The Barmat scandal was a political scandal in 1924 and 1925 in the Weimar Republic which implicated the Social Democratic Party of Germany in corruption, war profiteering, fraud, bribery, and other financial misdeeds. The scandal provided right-wing political forces within Germany with a basis for attacking the Social Democrats and the republic itself. Antisemitism in connection with the scandal also featured prominently in Nazi propaganda, since the Barmat brothers were Jewish. [1]
The scandal was used by the German far-right to foment the belief that wealthy Jewish families in quasi-criminal operations found fertile ground in the Republic and easily exploited the Social Democrats to do their bidding. [2] The right-wing press was eager to use the scandal as a vehicle for antisemitism. [3]
The Weimar government [4] was headed by Gustav Bauer, a Social Democrat, as Chancellor from June 1919 through March 1920. [5] Friedrich Ebert was the Republic's initial President, from the end of World War I [6] until his death in February 1925.
Julius Barmat was a Russian Jew who became a wholesale merchant with "less than perfect character." [7] After World War I, he moved to the Netherlands where he bought foodstuffs in the Netherlands to export into Germany (which had suffered badly during and after the war from lack of food) after the end of the war. He made a large amount of money in this endeavor and was—at least from the view of the nationalists—engaged in war profiteering. [8]
Barmat had profited from political patronage. He had joined the Dutch Social Democrats in 1908 and after the war had given the Social Democrats Second International free office space in his Amsterdam home. He consequently met German Social Democrats and developed connections that were helpful in transactions in foodstuffs for Germany. [1]
Barmat also had connections with Ernst Heilman (the SPD leader in the Prussian Landtag) [9] and Gustav Bauer (former Reich Chancellor). Heilmann became close friends with Julius and wrote letters of recommendation and served on the boards of six Barmat companies, but did not accept financial rewards. However, Wilhelm Richter, President of the Berlin Police, did receive gifts from Barmat. [10]
Barmat also met Ebert as well as Otto Wels (Chairman of the SPD) and (indiscreetly, it appears in retrospect) bragged about his political connections. [1]
The Barmats received German visas and established business relations with various state offices, including the Prussian State Bank and the Preußische Seehandlung. In return they donated around 20,000 Reichsmarks to Social Democratic newspapers, founded a children's home in Pirna, and paid commissions to Bauer. [11]
The national government's postal department generated considerable cash as a result of the mail and it invested [12] idle funds with Barmat's investment company. [13] The Prussian State Bank also loaned a considerable sum of money to Barmat.
Barmat, however, engaged in currency speculation with the funds, and the Barmat investment company collapsed in late 1924. [14] Both the national Weimar government and the Prussian State Bank lost several million dollars as a result of the Barmat firm's collapse, and a Reichstag commission was formed to investigate the matter. In addition, a commission of the Prussian Landtag was also formed to investigate. Most of the investigative work (and almost all of the publicity) came from this Landtag committee, or as a result of its work, rather than from the national committee of the central parliament. [15]
Various Prussian State Bank officials were arrested on 30 December 1924. The Barmat brothers were arrested early in the morning of the next day, New Year's Eve 1924. [16]
Preliminary investigation suggested that several prominent Social Democrats had received bribes, kickbacks or other financial favors in exchange for their support of Government contracts with the Barmats. The evidence showed as follows for the leading protagonists:
Bauer did not handle the press accusations well, keeping silent when the press exposed his membership on the board of a Barmat company, and issuing a denial of any involvement in the affair in January 1925, after the arrest of the Barmat brothers. In particular, he denied any benefit by way of financial remuneration. This was a most unfortunate public statement for Bauer, because his opponents had specific documentary evidence that it was a lie.
The first climax of the Prussian investigating commission took place in late January 1925, with Bauer, a prominent Social Democrat, giving evidence. [17]
During his period of government service, he had helped Barmat win food supply contracts with various Reich departments. After leaving office he helped Barmat one time with a Government scrap-metal deal; Bauer was to receive a commission from Barmat for this help. In late 1923 their relationship ended over a dispute as to the amount of "commission" that Bauer would receive for this deal. [18]
Bauer had publicly denied that he served on any Barmat supervisory board; but this was a lie, and he was forced to admit as much under the cross-examination by the Commission. He was also forced to admit that his actions in helping Barmat win government contracts were considerably more frequent and more involved that his previous statements to the press had indicated. [19]
Despite these reversals of his prior statements, he steadfastly and repeatedly continued to deny to the Commission that he had received any financial compensation from Barmat. However, in early February, only a few days after the testimony, the Lokal-Anzeiger reprinted a letter from Barmat to Bauer as a part of an article on the scandal. This letter was written during the period of their 1923 commission dispute over the scrap-metal deal, and identified the occasions on which Bauer had received money from Barmat.
Bauer was caught in a bald-faced lie and, it would appear, had committed perjury in denying any receipt of compensation. The SPD promptly asked Bauer to resign from the party and the Reichstag, and he did so on 6 February 1925. [20] [21]
The final report (October 1925) of Prussian Commission affirmed that Ebert had committed no improprieties in the affair and that his reputation was without strain relative to the scandal. While Bauer and Richter were reprimanded for careless and incautious conflict of interest, they had not profited directly or indirectly from the loans made to Barmat by the Prussian State Bank.
The Reich Presidency election would take place in spring of 1925. The right-wing would not forfeit a chance to discredit him by association with scandal. [22]
A motion was made in the Landtag commission in early February to investigate Ebert's knowledge of the Barmat scandal, particularly any involvement by the office of the President with the Barmats. The testimony of 23 February 1925 before the Commission established that Barmat had received letters of recommendation bearing the Presidential seal. The right-wing press made much of the testimony. It turned out that an office employee had indeed dispatched several letters of recommendation to Barmat, bearing the Presidential Seal.
Ebert had unfortunately recommended in 1919 that Barmat be given a permanent visa for his many business trips to and from Germany. [23]
Ebert was diagnosed with appendicitis and peritonitis on 26 February. He died two days later. He was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing by the Prussian investigating committee in the fall of 1925. Mommsen claims that Ebert's death (28 February 1925) was caused in part by the strain brought on by the Barmat scandal (particularly a result of the right-wing vilification against the Prussian government). [24]
Julius and Henry Barmat met with Dr. Anton Höfle, the Minister of Posts, in June 1924 and paid him bribes of some 120,000 Reichsmark over several months (In January 1924 hyperinflation had begun to be tackled with the “Rentenmark” so that by June 1924 120,000 Marks was worth something). They then borrowed 14.5 million Marks from the national Postal Department in September 1924. The loan was not secured and the Republic's money was lost when Barmat's investment speculations turned sour.
Höfle resigned his Reichstag [25] seat on 9 February 1925 and was arrested on 10 February 1925.
Höfle died, in custody and from a drug overdose, some six days before the second round of the Presidential election. [26] The Catholic Center press accused the prosecutors of pumping Höfle full of narcotics so that he would be available for questioning and implied that this amounted to a form of homicide. The right-wing of course claimed that Höfle's death was a suicide that amounted to his confession of guilt in the Barmat affair.
Three days after Hofle's arrest, Richter, the Police President of Prussia, was placed on an involuntary "leave" and a week later was dispatched into "interim retirement."
Ernst Heilmann, the SPD leader in the Prussian Landtag, revealed no compromising information, other than that he had supported Barmat's request for additional funds in early December 1924, in discussions with the Prussian Finance Minister. He was never charged or sanctioned, although some commentators did consider his intervention with the Ministry of Finance to be improper.
The right-wing press, and the Nazi Party in particular, used the Barmat scandal as a vehicle to express its underlying anti-Semitic, anti-socialist and anti-democratic sentiments. [27] An Austrian commentator perceptively noted that the right-wing press and propaganda campaign, using the Barmat scandal as the excuse and opportunity for expressing its sentiments, was more dangerous than the military coups to which the Republic had been subjected. The press campaign appealed to the hearts and minds of those who sought an excuse and a reason for the hardships and perceived injustices that Germany continued to suffer. [27]
The right-wing successfully propagandized that corruption was an inherent characteristic of democracy and that the only solution was the abandonment of democracy and a return to the ways of the autocratic past. They referred to the "corruption economy" which was a result of the SPD leadership in post-war Germany. [27] The scandal provided grist for the mill of right-wing propagandists, who could fulminate against Jewish speculators and profiteers as well as against all manner of Socialist politicians and others who supported the republic. Frustrated voters had an opportunity to channel their resentment against inflation and war profiteers against specific targets, and to transfer the responsibility for those ills to the Social Democrats. [28]
This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (January 2011) |
Reichstag elections were held 7 December 1924. Cabinet formation was complex, taking until 15 January. The result was a bourgeois coalition of rightist and center parties in the Rechtsblock under Hans Luther as Chancellor. The SDP went into opposition against the coalition of the Center, DVP and DNVP, and it promised the Luther government a "ruthless fight." [29]
Barmat was one of Weimar's biggest media scandals, due principally to the upcoming election for President in April 1925. Ebert was a formidable contender for re-election and the right-wing press saw an opportunity in Barmat to score political points. [30] Ebert had died and Braun was the SPD candidate.
The Barmat Scandal was bandied about in the press in preparation for the Presidential election and it also appeared as a topic at right-wing political rallies. The right-wing Nationalpost stated the theme: The Barmat scandal was not just a tale of corruption within the Prussian State Bank or the Postal Ministry. It was rather a scandal of Social Democracy itself. Leading Social Democrats, it contended, had improperly used political influence to secure favorable treatment (such as loans and contracts) for the Barmats, in exchange for payments and other financial benefits that flowed both to themselves individually as well as to the party.
Political leaflets were distributed throughout the countryside based on the history of the scandal.
No candidate secured a majority in the first round of elections, so under the Weimar Constitution a second round of elections had to be conducted. [31] In this round, the SPD aligned with the Center through a political deal: the SPD candidate Braun withdrew from the Presidential race and was elected president of Prussia on 3 April 1925 with the Center's support; and in return the SPD supported Marx (the Center party candidate) for Reich President.
At this point the right-wing abandoned its first-round candidate Jarres and instead offered up General Paul von Hindenburg as its candidate. The right-wing Reichsblock called the Center-SPD coalition the Barmatblock, and leaflets and pamphlets that painted the center-leftist coalition with the Barmat scandal were distributed widely throughout Germany. [32]
Hindenburg won on April 26 by a margin of 900,000 votes, largely as a result of his appeal to new voters who had stayed home in the first round. He had campaigned on the basis of restoring non-partisanship to the Presidential office and of a general restoration of social harmony. The press campaign was a key in this close election, as Fulda observed (p. 104):
The key to [Hindenburg's] success lay in the mobilization of former non-voters, and their dissatisfaction with the present system.... Hindenburg [might not have] scraped into office without four months of media barrage aimed at discrediting the Republic.
In early 1928 Julius and Henri Barmat were sentenced to 11 months and 6 months imprisonment for bribery, respectively. [33] After serving his sentence, Julius Barmat left Germany for the Low Countries. He was caught once again in another corruption scandal in which he was accused of bribery in order to obtain loans which ended up defrauding the Belgian National Bank of 34 million gold francs. He died in the St. Gillis prison in Forest (near Brussels) on 6 January 1938. [34] [35]
The Kapp Putsch, also known as the Kapp–Lüttwitz Putsch, was an attempted coup against the German national government in Berlin on 13 March 1920. Named after its leaders Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz, its goal was to undo the German Revolution of 1918–1919, overthrow the Weimar Republic, and establish an autocratic government in its place. It was supported by parts of the Reichswehr, as well as nationalist and monarchist factions.
Friedrich Ebert was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the first president of Germany from 1919 until his death in office in 1925.
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956.
Philipp Heinrich Scheidemann was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the first quarter of the 20th century he played a leading role in both his party and in the young Weimar Republic. During the German Revolution of 1918–1919 that broke out after Germany's defeat in World War I, Scheidemann proclaimed a German Republic from a balcony of the Reichstag building. In 1919 he was elected Reich Minister President by the National Assembly meeting in Weimar to write a constitution for the republic. He resigned the office the same year due to a lack of unanimity in the cabinet on whether or not to accept the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
Gustav Adolf Bauer was a German Social Democratic Party leader and the chancellor of Germany from June 1919 to March 1920. He served as head of government for nine months. Prior to becoming head of government, Bauer had been Minister of Labour in the first democratically elected German cabinet. After his cabinet was brought down by the Kapp Putsch in March 1920, Bauer served as vice-chancellor, Minister of the Treasury, and Minister of Transportation in other cabinets of the Weimar Republic from May 1920 to November 1922. In 1924 and 1925 he was involved in the Barmat scandal.
Hermann Müller was a German Social Democratic politician who served as the Foreign minister (1919–1920), and twice as the Chancellor of Germany in the Weimar Republic. In his capacity as Foreign Minister, he was one of the German signatories of the Treaty of Versailles.
Otto Braun was a politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) during the Weimar Republic. From 1920 to 1932, with only two brief interruptions, Braun was Minister President of the Free State of Prussia. The continuity of personnel in high office resulted in a largely stable government in Prussia, in contrast to the sometimes turbulent politics of the Reich. During his term of office, Prussia's public administration was reorganized along democratic lines. He replaced many monarchist officials with supporters of the Weimar Republic, strengthened and democratized the Prussian police, and made attempts to fight the rise of the Nazi Party.
The President of the Reich was the German head of state under the Weimar constitution, which was officially in force from 1919 to 1945. In English he was usually simply referred to as the President of Germany.
Wilhelm Marx was a German judge, politician and member of the Catholic Centre Party. During the Weimar Republic he was the chancellor of Germany twice, from 1923–1925 and 1926–1928, and served briefly as the minister president of Prussia in 1925. With a total of 3 years and 73 days, he was the longest-serving chancellor during the Weimar Republic.
The Weimar Coalition is the name given to the centre-leftist coalition of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the social liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) and the Christian democratic Centre Party, who together had a large majority of the delegates to the Constituent Assembly that met at Weimar in 1919, and were the principal groups that designed the constitution of Germany's Weimar Republic. These three parties were seen as the most committed to Germany's new democratic system, and together governed Germany until the elections of 1920, when the first elections under the new constitution were held, and both the SPD and especially the DDP lost a considerable share of their votes. Although the Coalition was revived in the ministry of Joseph Wirth from 1921 to 1922, the pro-democratic elements never truly had a majority in the Reichstag from this point on, and the situation gradually grew worse for them with the continued weakening of the DDP. This meant that any pro-republican group that hoped to attain a majority would need to form a "Grand Coalition" with the conservative liberal German People's Party (DVP), which only gradually moved from monarchism to republicanism over the course of the Weimar Republic and was virtually wiped out politically after the death of their most prominent figure, Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann in 1929.
Gustav Noske was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He served as the first Minister of Defence (Reichswehrminister) of the Weimar Republic between 1919 and 1920. Noske has been a controversial figure because although he was a member of the socialist movement, he used army and paramilitary forces to bloodily suppress the socialist/communist uprisings of 1919.
This Weimar Timeline charts the chronology of the Weimar Republic, dating the pre-history before the adoption of the actual Weimar constitution. This timeline stops when Hitler establishes the Third Reich.
Karl Rudolf Heinze was a German jurist and politician. During the Weimar Republic, as a member of the right-of-centre German People's Party (DVP) he was vice-chancellor of Germany and minister of Justice in 1920/21 in the cabinet of Konstantin Fehrenbach and from 1922 to 1923 again minister of Justice under Wilhelm Cuno.
Otto Landsberg was a German jurist, politician and diplomat. He was a member of the revolutionary Council of the People's Deputies that took power during the German Revolution of 1918–19 and then served as Minister of Justice in the first democratically elected government of Germany in 1919. In that capacity, he also was a member of the German delegation that went to Versailles to receive the Allies' Treaty of Versailles.
Carl Wilhelm Severing was a German union organizer and Social Democratic politician during the German Empire, Weimar Republic and the early post-World War II years in West Germany. He served as a Reichstag member and as interior minister in both Prussia and at the Reich level where he fought against the rise of extremism on both the left and the right. He remained in Germany during the Third Reich but had only minimal influence on reshaping the Social Democratic Party after World War II.
The Weimar National Assembly, officially the German National Constitutional Assembly, was the popularly elected constitutional convention and de facto parliament of Germany from 6 February 1919 to 21 May 1920. As part of its duties as the interim government, it debated and reluctantly approved the Treaty of Versailles that codified the peace terms between Germany and the victorious Allies of World War I. The Assembly drew up and approved the Weimar Constitution that was in force from 1919 to 1933. With its work completed, the National Assembly was dissolved on 21 May 1920. Following the election of 6 June 1920, the new Reichstag met for the first time on 24 June 1920, taking the place of the Assembly.
Erich Koch-Weser was a German lawyer and liberal politician. One of the founders (1918) and later chairman (1924–1930) of the liberal German Democratic Party, he served as minister of the Interior (1919–1921), vice-chancellor of Germany (1920) and minister of Justice (1928–1929).
The First Cabinet Müller was the third democratically elected government of Germany and the second in office after the Weimar Constitution came into force in August 1919. It was named after the new Chancellor (Reichskanzler) Hermann Müller of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The cabinet was based on the same three centre-left parties as the previous one: the SPD, the German Center Party (Zentrum) and the German Democratic Party (DDP). It was formed in March 1920 after the resignation of the Cabinet Bauer. The Cabinet Müller resigned in reaction to the outcome of the Reichstag elections of 6 June 1920.
The Second Marx cabinet was the 11th democratically elected government during the Weimar Republic. The cabinet was named after Chancellor Wilhelm Marx and took office on 3 June 1924 when it replaced the First Marx cabinet which had resigned on 26 May. Marx's second cabinet resigned on 15 December 1924 and was replaced on 15 January 1925 by a cabinet led by Hans Luther.
The 1931 Prussian Landtag referendum was an attempt to prematurely dissolve the sitting session of the Landtag (parliament) of the Weimar German state of Prussia. The referendum, which took place according to Article 6 of the 1920 Prussian Constitution, was triggered by a petition launched in the spring of 1931 by the anti-republican veterans' organization Der Stahlhelm. It was supported by several right-wing parties including the Nazis, as well as by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Even though 93.9% of those voting on 9 August 1931 opted to dissolve the Landtag, the referendum failed because the turnout of 39.2% did not meet the minimum 50% requirement.