Georg von Hertling
Georg Friedrich Karl Freiherr von Hertling, from 1914 Count von Hertling, (31 August 1843 – 4 January 1919) was a German politician of the Catholic Centre Party. He was foreign minister and minister president of Bavaria, then chancellor of the German Reich and minister president of Prussia from 1 November 1917 to 30 September 1918. He was the first party politician to hold the two offices; all the others were non-partisan.
Georg von Hertling
Wilhelm II
Georg Michaelis
Max von Baden
Koblenz 3
31 August 1843
Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse, German Confederation
4 January 1919 (aged 75)
Ruhpolding, People's State of Bavaria, Weimar Republic
3
Hertling's Catholicism played an important role in both his academic and political life. He belonged to the conservative wing of the Centre party and resisted moves towards making the government dependent on the will of parliament rather than on the emperor, a stance that helped bring down his government in the final months of World War I.
Education and non-political activities[edit]
Hertling came from a Catholic family of civil servants from the Grand Duchy of Hesse. He was born in Darmstadt, the son of the Hessian court councilor Jakob Freiherr von Hertling and his wife Antonie (née von Guaita).
The religious education he received through his mother made him consider becoming a priest. He attended the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium where he was a student under a principal who preserved the institute's humanistic character against the emerging natural sciences.[1] He then studied philosophy in Munich, Münster and Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1864.
He qualified at Bonn in 1867 to teach at the university level, but because he was a professing Catholic it was not until 1880 that he was appointed to an associate professorship. The delay was due to the Kulturkampf (culture struggle) taking place in Prussia between the government under Otto von Bismarck and the Catholic Church, primarily over issues of clerical control of education and ecclesiastical appointments. The experience contributed to Hertling taking a leading role in the 1876 founding of the Görres Society, a learned association for the cultivation of science in Catholic Germany. He remained its president until his death in 1919. Hertling received a full professorship at the University of Munich in 1882. Before that he published books on Aristotle in 1871 and Albertus Magnus in 1880.
Hertling was one of the pioneers of the movement for Catholic student fraternities. He joined the Catholic German Student Fraternity Aenania in Munich in 1862 and later the Catholic Student Association Arminia in Bonn. His speech at the 1863 Catholic Congress in Frankfurt, in which he presented religion, science, and friendship as the guiding principles of the Catholic fraternity student, is considered the catalyst for the founding of the Würzburg Federation, an association of Catholic student groups that still exists today as the Kartellverband.
Hertling was president of the German Society for Christian Art from its founding in 1893 until 1911.
He was married to Anna Freiin von Biegeleben (1845–1919), from an influential family of civil servants. The Hertlings had one son and five daughters, one of whom died young. Hertling was a great-nephew of the Romantic writer Bettina von Arnim and the poet Clemens Brentano. The actress Gila von Weitershausen (born 1944) is a great-granddaughter.
Member of parliament and Bavarian minister president[edit]
From 1875 to 1890 and 1896 to 1912 Hertling was a member of the German Reichstag as a representative of the Catholic Centre Party. He devoted himself first to sociopolitical issues and later primarily to foreign and financial policy. From 1909 to 1912 he was chairman of the Centre's parliamentary group, advocating the reconciliation of German Catholicism with the predominantly Protestant and Prussian-influenced national state. In 1891 Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria made him a Reichsrat, a life member of the House of Councillors (Kammer der Reichsräte), the upper house of the Bavarian Landtag, or state parliament.[2][3]
On 9 February 1912 the prince regent appointed Hertling chairman of the Bavarian Ministry of State and Bavarian foreign minister, i.e., as minister president, at which time the former regent, then King Ludwig III, also made him a count.[2] The appointment of a representative of the majority party in the state parliament to the office of head of government was a first and indicated the beginning of Bavaria's parliamentarization. Unlike his more liberal predecessor Clemens von Podewils-Dürniz, he had a secure parliamentary base and formed his own cabinet.
Social issues were among the most pressing problems in politics, and in 1913 the Bavarian government drew up plans to provide state support for the unemployed, but these failed in the upper chamber. As a result, demonstrations took place across Bavaria in early 1914.
After the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo in June 1914, the situation in the Balkans did not come up as an issue at the meeting of the Bavarian Council of Ministers on 15 July. When the minister president of Württemberg, Karl von Weizsäcker, suggested that a Bundesrat committee be convened to find a common position for the smaller federal states, Munich waved it off.
During World War I, Hertling supported the policies of the independent Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. Frederick Augustus II, Grand Duke of Oldenburg, as a spokesman for those who wanted Germany to annex foreign territory following a presumed victory in the war, suggested to the Bavarian King Ludwig III in March 1915 that he demand from Emperor Wilhelm II, on behalf of the German princes, the dismissal of Bethmann Hollweg, who in his opinion was too weak and stood in the way of a "German peace" – i.e., one with annexations. The King, who wanted to enlarge Bavaria after a victory, did not take the step because Hertling was able to prevent the initiative.
The simmering conflict between farmers and city dwellers caused by food shortages during the war was also played out between the parties in the Bavarian parliament and led to ministerial resignations in December 1916, although Hertling remained minister president. Bavaria's social situation grew increasingly worse.
On 31 August 1916 the Supreme Army Command announced the Hindenburg Program developed by Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg. It called for drastic measures to increase economic output. Its massive strengthening of imperial power was accompanied by a corresponding weakening of the federal states' ability to act politically.
After the fall of Bethmann Hollweg in July 1917, Hertling declined to assume the Reich chancellorship. Only after the failure of Bethmann's successor Georg Michaelis did Hertling, who was 74 and physically frail,[4] take over the offices of Reich chancellor and minister president of Prussia on 1 November 1917. He was the first party politician to hold the combined posts; all of his predecessors had been career civil servants or military men. It was initially planned to have Michaelis continue in office as Prussian minister president, but he did not have the necessary votes in parliament. In Bavaria Hertling was succeeded in office by the independent Otto von Dandl.
[11]
[12]
[13]
Media related to Georg von Hertling at Wikimedia Commons