Willy Huhn (Central Bank President)

Willy Huhn (born January 3, 1901 , † January 30, 1955 ) was a German politician and the first President of the German Central Bank of the GDR .

Life

Education and political activities

The son of Fritz Huhn and his wife Anna Harms finished school in 1916. During his apprenticeship he began to establish political and trade union connections. As a co-founder of the Communist Youth Association in Berlin, he chaired this group from 1916 to 1919. He worked with the Spartakusbund . In 1923 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Red Aid on behalf of the Central Committee (ZK) of the KPD in order to be the main cashier to help the communist members convicted by the judiciary.

apprenticeship as Banker

He took up employment with the general local health insurance fund . Then he went to the Berliner Stadtbank . He then took up a job at Deutsche Bank .

U.S. Captivity and Debt Collection

In 1943 he became a soldier in the Wehrmacht . He was evacuated from the cauldron around the city of Königsberg in East Prussia in 1945. In the West he was taken prisoner by the United States on April 20, 1945. There he signed up as a volunteer for training in order to support the occupying power in future administration. This training ended in September 1945. He then went straight to Berlin to meet the influential KPD functionary Wilhelm Pieck , who proposed him as one of the four heads of the Berlin Collection Commission for the Soviet sector of Berlin. In 1947 this commission was to settle the cash holdings of the previous banks in Berlin. Because of the growing tensions between the Allies, the commission was unable to finish its mandate.

Head of the German Central Bank

Huhn then received the order to set up a central bank in the Soviet occupation zone . After these preparations, the German Central Bank (DN) was founded on July 20, 1948 . Willy Huhn was appointed the first president of the DN.

Huhn and the DN board of directors steered a course that provided for a high degree of independence in currency matters. But by the end of 1948, tensions between SED officials and the DN leadership grew . At the beginning of 1950, after a personnel review by the Ministry of the Interior, the first senior employees of the DN were dismissed. When, at a meeting of the bank's board of directors on June 3, 1950, Huhn forbade interference by government agencies that were not competent at the DN, he warned against involving the Soviet Control Commission . Thereupon the Ministry of the Interior accused Huhn of being technically and politically not up to the task .

Resignation as President

The Central Party Control Commission , headed by Hermann Matern , decided that Huhn had to give up his position as president of the DN and leave the DN. After it was discovered that he had attended a class while in US captivity, this evidence was considered one reason for his alleged political unreliability.

On December 5, 1950, Huhn asked Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl to resign immediately for health reasons . Greta Kuckhoff became his successor. In Erkner he found a job as a commercial director at a chemical company. He died in 1955 from incorrect medical treatment.

Fonts

• The German Central Bank , in: Deutsche Finanzwirtschaft, 2 (1948), Issue 5/6, pp. 7-11

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Werner Eberlein: Born on November 9th. Memories . 3rd edition, Berlin 2001, p. 21.
2. ^ Sebastian T. Pollens: Bankplatz Berlin in the post-war period. Transformation and reconstruction of the East and West Berlin banking system between 1945 and 1953 . Berlin, 2006, p. 393.
3. ↑ Werner Eberlein, ibid, p. 256.
4. ↑ Matthias Ermer: From the Reichsmark to the Deutsche Mark of the German Central Bank. For the internal currency exchange in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany (June / July 1948) . Stuttgart 2000, p. 145.
5. ↑ Matthias Ermer, ibid, p. 173.
6. ↑ Werner Eberlein, ibid, p. 257.