Gustav Stresemann
Gustav Stresemann (
May 10,
1878 –
October 3,
1929) was a German liberal politician and statesman who served as
Chancellor and
Foreign Secretary during the
Weimar Republic. He was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize.
Stresemann was born in
Berlin on
May 10,
1878. He came from middle class origins, as the son of a Berlin innkeeper and beer distributor. However, he attended Universities of Berlin and
Leipzig, studied philosophy and literature and received a doctorate in
economics. He also became a spokesman for his student association.
In 1902 he founded the Saxon Manufacturers' Association. In 1903 he married Käte Kleefeld, daughter of a wealthy Jewish Berlin businessman. In 1906 he was elected into Dresden town council. Though he had initially worked in trade associations, Stresemann soon became a leader of the
National Liberal Party in
Saxony, being elected to the
Reichstag in
1907, where he soon became a close associate of party chairman
Ernst Bassermann. However, he disagreed with the most conservative party member and lost his post in the party's executive committee in 1912 and later the same year both his parliamentary and town council seats. He returned to business and founded the German-American Economic Association. He returned to Reichstag in 1914. He was exempted from the war service due to poor health.
Stresemann's politics defy easy categorisation. Today, he is generally considered one of the most important leaders of Germany and a staunch supporter of democracy in the fragile
Weimar Republic. Further, he is noted as one of the first to envisage European economic integration. Arguably, his most notable achievement is the reconciliaton between Germany and France, for which he and
Aristide Briand received the
Nobel Peace Prize in
1926.
However, the evolution of his political ideas appears somewhat erratic. Initially, in the
German Empire, Stresemann had been associated with the left wing of the National Liberals. During
World War I, he gradually moved to the right, expressing his support of the monarchy and Germany's expansionist goals. He was one of the proponents of the unrestricted submarine warfare.
Stresemann's association with the right ultimately led to his exclusion from the new
German Democratic Party after the war, leading him to found his own party, the D.V.P (
Deutsche Volkspartei German People's Party), composed of the right wing of the old National Liberal Party. Most of its support came from middle class and upper class Protestants. The D.V.P favoured
laissez faire free-market economics, Christian family values, secular education, a policy of lowering tariffs, hostility to
Marxism (in the Weimar Republic, the term Marxism referred not only to the
Communists, but to the
Social Democrats as well), opposition to welfare spending and agrarian subsides, and at best a grudging acceptance of democracy.
Although the party was initially seen, along with the more straightforwardly conservative
German National People's Party, as part of the "national opposition" to the Weimar Republic, particularly for its ambivalent attitude towards the
Freikorps and the
Kapp Putsch in
1920, Stresemann gradually tried to cooperate with the parties of the left and center - possibly under the impression of political murders like that of
Walther Rathenau.
In
August 13 1923, in the midst of the
Ruhr Crisis, he was appointed Chancellor of a grand coalition government. As Chancellor, Stresemann went a long way towards resolving the crisis, but some of his moves - like his refusal to deal firmly with culprits of the
Beer Hall Putsch - alienated the Social Democrats, who left the coalition and caused its collapse in
November 23 1923. Stresemann remained as Foreign Minister in the government of his successor,
Centrist Wilhelm Marx, and continued to hold that position through numerous governments until his death.
As Foreign Secretary, Stresemann had numerous achievements, particularly the signing of the
Locarno Pact with Britain, France, Italy, and Belgium in
1925, the entry of Germany into the
League of Nations as permanent member of the Security Council in
1926, and the
Dawes Plan of 1924, the
Treaty of Berlin in 1926 and
Young Plan of 1929, which reduced Germany's reparations payments under the
Treaty of Versailles. He also befriended
Aristide Briand, with whom he shared the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize for achieving Franco-German reconciliation.
During his period in the foreign ministry, Stresemann came more and more to accept the Republic, which he had at first rejected. By the mid-1920s, having contributed much to a (temporary) consolidation of the feeble democratic order, Stresemann was regarded as a
Vernunftrepublikaner (republican by reason) - someone who accepted the Republic as the least of all evils, but was in their heart still loyal to the monarchy. The conservative opposition criticised him for his supporting the republic and fulfilling too willingly the demands of the Western powers; along with
Matthias Erzberger and others, he was attacked as a
Erfüllungspolitiker ("fulfillment politician").
Stresemann is remembered for his role in consolidating liberal democracy in Germany and concluding peace with her western neighbours. On the other hand, his position on the Polish-German border per the treaty of
Versailles and the Upper Silesian plebiscite was as uncompromising as any German politician's of that time, with the exception of far-left social democrats and communists.
In
1925, when he first proposed an agreement with France, he made it clear that in doing so he intended to
"gain a free hand to secure a peaceful change of the borders in the East and [...] concentrate on a later incorporation of German territories in the East".In the same year, while Poland was in a state of political and economic crisis, Stresemann began a
trade war against the country. Stresemann hoped for an escalation of the Polish crisis, which would eventually enable Germany to take back territories it was forced to cede to Poland after WW1. For this reason, Stresemann refused to engage in any international cooperation which would have "prematurely" restabilised the Polish economy. In response to a British proposal, Stresemann wrote to the German ambassador in London:
"[A] final and lasting recapitalisation of Poland must be delayed until the country is ripe for a settlement of the border according to our wishes and until our own position is sufficiently strong." According to Stresemann's letter, there should be no settlement
"until [Poland's] economic and financial distress has reached an extreme stage and reduced the entire Polish body politic to a state of powerlessness".
Gustav Stresemann died of a massive
heart attack on
October 3,
1929 at the age of 51. His sudden and premature death, as well as that death of his "pragmatic moderate" French counterpart
Briand in
1931, and the assassination of Briand's successor
Louis Barthou in
1934, left a vacuum in European statesmanship which further tilted the slippery slope towards
World War II.
Gustav and Käthe had two sons,
Wolfgang and Joachim Stresemann.
*Gustav Stresemann (
DVP) - Chancellor and
Foreign Minister*
Robert Schmidt (
SPD) -
Vice Chancellor and
Reconstruction Minister*
Wilhelm Sollmann (SPD) -
Interior Minister*
Rudolf Hilferding (SPD) -
Finance Minister*
Hans von Raumer (DVP) -
Economics Minister*
Heinrich Brauns (
Z) -
Labour Minister*
Gustav Radbruch (SPD) -
Justice Minister*
Otto Gessler (
DDP) -
Defence Minister*
Anton Höfle (Z) -
Postal Minister*
Rudolf Oeser (DDP) -
Transport Minister*
Hans Luther -
Food Minister*
Johannes Fuchs (Z) -
Occupied Areas Minister*Gustav Stresemann (DVP) - Chancellor and
Foreign Minister*
Wilhelm Sollmann (SPD) -
Interior Minister*
Hans Luther -
Finance Minister*
Joseph Koeth -
Economics Minister*
Heinrich Brauns (Z) -
Employment Minister*
Gustav Radbruch (SPD) -
Justice Minister*
Otto Gessler (DDP) -
Defence Minister*
Anton Höfle (Z) -
Postal Minister*
Rudolf Oeser (DDP) -
Transport Minister*
Gerhard Graf von Kanitz -
Food Minister*
Robert Schmidt (SPD) -
Reconstruction Minister*
Johannes Fuchs (Z) -
Occupied Areas MinisterChanges*
November 3,
1923 - The Social Democratic Ministers, Sollmann, Radbruch, and Schmidt, resign. Sollmann is succeeded as Interior Minister by
Karl Jarres (DVP). The others are not replaced before the ministry falls
Footnotes
# Stresemann in an article for the
Hamburger Fremdenblatt,
10 April 1922, quoted after
Martin Broszat,
200 Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972, p. 220.# Stresemann in a letter to the German ambassador in London, quoted after Broszat (see above), p. 224.
Books
*
Turner, Henry Ashby Stresemann and the politics of the Weimar Republic, Princeton, N. J. : Princeton University Press, 1963.
*Wright, Jonathan
Gustav Stresemann: Weimar's Greatest Statesman (2002).
*
Hitler, Stresemann and the Discontinuity of German Foreign Policy by Edgar Feuchtwanger
*
Nobel biography
