Johannes Popitz
Encyclopedia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n finance minister
Finance minister
The finance minister is a cabinet position in a government.A minister of finance has many different jobs in a government. He or she helps form the government budget, stimulate the economy, and control finances...
and a member of the German Resistance
German Resistance
The German resistance was the opposition by individuals and groups in Germany to Adolf Hitler or the National Socialist regime between 1933 and 1945. Some of these engaged in active plans to remove Adolf Hitler from power and overthrow his regime...
against Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
Life
As a pharmacistPharmacist
Pharmacists are allied health professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use...
's son from Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, Popitz studied political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
in Dessau
Dessau
Dessau is a town in Germany on the junction of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it is part of the merged town Dessau-Roßlau. Population of Dessau proper: 77,973 .-Geography:...
, Lausanne
University of Lausanne
The University of Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of theology, before being made a university in 1890. Today about 12,000 students and 2200 researchers study and work at the university...
, Leipzig
University of Leipzig
The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...
, Berlin and Halle. From 1907 to 1918 he acted as a junior government lawyer.
In 1918, he married Cornalia Slot, with whom he had three children.
In 1919, after the election for the Weimar
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
National Assembly, he became a Geheimrat
Geheimrat
Geheimrat was the title of the highest advising officials at the Imperial, royal or principal courts of the Holy Roman Empire, who jointly formed the Geheimer Rat reporting to the ruler...
in the finance ministry.
From 1925 to 1929, Popitz acted as State Secretary in the German Ministry of Finance, where he sometimes worked under Finance Minister Rudolf Hilferding
Rudolf Hilferding
Rudolf Hilferding was an Austrian-born Marxist economist, leading socialist theorist, politician and chief theoretician for the Social Democratic Party of Germany during the Weimar Republic, almost universally recognized as the SPD's foremost theoretician of his century, and a...
, with whom, in 1929, he was provisionally retired owing to political differences with the government.
As an honorary professor of tax law and financial science at the University of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
and the State Academy (Verwaltungsakademie) from 1922, Popitz was named to Kurt von Schleicher
Kurt von Schleicher
Kurt von Schleicher was a German general and the last Chancellor of Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic. Seventeen months after his resignation, he was assassinated by order of his successor, Adolf Hitler, in the Night of the Long Knives....
's cabinet as State Minister without Portfolio, and as commissary leader of the Prussian Finance Ministry.
On 21 April 1933, Popitz took up the offices of Prussian State and Finance Minister, although up to this time, he was still not a member of the Nazi Party. On 1 February 1937 (1939, according to some sources), the Völkischer Beobachter
Völkischer Beobachter
The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...
reported in its South German edition that Popitz had been offered the Nazi Party's golden insignia, which he had accepted.
After Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
(9 November 1938), Popitz protested the mass persecution of Jews by offering his resignation, which was refused.
As a rightwing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
and monarchist who would have preferred to see Crown Prince Wilhelm
Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany
Frederick William Victor Augustus Ernest of the House of Hohenzollern was the last Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire. He was colloquially known as William or Wilhelm throughout Europe....
, Kaiser Wilhelm II
William II, German Emperor
Wilhelm II was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918. He was a grandson of the British Queen Victoria and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe...
's eldest son, succeed Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, Popitz became active in the resistance circles beginning in 1938, including the group around Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler was a monarchist conservative German politician, executive, economist, civil servant and opponent of the Nazi regime...
. As a member of another such circle, the Mittwochsgesellschaft ("Wednesday Society"), a small group of high officials and industrialists who had evolved from a debating club into a centre for conservative opposition to the National Socialist régime, he was drawn ever further into the centre of the conspiracy against Hitler. He drew up a provisional post-Hitler constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
, the Vorläufiges Staatsgrundgesetz, whose general tendencies were quite authoritarian.
In the summer of 1943, Popitz conducted secret talks with Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, whose support he sought to win for a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
, and whom he tried to convince to take part in attempts to negotiate with the Western Powers for an acceptable peace deal.
Already in the autumn of that same year, Popitz was being watched by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
, and indeed, he was arrested in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
on 21 July 1944, the day after Claus von Stauffenberg's unsuccessful attempt on Hitler's life
July 20 Plot
On 20 July 1944, an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Third Reich, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The plot was the culmination of the efforts of several groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government...
at the Wolfsschanze
Wolfsschanze
Wolf's Lair is the standard English name for Wolfsschanze, Adolf Hitler's first World War II Eastern Front military headquarters, one of several Führerhauptquartier or FHQs located in various parts of Europe...
in East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
. After his arrest, Popitz told the Gestapo::
“As somebody who was very familiar with conditions in the System periodPopitz went to tell the Gestapo that:The System (Nazism)"The System" was a derogatory term used by the Nazis to denote contemptuously the Weimar Republic and its institutions. In Nazi publications and propaganda, the word was used in a number of compounds: for example, the period from the German Revolution of 1918–1919 to the Nazi seizure of power in...
[i.e. the Weimar Republic], my view of the Jewish question was that the Jews ought to disappear from the life of the state and the economy. However, as far as the methods were concerned, I repeatedly advocated a somewhat more gradual approach, particularly in light of diplomatic considerations”
"The Jewish question had to be dealt with, their removal from state and economy was unavoidable. But the use of force which led to the destruction of property, to arbitrary arrests and to the destruction of life could not be reconciled with law and morality, and, in addition, seemed to me to have dangerous implications for people's attitudes to property and human life. At the same time, I saw in the treatment of the Jewish Question a great danger of increasing international hostility to Germany and its regime"
On 3 October, he was sentenced to death at the Volksgerichtshof by Roland Freisler
Roland Freisler
Roland Freisler was a prominent and notorious Nazi lawyer and judge. He was State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the People's Court , which was set up outside constitutional authority...
. At first, in the hopes that the contacts with the Allies that he and Popitz had discussed might still develop, Himmler saw to it that Popitz was not put to death. However, as it became apparent that no such talks would be forthcoming, Popitz's fate was sealed. He was hanged
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
on 2 February 1945 at Plötzensee Prison
Plötzensee Prison
Plötzensee Prison was a Prussian institution built in Berlin between 1869 and 1879 near the lake Plötzensee, but in the neighbouring borough of Charlottenburg, on Hüttigpfad off Saatwinkler Damm. During Adolf Hitler's time in power from 1933 to 1945, more than 2,500 people were executed at...
in Berlin.
Works by Popitz
- Finanzausgleichsprobleme. - Berlin : Dt. Kommunal-Verl., 1927
- Der künftige Finanzausgleich zwischen Reich, Ländern und Gemeinden. - Kiel : Bibl. d. Inst. d. Weltwirtschaft, 1955
Works about Popitz
- Lutz-Arwed Benthin: Johannes Popitz und Carl Schmitt: zur wirtschaftlichen Theorie des totalen Staates in Deutschland. - München : Beck, 1972. - (Münchener Studien zur Politik; 19) - ISBN 3-406-02799-7
- Hildemarie Dieckmann: Johannes Popitz: Entwicklung und Wirksamkeit in der Zeit der Weimarer Zeit. - Berlin : Colloquium Verl., 1960