key profiles

Question 1

Hjalmar Schacht
1877-1970

Answer 1

• Director of the National Bank from 1916
• Co-founder of the DDP in November 1918
• Described as financial genius for his role in stabilising Germany’s currency
• Became Reich Currency Commissioner & head of the Reichsbank
• Introduced the Rentenmark
• Went on to negotiate the Dawes and Young Plans
• Became Economics Minister under the Nazis
• Lost favour and was removed from the Reichsbank in 1939

Question 2

Charles Dawes
1865-1951

Answer 2

• An American banker and politician
• Became US Vice-President in 1924
• Stresemann and him were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for their work to resolve the reparations issue

Question 3

Owen D. Young
1874-1962

Answer 3

• A lawyer but became a leading businessman
• Was President of General Electric and founded RCA - the Radio Corporation of America
• Helped in the writing of the Dawes Plan in 1924

Question 4

Alfred Hugenberg
1865-1951

Answer 4

• Had been a civil servant and then a banker before the war
• Owned newspapers and film companies
• Was a deputy in the Reichstag, representing conservative DNVP
• Became leader of DNVP in 1928, making the party more extreme in its hostility to democratic government
• His money and media influence provided crucial support for the campaign against the Young Plan
• Was appointed Minister for Economics and Food in the Nazi government, 1933

Question 5

Clara Zetkin
1857-1933

Answer 5

• A KPD member of the Reichstag from 1920-1933
• Had been active in the SPD before 1914 and was a leading campaigner for women’s rights
• Organised the first International Women’s Day in 1911
• Close friend of Rosa Luxemburg
• Blamed capitalism for reducing women to the status of breeders and homebuilders
• Believed women would only be truly liberated by a socialist revolution

Question 6

Marie Juchacz
1879-1956

Answer 6

• Long-standing member of the SPD
• Elected to the National Assembly in 1919
• First woman to make a speech in the legislative body in Germany
• Served as a Reichstag deputy for the SPD until 1933
• Introduced to politics by her older brother, Otto Gohlke

Question 7

Marianne Weber
1870-1954

Answer 7

• An intellectual and academic
• Wife of Max Weber, a leading sociologist
• Wrote several books on feminist issues
• Active in the German women’s suffrage movement before 1914
• Joined the DDP in 1919
• First woman elected to state legislature in Baden

Question 8

Paula Muller-Otfried
1865-1946

Answer 8

• A devout Protestant and co-founder of the German Protestant Women’s League
• Very active in her church and social work
• Opposed to women’s suffrage, warning that voting rights would not improve women’s lives
• Member of the DNVP, became a Reichstag deputy in 1920

Question 9

Theodor Wolff
1868-1943

Answer 9

• A liberal journalist from a wealthy Jewish family
• Came under attack in 1916 for urging a negotiated peace
• One of the founders of the DDP in 1918
• Went into exile after his books were burned by the Nazis
• Arrested in 1943 in Italy and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he died

Question 10

Kurt Eisener
1867-1919

Answer 10

• A journalist and leading member of the SPD in Bavaria
• Joined the breakaway USPD in 1917 and was imprisoned for treason
• Released from prison in November 1918 and led the revolt in Bavaria that resulted in the establishment of the short-lived Bavarian Socialist Republic
• Was assassinated in Munich in 1919 by a right-wing nationalist

Question 11

Hermann Muller
1876-1931

Answer 11

• An SPD politician who’d been foreign minister from 1919-20
• Chancellor in 1928
• Was one of the German signatories of the Treaty of Versailles
• Had a reputation for being calm + hardworking but lacked charisma

Question 12

Ernst Thalmann
1886-1944

Answer 12

• Chairman of the KPD in 1925
• Had been a member of the SPD before 1914 but split with the party in 1917 over its support of the war
• Survived an assassination attempt by a right-wing paramilitary group in 1922
• One of the leaders for the Hamburg communist uprising in 1923
• Was guided by Stalin after 1925
• Followed the line that the SPD were the communists’ main enemies
• Communist candidate in presidential elections of 1925 and 1932
• Arrested in 1933 and imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp where he was executed on Hitler’s orders in 1944