Stresemann, Gustav (1878–1929)

views updated

STRESEMANN, GUSTAV (1878–1929)

German chancellor (1923) and foreign minister (1923–1929).

Gustav Stresemann was the most important German statesman of the Weimar period. In recognition for his contribution to the stabilization of postwar Europe, he was awarded, along with his French counterpart Aristide Briand, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.

The son of a Berlin publican and neighborhood beer distributor, Stresemann grew up in modest circumstances and was the only member of his family to receive a university education. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Berlin beer business, analyzing its transformation into a modern industry by the emergence of big bottling companies. For the rest of his life, he retained a soft spot for old-fashioned craftwork and the interests of small-scale producers. In 1903 he joined the National Liberal Party, fully embracing that group's advocacy of a strong German Empire. He pushed for the creation of a high seas fleet and backed the pan-German aspirations of the German Colonial League. At the same time, however, his championship of social welfare legislation antagonized those of his National Liberal colleagues who opposed governmental interference in the prerogatives of big business. Attacks against him by the right wing of the National Liberal Party in the imperial period anticipated the challenges he would face in the Weimar era from unreconstructed nationalists.

In 1907, at age twenty-eight, Stresemann became the youngest member in the Reichstag (parliament). Like most Germans of the educated middle class, he greeted the outbreak of war in 1914 with enthusiasm, and though ill health kept him out of uniform he used his position in the Reichstag to push Germany's ambitious war aims. As an advocate of unrestricted submarine warfare he played a key role in the overthrow of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who opposed the use of U-boats against neutral shipping. Confident of German victory almost to the bitter end, Stresemann was appalled by Germany's defeat in 1918.

Stresemann did not become a convert to the new republican order immediately—and the depth of that conversion remained questionable. He opposed the Weimar constitution and profoundly resented the Treaty of Versailles. Nevertheless, with the young republic buffeted by putsch attempts from right and left, political assassinations, and the collapse of the currency, he came to view the new constitutional democracy as the only practical alternative to prolonged chaos. Having helped found the center-right German People's Party in 1920, he became chancellor in August 1923, heading a "grand coalition" embracing his own party, the Social Democratic Party, the Center Party, and the German Democratic Party. Although he held the chancellorship only from 13 August to 23 November 1923, he managed during those turbulent months to end Germany's policy of "passive resistance" to the French occupation of the Ruhr Valley, which was a prerequisite for Germany's economic recovery and a necessary first step toward reconciliation with France. Less laudably, on the domestic front Stresemann adopted a lenient line toward Adolf Hitler's abortive Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, thereby helping the Nazi leader avoid the career-ending punishment he deserved.

Stresemann is best known for his six-year tenure as German foreign minister. In 1924 he orchestrated Germany's acceptance of the American-sponsored Dawes Plan, which by reorganizing German war reparations payments helped to stabilize the German currency. In 1925 Stresemann helped negotiate the Treaties of Locarno, which confirmed the inviolability of Germany's western borders and the demilitarization of the Rhineland. With respect to Germany's eastern borders with Poland and Czechoslovakia, Stresemann agreed that Berlin would not attempt changes without arbitration, but he did not formally endorse those borders. This caveat reflected Stresemann's, and Germany's, enduring opposition to the eastern settlement. A year after Locarno, Germany joined the League of Nations, a step that Stresemann had actively promoted. The German foreign minister also saw to it that Germany subscribed to the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), which outlawed war as an instrument of national policy.

Stresemann, who died in 1929, did not live to see how quickly the peace-and-arbitration edifice he had helped to construct collapsed into rubble. The fragility of his internationalist project constitutes part of the ambiguity of his legacy. Another part derives from the fact that his pursuit of international reconciliation was designed to promote Germany's reemergence as a major European power. Given the primacy of his German nationalism, many historians question whether he can legitimately be considered a forefather of the post–World War II European integrationist project. On the other hand, his understanding that Germany's national revival could be accomplished only within the broader framework of a stable and peaceful Europe certainly anticipated the later ideals of Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl.

See alsoBriand, Aristide; Germany; League of Nations.