Walther Rathenau

Walther Rathenau (September 29, 1867–June 24, 1922) was a German industrialist and politician who served as Foreign Minister of Germany.

Political career

Rathenau was a leading proponent of a policy of assimilation for German Jews: he argued that Jews should oppose both Zionism and socialism, but should instead integrate themselves into mainstream German society. This, he said, would eventually lead to the disappearance of anti-Semitism. This did not save him from becoming a hated figure, caricatured as a archetypal Jewish capitalist, by Germany's militant anti-Semitic movement.

Related Topics:
Assimilation - Zionism - Socialism - Anti-Semitism

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During World War I Rathenau held senior posts in the Raw Materials Department of the War Ministry, as well as becoming chairman of AEG on his father's death in 1915. He played the leading role in putting Germany's economy in a war footing, and enabling Germany to continue its war effort for four years despite acute shortages of labour and raw materials.

Related Topics:
World War I - 1915

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After the war Rathenau, a moderate liberal in politics, was one of the founders of the German Democratic Party (DDP). He rejected the tide of socialist thought which swept Germany after the shock of defeat and revolution, opposing state ownership of industry and advocating greater worker participation in the management of companies. His ideas were influential in post war governments.

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In 1921 Rathenau was appointed Minister of Reconstruction, and in 1922 he became Foreign Minister. His insistence that Germany should fulfill its obligations under the Treaty of Versailles, while working for a revision of its terms, infuriated German nationalists. He also angered nationalists by negotiating the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Union. The leaders of the (still obscure) Nazi Party and other right wingers claimed he was part of a "Jewish-Communist conspiracy."

Related Topics:
1921 - 1922 - Treaty of Versailles - Treaty of Rapallo - Soviet Union - Nazi Party

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The British politician Robert Boothby wrote of him: "He was something that only a German Jew could simultaneously be: a prophet, a philosopher, a mystic, a writer, a statesman, an industrial magnate of the highest and greatest order, and the pioneer of what has become known as 'industrial rationalization'."

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In fact, despite his desire for economic and political co-operation between Germany and the Soviet Union, Rathenau remained skeptical of the Soviets' methods. In his Kritik der dreifachen Revolution ("Critique of the triple revolution"), he noted:

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: "We cannot use Russia's methods, as they only and at best prove that the economy of an agrarian nation can be leveled to the ground; Russia's thoughts are not our thoughts. They are, as it is in the spirit of the Russian city intelligence, unphilosophical and highly dialectic; they are passionate logic based on unverified suppositions. They assume that a single good, the destruction of the capitalist class, weighs more than all other goods, and that poverty, dictatorship, terror and the fall of civilization must be accepted to secure this one good.

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: "If ten million people must die to free ten million people from the bourgeoisie, then this is a harsh but necessary consequence. The Russian idea is compulsory happiness, in the same sense and with the same logic as the compulsory introduction of Christianity and the Inquisition."

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