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Walther Rathenau (September 29, 1867 – June 24, 1922) was a German industrialist, politician, writer, and statesman who served as Foreign Minister of Germany during the Weimar Republic.

Contents 1 Family 2 Political career 3 Assassination 4 References 5 Works 6 See also 7 External links

Rathenau was born in Berlin, the son of Emil Rathenau, a prominent Jewish businessman and founder of the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), an electrical-engineering company. He studied physics, chemistry, and philosophy in Berlin and Strasbourg. His religious heritage and wealth, as well as his association with Freemasonry^{[citation needed]}, were all factors in establishing his deeply divisive reputation in German politics. He worked as an engineer before joining the AEG board in 1899, becoming a leading industrialist in the late German Empire and early Weimar Republic periods^[1]. Rathenau is thought to be the basis for the German industrialist character "Arnheim" in Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities.

Rathenau was a leading proponent of a policy of assimilation for German Jews: he argued that Jews should oppose both Zionism and socialism and fully integrate themselves into mainstream German society. This, he said, would lead to the eventual disappearance of anti-Semitism. As a powerful, affluent and highly visible Jewish politician, Rathenau was disdained by Germany's extreme right, culminating in his 1922 assassination.

During World War I Rathenau held senior posts in the Raw Materials Department of the War Ministry, while becoming chairman of AEG upon his father's death in 1915. He played a leading role in putting Germany's economy on a war footing, enabling wartime Germany to continue its war effort for years despite shortages of labor and raw materials.

Rathenau was a moderate liberal in politics, and after WWI he was one of the founders of the German Democratic Party (DDP). He rejected the tide of socialist thought which swept Germany after the shock of defeat and revolution, opposing state ownership of industry and advocating greater worker participation in the management of companies. His ideas were influential in post-war governments.

In 1921, Rathenau was appointed Minister of Reconstruction, and in 1922 he became Foreign Minister. His insistence that Germany should fulfill its obligations under the Treaty of Versailles, while working for a revision of its terms, infuriated German nationalists. He also angered nationalists by negotiating the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Union. The leaders of the (still obscure) Nazi Party and other right-wing groups claimed he was part of a "Jewish-Communist conspiracy."

The British politician Robert Boothby wrote of him: "He was something that only a German Jew could simultaneously be: a prophet, a philosopher, a mystic, a writer, a statesman, an industrial magnate of the highest and greatest order, and the pioneer of what has become known as 'industrial rationalization'."

In fact, despite his desire for economic and political co-operation between Germany and the Soviet Union, Rathenau remained skeptical of the methods of the Soviets. In his Kritik der dreifachen Revolution (Critique of the triple revolution) he noted that:

"We cannot use Russia's methods, as they only and at best prove that the economy of an agrarian nation can be leveled to the ground; Russia's thoughts are not our thoughts. They are, as it is in the spirit of the Russian city intelligentsia, unphilosophical, and highly dialectic; they are passionate logic based on unverified suppositions. They assume that a single good, the destruction of the capitalist class, weighs more than all other goods, and that poverty, dictatorship, terror and the fall of civilization must be accepted to secure this one good."

"If ten million people must die to free ten million people from the bourgeoisie, then this is a harsh but necessary consequence. The Russian idea is compulsory happiness, in the same sense and with the same logic as the compulsory introduction of Christianity and the Inquisition."

On June 24, 1922, two months after the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, Rathenau was assassinated by two right-wing army officers linked to Organisation Consul. On the morning of 24 June 1922 he was driving from his house to Wilhelmstraße, as he did daily. During the trip his car was passed by another in which three armed men were sitting. They simultaneously shot at the minister with machine guns and then quickly drove away. A memorial stone in the Königsallee in Berlin-Grunewald marks the scene of the crime. One of the assassins was the future writer Ernst von Salomon - he had provided the car but was not present at the shooting. Curiously, he managed to stay out of the Nazi party and had a Jewish wife. His book after the war, Der Fragebogen ("The Questionaire"), about the history of Germany between 1918 to 1946 was one of the bestsellers in West Germany^[2].

Some believe that Rathenau's assassination may have significantly influenced the long-term political, economic, and social development of Europe. It was certainly an early sign of the instability and violence which were eventually to destroy the Weimar Republic. The British writer Morgan Philips Price wrote:

"In June 1922 Walter Rathenau, a big Jewish industrialist and progressive economist, was assassinated by gangsters of the extreme Right who were the heart and soul of the Freikorps. I was present at the memorial service in the Reichstag and noted an extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm among the workers of Berlin, as expressed in their trade union leaders and socialist parties, for the Republic and for President Ebert. The rank and file of the Majority Social Democrats were now thoroughly aroused...first Communists, then Socialists, and now a big industrialist were murdered for having Liberal views and, in the last case, for being a Jew. The situation in Germany was becoming more and more sinister."

Others, such as historian Erich Eyck, argue that the murder of Rathenau may have been the singular event that set into motion the period of extreme hyperinflation in Germany during 1922-23:

"But as great as was the impact of Rathenau’s death upon German domestic politics, it left an even greater mark upon the economic scene. Now the tumble of the mark could not be stopped. The dollar, still under 350 on the day of the murder, climbed to 670 by the end of July, to 2000 in August, and to 4500 by the end of October."

Albert Einstein later commented that he was "greatly disturbed" by Rathenau's assassination, since he saw it as early proof of an immense anti-pacifist and anti-semitic presence in Germany^[3].

• Reflektionen (1908)
• Zur Kritik der Zeit (1912)
• Zur Mechanik des Geistes (1913)
• Von kommenden Dingen (1917)
• An Deutschlands Jugend (1918)
• Die neue Gesellschaft (1919)
• Der neue Staat (1919)
• Der Kaiser (1919)
• Kritik der dreifachen Revolution (1919)
• Was wird werden (1920, a utopian novel)
• Gesammelte Schriften (6 volumes)
• Gesammelte Reden (1924)
• Briefe (1926, 2 volumes)
• Neue Briefe (1927)
• Politische Briefe (1929)

• Contributions to liberal theory
• 1920s Berlin
• Liberalism
• Jewish left

• Walther-Rathenau-Gesellschaft e.V. (German)
• Speech by German President Friedrich Ebert at Rathenau's burial (German)

Preceded by Joseph Wirth

Foreign Minister of Germany 1922

Succeeded by Joseph Wirth