Gustav Stresemann was a German politician and statesman who served as
Chancellor in 1923 and Foreign Minister 1923–1929, during the Weimar Republic.
He was co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.
Stresemann's politics defy easy categorization. Arguably, his most
notable achievement was the reconciliation between Germany and
France, for which he and Aristide Briand received the Nobel Peace Prize. During a
period of political instability and fragile, short-lived governments, he was
generally seen as the most influential cabinet member in most of the Weimar
Republic's existence. During his political career, he
represented three successive liberal parties; he was the dominant figure of
the German People's Party during the Weimar Republic.
Early years Stresemann was born on May 10, 1878 in
the Köpenicker Straße area of southeast Berlin, the youngest of seven children.
His father worked as a beer bottler and distributor, and also ran a small bar
out of the family home, as well as renting rooms for extra money. The
family was lower middle class, but relatively well-off for the
neighbourhood, and had sufficient funds to provide Gustav with a high-quality
education. Stresemann was an excellent student, particularly excelling in
German literature and poetry. In an essay written when he left school, he
noted that he would have enjoyed becoming a teacher, but he would only
have been qualified to teach languages or the natural sciences, which were not
his primary areas of interest. Thus, he entered the University of Berlin in 1897
to study political economy. Through this course of studies, Stresemann was
exposed to the principal ideological arguments of his day, particularly the
German debate about socialism. During his university years, Stresemann
also became active in Burschenschaften movement of student fraternities, and
became editor, in April 1898, of the Allgemeine Deutsche
Universitäts-Zeitung, a newspaper run by Konrad Kuster, a leader in the liberal
portion of the Burschenschaften. His editorials for the paper were often
political, and dismissed most of the contemporary political parties as broken
in one way or another. In these early writings, he set out views that combined
liberalism with strident nationalism, a combination that would dominate his
views for the rest of his life. In 1898, Stresemann left the University of
Berlin, transferring to the University of Leipzig so that he could pursue a
doctorate. He completed his studies in January 1901, submitting a thesis on the
bottled beer industry in Berlin, which received a relatively high grade.
In 1902 he founded the Saxon Manufacturers' Association. In 1903 he
married Käte Kleefeld, daughter of a wealthy Jewish Berlin businessman, and
the sister of Kurt von Kleefeld, the last person in Germany to be ennobled.
At that time he was also a member of Friedrich Naumann's National-Social
Association. In 1906 he was elected to the Dresden town council. Though he had
initially worked in trade associations, Stresemann soon became a leader of the
National Liberal Party in Saxony. In 1907, he was elected to the Reichstag,
where he soon became a close associate of party chairman Ernst Bassermann.
However, his support of expanded social-welfare programs didn't sit well
with some of the party's more conservative members, and he lost his
post in the party's executive committee in 1912. Later that year he lost both
his Reichstag and town council seats. He returned to business and founded the
German-American Economic Association. In 1914 he returned to the Reichstag. He
was exempted from war service due to poor health. With Bassermann kept away
from the Reichstag by either illness or military service, Stresemann soon became
the National Liberals' de facto leader. After Bassermann's death in 1917,
Stresemann succeeded him as party leader.
The evolution of his political ideas appears somewhat erratic. Initially, in
the German Empire, Stresemann was 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
a vocal proponent of unrestricted submarine warfare. However, he still
favoured an expansion of the social welfare programme, and also supported an
end to the restrictive Prussian franchise.
When the Allies' peace terms became known, including a crushing burden of
paying reparations for the war, Constantin Fehrenbach denounced them and
claimed "the will to break the chains of slavery would be implanted" into a
generation of Germans. Stresemann said of this speech: "He was inspired in that
hour by God to say what was felt by the German people. His words, spoken under
Fichte's portrait, the final words of which merged into “Deutschland,
Deutschland über alles”, made it an unforgettably solemn hour. There was in
that sense a kind of uplifting grandeur. The impression left on all was
tremendous". Stresemann briefly joined the German
Democratic Party after the war, but was expelled for his association with the
right wing. He then gathered the main body of the old National Liberal
Party—including most of its centre and right factions—into the German People's
Party, with himself as chairman. Most of its support came from middle class and
upper class Protestants. The DVP platform promoted Christian family
values, secular education, lower tariffs, opposition to welfare spending
and agrarian subsides and hostility to "Marxism".
The DVP was initially seen, along with the German National People's Party, as
part of the "national opposition" to the Weimar Republic, particularly for its
grudging acceptance of democracy and its ambivalent attitude towards the
Freikorps and the Kapp Putsch in 1920. By late 1920, Stresemann gradually moved
to cooperation with the parties of the left and centre — possibly in reaction
to political murders like that of Walther Rathenau. However, he remained a
monarchist at heart. In the Weimar Republic
= Chancellor 1923 = On August 13, 1923 Stresemann was
appointed Chancellor and Foreign Minister of a grand coalition government
in the so-called year of crises. In social policy, a new system of binding
arbitration was introduced in October 1923 in which an outside arbitrator had
the final say in industrial disputes. On September 26, 1923 Stresemann
announced the end to the resistance against the Occupation of the Ruhr by
the French and Belgians, in tandem with an Article 48 state of emergency
proclamation by President Ebert that lasted until February 1924. By this
time, Stresemann was convinced that accepting the republic and reaching an
understanding with the Allies on the reparations issue was the only way for
Germany to gain the breathing room it needed to rebuild its battered economy.
He also wished to recover the Rhineland, as he wrote to the Crown Prince on July
23, 1923: "The most important objective of German politics is the liberation of
German territory from foreign occupation. First, we must remove the
strangler from our throat". Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic
would reach its peak in November 1923. Since Germany was no longer able to pay
the striking workers, more and more money was printed, which finally led to
hyperinflation. Stresemann introduced a new currency, the Rentenmark, to end
hyperinflation. This reassured the people that the democratic system was
willing and able to solve urgent problems.
In early November 1923, the Social Democrats withdrew from his reshuffled
government. It resigned on November 23, 1923.
= Foreign Minister 1923-29 = Stresemann remained as Foreign Minister
in the government of his successor, Centrist Wilhelm Marx. He remained
foreign minister for the rest of his life in eight successive governments
ranging from the centre-right to the centre-left.
As Foreign Minister, Stresemann had numerous achievements. His first notable
achievement was the Dawes Plan of 1924, which reduced Germany's overall
reparations commitment and reorganized the Reichsbank.
After Sir Austen Chamberlain became British Foreign Secretary, he wanted a
British guarantee to France and Belgium as the Anglo-American guarantee had
fallen due to the United States' refusal to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.
Stresemann later wrote: "Chamberlain had never been our friend. His first act was
to attempt to restore the old Entente through a three-power alliance of
England, France and Belgium, directed against Germany. German diplomacy faced
a catastrophic situation". Stresemann conceived the idea that Germany would
guarantee her western borders and pledged never to invade Belgium and
France again, along with a guarantee from Britain that they would come to
Germany's aid if attacked by France. Germany was in no position at the time
to attack, as Stresemann wrote to the Crown Prince: "The renunciation of a
military conflict with France has only a theoretical significance, in so far as
there is no possibility of a war with France". Stresemann negotiated the
Locarno Treaties with Britain, France, Italy, and Belgium. On the third day of
negotiations Stresemann explained Germany's demands to the French Foreign
Secretary, Aristide Briand. As Stresemann recorded, Briand "almost fell
off his sofa, when he heard my explanations". Stresemann said that
Germany alone should not make sacrifices for peace; European countries should
cede colonies to Germany; the disarmament control commission should
leave Germany; the Anglo-French occupation of the Rhineland should be
ended; and Britain and France should disarm as Germany had done. The Treaties
were signed in October 1925 at Locarno. Germany officially recognized the
post-World War I western border for the first time, and was guaranteed peace
with France, and promised admission to the League of Nations and evacuation of
the last Allied occupation troops from the Rhineland.
Stresemann was not willing to conclude a similar treaty with Poland: "There will
be no Locarno of the east" he said. Moreover, he never excluded the use of
force to regain the eastern territories of former German Empire which had come
under Polish control as a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles.
After this reconciliation with the Versailles powers, Stresemann moved to
allay the growing suspicion of the Soviet Union. He said to Nikolay
Krestinsky in June 1925, as recorded in his diary: "I had said I would not come
to conclude a treaty with Russia so long as our political situation in the other
direction was not cleared up, as I wanted to answer the question whether we
had a treaty with Russia in the negative". The Treaty of Berlin signed
in April 1926 reaffirmed and strengthened the Rapallo Treaty of 1922.
In September 1926, Germany was admitted to the League of Nations as permanent
member of the Security Council. This was a sign that Germany was quickly becoming
a normal state, and assured the Soviet Union of Germany's sincerity in the
Treaty of Berlin. Stresemann wrote to the Crown Prince: "All the questions
which to-day preoccupy the German people can be transformed into as many
vexations for the Entente by a skilful orator before the League of Nations". As
Germany now had a veto on League resolutions, she could gain concessions
from other countries on modifications on the Polish border or Anschluss with
Austria, as other countries needed her vote. Germany could now act as "the
spokesman of the whole German cultural community" and thereby provoke the
German minorities in Czechoslovakia and Poland.
Stresemann was co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926 for these
achievements. Germany signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact
in August 1928. It renounced the use of violence to resolve international
conflicts. Although Stresemann did not propose the pact, Germany's adherence
convinced many people that Weimar Germany was a Germany that could be
reasoned with. This new insight was instrumental in the Young Plan of
February 1929 which led to more reductions in German reparations
payment. Gustav Stresemann's success owed much to
his friendly personal character and his willingness to be pragmatic. He was
close personal friends with many influential foreigners. The most noted
was Briand, with whom he shared the Peace Prize.
Stresemann was not, however, in any sense pro-French. His main preoccupation
was how to free Germany from the burden of reparations payments to Britain and
France, imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. His strategy for this was to
forge an economic alliance with the United States. The U.S. was Germany's
main source of food and raw materials, and one of Germany's largest export
markets for manufactured goods. Germany's economic recovery was thus in
the interests of the U.S., and gave the U.S. an incentive to help Germany escape
from the reparations burden. The Dawes and Young plans were the result of this
strategy. Stresemann had a close relationship with Herbert Hoover, who
was Secretary of Commerce in 1921-28 and President from 1929. This strategy
worked remarkably well until it was derailed by the Great Depression after
Stresemann's death. 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 consolidation of
the feeble democratic order, Stresemann was regarded as a Vernunftrepublikaner -
someone who accepted the Republic as the least of all evils, but was in his heart
still loyal to the monarchy. The conservative opposition criticized 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. 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 enable Germany to regain
territories ceded to Poland after World War I, and he wanted Germany to gain a
larger market for its products there. So Stresemann refused to engage in any
international cooperation that would have "prematurely" restabilized the
Polish economy. In response to a British proposal, Stresemann wrote to the German
ambassador in London: "[A] final and lasting recapitalization 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".
= Death = Gustav Stresemann died of a stroke on
October 3, 1929 at the age of 51. His gravesite is situated in the Luisenstadt
Cemetery at Südstern in Berlin Kreuzberg, and includes work by the
German sculptor Hugo Lederer. Stresemann's sudden and premature death,
as well as the death of his "pragmatic moderate" French counterpart Aristide
Briand in 1932, and the assassination of Briand's successor Louis Barthou in
1934, left a vacuum in European statesmanship that helped to accelerate
the movement towards renewed conflict, and ultimately World War II.
Gustav and Käte had two sons, Wolfgang, who later became intendant of the
Berliner Philharmoniker, and Joachim Stresemann.
Gustav Stresemann was a freemason initiated in the masonic lodge Frederick
the Great in Berlin in 1923. His masonic membership was generally known to his
contemporaries and he was criticized by German nationalists as a "lodge
politician". Fashion
Stresemann popularized the style of substituting a short dark lounge-suit
jacket for a morning coat but otherwise wearing morning dress for men's day
wear. The look became so identified with Stresemann that such outfits are often
called "Stresemanns." Quotes
If the allies had obliged me just one single time, I would have brought the
German people behind me, yes; even today, I could still get them to support
me. However, they gave me nothing and the minor concessions they made, always
came too late. Thus, nothing else remains for us but brutal force. The
future lies in the hands of the new generation. Moreover, they, the German
youth, who we could have won for peace and reconstruction, we have lost. Herein
lies my tragedy and there, the allies' crime.
Footnotes Bibliography
External links Works by Gustav Stresemann at Project
Gutenberg Works by or about Gustav Stresemann at
Internet Archive Hitler, Stresemann and the Discontinuity
of German Foreign Policy by Edgar Feuchtwanger
Nobel biography STRESEMANN AND LITHUANIA IN THE NINETEEN
TWENTIES