Wilhelm Muehlon

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Johann Wilhelm Muehlon (born October 31, 1878 in Karlstadt ; † February 5, 1944 in Klosters-Serneus , Canton of Graubünden ) was a German arms industrialist and diplomat .

Life

Johann Wilhelm Muehlon's parents were Margarethe Rohmann and the innkeeper Johann Muehlon.

Muehlon studied law and political science in Munich, Berlin and Würzburg. In 1904 he received his doctorate in law and practiced the profession of lawyer. In 1907 he joined the foreign service.

In 1908 he was given leave of absence as assistant director at Friedrich Krupp AG . From 1913 he headed the war material department. At the end of 1914 he left the company at his own request; he “hated” his work there.

In 1915 he was commissioned by the Foreign Office to negotiate as “Special Commissioner of the Reich Administration for the Balkan States” in Bucharest , Sofia , Vienna and Budapest on grain and oil deliveries. Muehlon had refused the post of envoy in Romania. He also refused to represent Wilhelm II's peace proposals to Ferdinand I in Romania in October 1916 . Muehlon represented politically independent, liberal-democratic views. He rejected Wilhelm II's annexionist war aims and saw Woodrow Wilson's policy as serious mediation efforts.

In autumn 1916 he went into exile in Switzerland and worked for the German embassy in Bern without a diplomatic passport or accreditation . After the announcement of unrestricted submarine warfare , Muehlon broke off contact with the authorities of the German Reich.

Muehlon11.pdf

In August 1917, Muehlon wrote a memorandum on the July crisis of 1914. The memorandum was addressed to parliamentarians in the German Reich and was published in May 1917 like a letter to Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg . In it Muehlon reported on talks with Karl Helfferich and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach in July 1914, from which it emerged that the government of the German Reich had shown willingness to go to war before the ultimatum to Serbia. On July 5, 1914, Alexander Hoyos was signaled at the Foreign Office and at an audience with Wilhelm II. Muehlon's motive for sending the memorandum to the parliamentarians was to give them proof in a dispute with the Reich government that Oskar Cohn had been conducting since 1914. In March 1918, his memorandum was the subject of a confidential meeting in the main committee of the Reichstag. The question of war guilt was as a subject of political expediency construed the German Empire, Muehlon from the Parliament and the patriotic press as emotionally disturbed defamed in an attempt to discredit the content of the memorandum.

In the spring of 1918, Muehlon published his diary from the first months of the war under the title Die Verheerung Europa in Zurich . The work was on the index in the German Reich and abroad it established its reputation as "the first European in Germany".

" ... the most terrifying things in this war are ... the rallies of the so-called intellectual elite of Germany, the professors and similar creatures, who proclaim a kind of regulated schoolmaster barbery ... "

- Wilhelm Muehlon

In Switzerland , German-speaking pacifists, republicans and democrats such as Alfred Hermann Fried , Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster , Prince Alexander v. Hohenlohe, Max von Montgelas and Hermann Staudinger . There were friendly relationships with Eduard Bernstein , Ludwig Quidde , the editorial team of the Freie Zeitung in Bern with Hugo Ball and Ernst Bloch as well as Leonhard Frank , Annette Kolb , Rainer Maria Rilke , Hermann Hesse and René Schickele .

In late 1917 and early 1918, Muehlon met with Julius Meinl II , Heinrich Lammasch and George D. Herron with the aim of ending the armed conflict.

On November 27, 1918, Kurt Eisner had proposed Muehlon for an office in the Reich Presidium. After Eisner's murder, Muehlon traveled to Munich on February 25, 1919, mediated by the ambassador of the Bavarian Soviet Republic Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster . He turned down the position of Bavarian Foreign Minister that had been offered to him during a conversation with the Council of Ministers made up of Johannes Hoffmann , Heinrich von Frauendorfer , Edgar Jaffé and Hans Unterleitner .

After the war, after the resumption of diplomatic relations at the end of 1922, he was involved in financial negotiations between the German Reich and Romania, since in the eyes of the German envoy Hans Freytag he enjoys the greatest trust among the politicians in Romania .

In 1926 he acquired Gottlieben Castle . He got involved financially in the Catholic-pacifist Rhein-Mainische Volkszeitung , for this reason the National Socialist regime initiated proceedings against him for treason after 1933 .

Fonts

  • A stranger in your own country. Memories and diary entries of a Krupp director 1908-1914. Edited and introduced by Wolfgang Benz. Donat, Bremen 1989, ISBN 3-924444-44-7 . Contains the first publication of a manuscript of an autobiography for the period up to 1914 and a largely faithful reprint of Die Verheerung Europa .
  • Diary of the war years 1940-1944. Edited and introduced by Dr. Jens Heisterkamp. Edition Spicker, Dornach 1992, ISBN 3-85704-282-6 .
  • The Devastation of Europe: Records from the First Months of the War . Orell Füßli, Zurich 1918

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wilhelm Muehlon: Die Verheerung Europäische , Foreword 1918, p. 3
  2. ^ Wilhelm Muehlon: Die Verheerung Europäische , entry from November 11, 1914, pp. 144f
  3. ↑ Kurt Eisner, Franz J. Bauer, Dieter Albrecht, Die Eisner Government “1918/19” , Droste, 1987 - 486 pp., 402
  4. ↑ Foreign Office / Political Archive and Historical Unit: Files on German Foreign Policy. 1918-1945. From the archive of the Foreign Office . Göttingen u. a. 1950–1995, here: Series A. Volume VI, pp. 549–551. Also Volume VII, pp. 204 and 328.
personal data
SURNAME Muehlon, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Muehlon, Johann Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German armaments industrialist and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlstadt
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 1944
Place of death Klosters-Serneus , Canton of Graubünden