Alfred Ernst Christian Alexander Hugenberg (19 June 1865 – 12 March 1951) was an influential German businessman and politician. An important figure in nationalist politics in Germany during the first three decades of the twentieth century, Hugenberg became the country's leading media proprietor during the 1920s. As leader of the German National People's Party, he played a part in helping Adolf Hitler become chancellor of Germany and served in his first cabinet in 1933, hoping to control Hitler and use him as his tool. The plan failed, and by the end of 1933, Hugenberg had been pushed to the sidelines. Although he continued to serve as a guest member of the Reichstag until 1945, he wielded no political influence. Following World War II, he was interned by the British in 1946 and classified as "exonerated" in 1951 after undergoing denazification.
Hugenberg's fundamental political and philosophical principles can be traced back to his youth. His university studies and early work organizing agricultural societies led him to view the independent farmer or small businessman as the ideal German. He believed in social Darwinism, despised communism, socialism and trade unions, and was, in general, skeptical of big business and finance. He thought that Germany needed an authoritarian government – ideally a monarchy – and strongly supported nationalism and imperialism in the belief that Germany could be secure only as a great power. The fall of the Hohenzollern monarchy at the end of World War I came as a tremendous shock, and from that point until the establishment of the Nazi state in 1933 he focused on bringing down the parliamentary government of the Weimar Republic.
Hugenberg earned degrees in both economics and law. In 1891, at the age of twenty-six, he co-founded the nationalist organization that later became the Pan-German League. He worked in the Prussian civil service and in private business before joining the Krupp steel works, where he was chairman of the board of directors from 1909 until 1918. His work there led to seats on other supervisory boards and trade associations. During World War I, Hugenberg was an annexationist who wanted the Empire to expand to the east through German settlements. He blamed Germany's defeat on Jews and socialists who had supposedly stabbed the German army in the back.
After the war, Hugenberg left Krupp to concentrate on politics and building up the media empire that he had started in 1916 when he bought the Scherl publishing house. That purchase was followed by the news agency Telegraphen-Union, numerous newspapers and in 1927 a controlling interest in the Universum-Film-AG (Ufa), a major film producer. Hugenberg's media outlets provided stiff and sometimes dominating competition to older liberal media companies such as Ullstein and Mosse.
As a representative of the German National People's Party (DNVP), Hugenberg was a member of the Weimar National Assembly from 1919–20 and then of the German Reichstag until 1945. For many years, he provided the majority of the DNVP's funds, and his influence dominated the right-wing press in Germany. As the most influential voice in the DNVP's pan-German bloc, he opposed the Dawes Plan, which attempted to resolve the issues surrounding Germany's reparations payments, in the belief that a return to the economic chaos of hyperinflation would bring down the Republic. Hugenberg became chairman of the DNVP after the party's substantial losses in the 1928 Reichstag elections. He obtained "dictatorial" leadership powers and tried to transform the party into a "Hugenberg movement". He also shifted emphasis to the extra-parliamentary sphere with the aim of forcing the replacement of parliamentary government by an authoritarian regime. His radicalism caused the DNVP to split, with many key industrialists leaving the party.
Hugenberg's first tentative media support of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came following the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The relationship deepened in 1929 when the DNVP and Nazis joined forces in an unsuccessful bid to stop the Young Plan, a second attempt to resolve the reparations issue. The two parties were also part of the short-lived Harzburg Front of 1931 that was formed to create a united front against the government of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning. Both efforts at cooperation benefited the Nazis more than the DNVP. The Nazis gained the most from the radicalization of the middle classes, and the moderate elements in the DNVP continued to move away from the party.
By early 1933, Hugenberg realised that his attempt to ally with the Nazis had failed and that they presented a danger to the state and society. He nevertheless became Minister of Economics and of Food and Agriculture in the Hitler cabinet. He became increasingly isolated in the cabinet and failed in his attempt to become "economic dictator". He was forced out of the cabinet after five months, on the same day that the DNVP voted to disband. After that, he no longer had any political influence and, over time, also had to cede his media holdings to the Nazis.
After World War II, he was interned by the British. He died in 1951.
Early years Political philosophy Born in Hanover to Carl Hugenberg, a royal Hanoverian official who in 1867 entered the Prussian Landtag as a member of the National Liberal Party, the young Hugenberg studied law in Göttingen, Heidelberg, and Berlin, as well as economics in Strassburg.Tim Kirk, Cassell's Dictionary of Modern German History, Cassell, 2002, p. 180 As a child, he had a love of writing poetry, which was strongly discouraged by his father who instead raised Hugenberg to be a bureaucrat like himself. In 1891, Hugenberg was awarded a PhD at Strassburg for his dissertation Internal Colonization in Northwest Germany, in which he set out three ideas that guided his political thought for the rest of his life: The necessity for statist economic policies to allow German farmers to be successful; Despite the necessity for the state to assist farmers, the German farmer should be encouraged to act as an entrepreneur, thereby creating a class of successful farmers/small businessmen who would act as a bulwark against the appeal of the Marxist Social Democrats, whom Hugenberg viewed as a grave threat to the status quo; Finally, allowing German farmers to be successful required a policy of imperialism, as Hugenberg argued on social Darwinist grounds that the "power and significance of the German race" could be secured if Germany colonized other nations. Hugenberg maintained that Germany's prosperity depended upon having a great empire, and argued that, in the coming 20th century, Germany would have to battle three great rivals, namely Britain, the United States and Russia, for world supremacy.
Later in 1891, Hugenberg co-founded, along with Karl Peters, the ultra-nationalist General German League, and in 1894 its successor movement, the Pan-German League (). From 1894 to 1899, Hugenberg worked as a Prussian civil servant in Posen (modern Poznań, Poland). In 1900, he married his second cousin, Gertrud Adickes (1868–1960), with whom he had four children.Günter Watermeier, Politischer Mord und Kriegskultur an der Wiege der Weimarer Republik, GRIN Verlag, 2007, p. 13 Gertrude was the daughter of Franz Burchard Adickes, Mayor of Frankfurt.
The son of an upper-middle class family, Hugenberg initially resented the (landed nobility), but over time, he came to accept the idea of "feudal-industrial control of Germany", believing in an alliance of and industrialists. Alongside these beliefs, Hugenberg maintained an ardent belief in imperialism and opposition to democracy and socialism.
At the same time, Hugenberg became involved in a scheme in the Province of Posen in which the Prussian Settlement Commission bought land from Poles to settle ethnic Germans there.Louis Leo Snyder, Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, Wordsworth Editions, 1998, p. 177 In 1899, Hugenberg called for "annihilation of Polish population".Sebastian Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany, Cambridge University Press, p. 175 Hugenberg was strongly anti-Polish, and criticized the Prussian government for its "inadequate" Polish policies, favouring a more vigorous policy of Germanization.
Hugenberg initially took a role organizing agricultural societies before entering the civil service in the Prussian Ministry of Finance in 1903. Hugenberg came into conflict with his superiors, who opposed his plans to confiscate all the non-productive estates of the to settle hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans who would become his idealised farmer-small businessmen and "Germanise" the East.
Chairman at Krupp Steel
He subsequently left the public sector to pursue a career in business, and in 1909 he was appointed chairman of the supervisory board of Krupp Steel where he built up a close personal and political relationship with Baron Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the CEO of Krupp AG. Krupp had been "in search of a man of really superior intelligence" to run the finance department of Krupp AG and found that man in Hugenberg, with his "extraordinary" intelligence and work ethic. In 1902, Friedrich Alfred Krupp's homosexuality was revealed to the public. He killed himselfWilli Boelcke, Krupp und die Hohenzollern in Dokumenten 1850-1918. Frankfurt 1970. pages 158–162 or died from illnessMichael Epkenhans, Ralf Stremmel: Friedrich Alfred Krupp. Ein Unternehmer im Kaiserreich. München 2010. page 14Julius Meisbach: Friedrich Alfred Krupp - wie er lebte und starb, Verlag K.A.Stauff & Cie., Köln ca. 1903 shortly after the Social Democratic newspaper Vorwärts published love letters he had written to his Italian male lovers. After Krupp's death, the entire firm of Krupp AG was left to his eldest daughter, Bertha Krupp. As Krupp AG was one of the world's largest arms manufacturers and the chief supplier of weapons to the German state, the management of Krupp AG was of some interest to the state, and Emperor Wilhelm II did not believe that a woman was capable of running a business. To solve this perceived problem, the Emperor had Bertha marry a career diplomat, Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach, who was regarded by the Emperor as a safe man to run Krupp AG. Gustav Krupp, as he was renamed by Wilhelm, knew little about running a business and so depended on his board to assist him. Hugenberg's role in the management of Krupp AG was thus considerably larger than would be indicated by his title of director of finance; in many ways, he was the man who effectively ran the Krupp corporation during his ten years at the firm between 1908 and 1918.