Heinrich Brüning
Heinrich Aloysius Maria Elisabeth Brüning was a German Centre Party politician and academic, who served as the chancellor of Germany during the Weimar Republic from 1930 to 1932.
A political scientist and Christian social activist, he entered politics in the 1920s and was elected to the Reichstag in 1924. In 1930, he was appointed interim chancellor, just as the Great Depression took hold. His austerity policies in response were unpopular, with most of the Reichstag opposed, so he governed by emergency decrees issued by President Paul von Hindenburg, overriding the Reichstag. This lasted until May 1932, when his land distribution policy offended Hindenburg, who refused to issue any more decrees. Brüning resigned in response to the refusal.
After Hitler took power, Brüning fled Germany in 1934. He eventually settled in the United States. From 1937 to 1952, he was a professor at Harvard University. He returned to Germany in 1951 to teach at the University of Cologne but again moved to the United States in 1955 and lived out his days in retirement in Vermont.
Brüning remains a controversial figure in Germany's history, as historians debate whether he was the "last bulwark of the Weimar Republic", the "Republic's undertaker", or both. Scholars are divided over how much room for manoeuvre he had during the Depression, in a period of great political instability. While he intended to protect the Republic's government, his policies, notably his use of emergency powers, also contributed to the gradual decline of the Weimar Republic during his chancellorship.
Early life and education
Born in Münster in Westphalia, Brüning lost his father when he was one year old, and thus his elder brother Hermann Joseph played a major part in his upbringing in a devoutly Roman Catholic family. After graduating from Gymnasium Paulinum he first leaned towards the legal profession but then studied Philosophy, History, German, and Political Science at Strasbourg, the London School of Economics, and Bonn, where in 1915 he received a doctorate for his thesis on the financial, economic, and legal implications of nationalizing the British railway system. Historian Friedrich Meinecke, one of his professors at Strasbourg, had a major influence on Brüning.Volunteering for the infantry, he was accepted despite his shortsightedness and physical weakness, and served in World War I from 1915 to 1918. He rose to lieutenant in infantry regiment No. 30, Graf Werder, and company commander by the end of the war. He was cited for bravery and awarded both the second and first class Iron Cross. Despite having been elected to a soldiers' council after the armistice of 11 November 1918, Brüning did not approve of the German Revolution of 1918–1919 which ended with the establishment of the Weimar Republic.
Rise in politics
Despite his reluctance to speak about his private life, it is assumed that his war experience and the war's aftermath persuaded him not to pursue his academic career, and he preferred to help former soldiers reintegrate into civilian life by assisting them finding employment or further their education. He collaborated with the social reformer Carl Sonnenschein and worked in the "Secretariat for social student work". After six months he entered the Prussian welfare department and became a close associate of Adam Stegerwald, the minister. Stegerwald, also the leader of the Christian trade unions, made him chief executive of the unions in 1920, a post Brüning retained until 1930.As the editor of the union newspaper Der Deutsche, Brüning advocated a "social popular state" and "Christian democracy", based on the ideas of Christian corporatism. In 1923, Brüning was actively involved in organizing the passive resistance in the "Ruhrkampf". Brüning joined the Centre Party and in 1924 was elected to the Reichstag, representing Breslau. In the Reichstag, he quickly made a name for himself as a financial expert and managed to push through the so-called Brüning Law, which restricted the workers' share of income taxes to no more than 1.2 billion Reichsmarks.
From 1928 to 1930, Brüning served as a member of the Landtag of Prussia. In 1929, after his election as leader of the Centre Party group in the Reichstag, his party's agreement to the Young Plan was made conditional on a guarantee of tax increases that would ensure a balanced budget. This earned him President Paul von Hindenburg's attention.
Chancellor of Germany (1930–1932)
In March 1930, the grand coalition under the Social Democrat Hermann Müller collapsed. Hindenburg appointed Brüning chancellor on 29 March 1930. Brüning's financial and economic acumen combined with his openness to social questions made him a candidate for chancellor and his war service as a front-line officer made him acceptable to Hindenburg.Great Depression and economic policy
The government faced the Great Depression. At the same time, the 1929 Young Plan had greatly reduced war reparations owed by Germany, but paying the remainder required severe austerity measures. Brüning disclosed to his associates in the German Labour Federation that his chief aim as chancellor would be to liberate the German economy from the burden of reparations and foreign debt. This would require tight credit and a deflationary rollback of all wage and salary increases. These policies had begun under the Müller cabinet but would be pursued much more extensively under Brüning.The Reichstag rejected Brüning's measures within a month. Hindenburg, already bent on reducing the influence of the Reichstag, saw this event as the "failure of parliament", and with Brüning's consent he called new elections, to be held in September. In the meantime, Brüning's measures were implemented in the summer by presidential emergency decrees under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The deflationary measures led to a trade surplus, but increased unemployment and poverty. As unemployment continued to rise, Brüning's cuts in both wages and public assistance, combined with rising prices and taxes, increased misery among workers and the unemployed. This gave rise to the slogan "Brüning verordnet Not!", alluding to his measures being implemented by the Notverordnung.
Brüning became extremely unpopular. Hindenburg wished to base the government on the parties of the right, but the right-wing German National People's Party refused to support Brüning's government. To the president's dismay, Brüning had to rely on his own Centre Party, the only party that fully supported him, and on the toleration of the Social Democrats.
Political crisis and government dissent
In the September election, the parties of the grand coalition lost many seats, while the Communists and the National Socialists made major gains. This left Brüning without any hope of forming a Reichstag majority. Instead, he continued to govern by Notverordnung. He coined the term "authoritarian democracy" to describe this form of government, based on the cooperation of the president and parliament. Brüning was somewhat ambivalent toward democracy. Soon after taking office, he sharply limited freedom of the press. By one estimate, 100 newspaper editions were banned every month.File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-12084, Berlin-Tempelhof, Abreise Ramsay MacDonalds.jpg|thumb|Chancellor Brüning and Foreign Minister Julius Curtius saying good-bye to British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald at Berlin Tempelhof Airport, July 1931
Brüning's harsh economic policies undermined the tacit support of the Social Democrats for the government, while the liberal and conservative members of the cabinet favoured opening the government to the right. President Hindenburg, pushed by his camarilla and military chief Kurt von Schleicher, also advocated such a move and insisted on a cabinet reshuffle, especially the removal of ministers Joseph Wirth and Theodor von Guérard, both from the Centre Party.
The president's wishes also hampered the government's resolution in combatting the extremist parties and their respective paramilitary organisations. The chancellor and president agreed that the brutality, intolerance, and demagogy of the Communists and Nazis rendered them unfit for government, and Brüning believed the government was strong enough to steer Germany through the crisis without the support of the Nazis.
Nonetheless, he negotiated with Hitler about toleration or a formal coalition, without yielding to the Nazis any position of power or full support by presidential decree. Because of these reservations the negotiations came to nothing and as street violence rose to new heights in April 1932, Brüning had both the Communist "Rotfrontkämpferbund" and the Nazi Sturmabteilung banned. The unfavourable reaction in right-wing circles further undermined Hindenburg's support for Brüning.
Brüning agonized over how to stem the growing Nazi tide, especially since Hindenburg could not be expected to survive another full term as president should he choose to run again. If Hindenburg were to die in office, Hitler would be a strong favorite to succeed him.
Restoring the monarchy
In his posthumously published memoirs Brüning claims, without support of contemporaneous documents, that he hit upon a last-ditch solution to prevent Hitler from taking power: restoring the Hohenzollern monarchy. He planned to persuade the Reichstag to cancel the 1932 German presidential election and extend Hindenburg's term. He would have then had the Reichstag proclaim a monarchy, with Hindenburg as regent. Upon Hindenburg's death, one of Crown Prince Wilhelm's sons would have been invited to assume the throne. The restored monarchy would have been a British-style constitutional monarchy in which real power would have rested with the legislature.He managed to garner support from all of the major parties except the Nationalists, Communists, and Nazis, making it very unlikely that the plan would get the two-thirds majority required for passage. The plan floundered, however, when Hindenburg, an old-line monarchist, refused to support restoration of the monarchy unless Kaiser Wilhelm II was recalled from exile in the Netherlands. When Brüning tried to impress upon him that neither the Social Democrats nor the international community would accept any return of the deposed Kaiser, Hindenburg threw him out of his office.