , author Gerd Simon , University of Tübingen, May 2008 (PDF; 196 KB)
  • Daitz: The Europe Charter and other documents on the European idea , Ed. Gerd Simon
• Werner Daitz in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Based on their archives, GDR historiography assumed that death is not certain and that Daitz continued to live under a false name. Commercial register files HR A 3737 assume that Daitz dies on May 5th in Berlin, writes archivist Ulrich Simon from the archive of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck on October 24th 2001 to researcher Yann Bohnert, according to Gerd Simon, Chronology Daitz 2008, see the web links below .
2. ^ Karl Dietrich Bracher , Wolfgang Sauer , Gerhard Schulz, The National Socialist Seizure of Power. Studies on the establishment of the totalitarian system of rule in Germany 1933/34 , 3rd edition, Cologne 1974, p. 482.
3. ^ Gerhard Schneider: Lübeck's banking policy through the ages (1898–1978) , Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1979, p. 212
4. ^ Establishment of a Reich Commissioner for Large- Scale Economics . 1940.