Reinhold Quaatz

Reinhold Quaatz (born 8 May 1876 in Berlin - died 15 August 1953 in West Berlin) was a German conservative politician active during the Weimar Republic. Although associated with right-wing and völkisch tendencies Quaatz was half-Jewish in ancestry.[1]

Quaatz was a member of the Reichstag, first being elected in 1920 for the German People's Party (DVP) before switching to the German National People's Party (DNVP) and retaining his seat until the establishment of the Nazi regime.[2] He had been a member of the Nationalliberale Vereinigung, a landowners group that was affiliated to the DVP, and which also included the likes of Johann Becker, Moritz Klönne, Albert Vögler and Alfred Gildemeister, but then clashed with the leadership and switched to the DNVP in early 1924. As a result, Quaatz ran on the DNVP ticket for the May 1924 election and from then on.[3] As a DNVP member Quaatz was personally close to party leader Alfred Hugenberg. The industrialist frequently confided in his friend, a fact demonstrated when Quaatz's diaries were published in 1989.[4] Despite his mother being Jewish Quaatz endorsed anti-Semitic policies during his time as a DNVP politician and even encouraged Hugenburg to work closely with Adolf Hitler as he feared both socialism and the political Catholicism of the Centre Party.[5]

Away from politics he was an industrialist and financier and in early 1933 he was appointed to the board of the Dresdner Bank.[6] He was removed from this position in February 1936 as the Nazi laws barred Mischling from such positions.[7] He was briefly cross-examined by the Gestapo in the aftermath of the 1944 attempt of Hitler's life but generally his high level contacts meant that he endured little state attention.[7] He was a founder member of the Christian Democratic Union in Berlin after the war.

References

  1. ↑ Hermann Beck, The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light, Berghahn Books, 2009, p. 199
  2. ↑ Datenbank der deutschen Parlamentsabgeordneten
  3. ↑ Beck, The Fateful Alliance, p. 24
  4. ↑ Beck, The Fateful Alliance, p. 91
  5. ↑ Hermann Weiss & Paul Hoser (eds), Die Deutschnationalen und die Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik. Aus dem Tagebuch von Reinhold Quaatz 1928-1933 (Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59), Oldenbourg: Munich 1989, pp. 19-21
  6. ↑ Gerald D. Feldman, Wolfgang Seibel, Networks of Nazi Persecution: Bureaucracy, Business, and the Organization of the Holocaust, Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 48
  7. 1 2 Hermann Weiss & Paul Hoser (eds), Die Deutschnationalen und die Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik. Aus dem Tagebuch von Reinhold Quaatz 1928-1933 (Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59), Oldenbourg: Munich 1989, p. 17
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