Gustav Stresemann in public space

Gustav Stresemann (*10.5.1878 Berlin, † 3.10.1929 Berlin) is primarily to be found in German national memory as the first German Nobel Peace Prize winner and as "Weimar's greatest statesman". [1] Shortly after his death, the connecting street between Potsdamer Platz and Kreuzberg's Wilhelmstraße was named after him; after a renaming in 1935, it has been called that since 1947 to this day. However, Stresemann was and is not without controversy in research and popular science. Today, Stresemann's positive assessment is primarily based on his work as foreign minister and oscillates between "the first real European", "pioneer" and "potential obstructor of Hitler". In the current historical master narrative, he was and is seen above all as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize of 1926, as an actor in a peaceful revision of the Treaty of Versailles and as an opponent of anti-Semitism. What is less well known is that before the First World War he was an active supporter of Germany's striving for world power status and an advocate of an aggressive foreign and colonial policy. In 1906/7, during the election campaign during the uprising of the Herero and Nama in what is now Namibia, he stirred up procolonial sentiments, which earned him a seat in the Reichstag. In his work as Foreign Minister of the Weimar Republic, he sought a compromise with France and at the same time maintained the option of revising the eastern border. Overall, Stresemann today stands for the "economic variant of German power politics"[2] and is considered the protagonist of a "moderate", i.e. realpolitik grab for world power. [3]

Gustav Stresemann was born on 10 May 1878 in Berlin-Friedrichshain as the seventh of eight children. The family was middle-class and petty-bourgeois: his parents, Emil August and Mathilde née Juhre, ran a beer stall, the forerunner of today's Büdchen. Probably because of his special talent, Gustav was the only one of the children to attend a secondary school, namely the institution "Am Weißen Turm" (today Andreas-Gymnasium) in Friedrichshain. The school building was not far from the Schlesischer Bahnhof in a rather proletarian-migrant quarter; however, the student body was of mixed social origin. After graduating from high school in 1897, he first studied history and literature, later economics (today: economics) at Humboldt University and then moved to Leipzig. He joined the reform fraternity "Neogermania", where he advocated a constitutional-liberal nationalism inspired by the 1848 revolution and was directed against both widespread anti-Semitism and emerging fraternity sympathies for social democracy. In his studies, he initially oriented himself towards the economist and political scientist Karl Theodor Reinhold. Reinhold combined nationalism, liberalism and a cross-class social partnership as the basis for an efficient economy, which he saw as an indispensable basis for political power. Stresemann also advocated a balance between the interests of employers and workers, especially after the Crimmitschau textile workers' strike, but at the same time sharply and unequivocally distanced himself from the Social Democrats.

Ultimately, he positioned himself as the protagonist of a socially balanced society, whose economic power legitimized the increasingly loud claim to world power. After his studies, this attitude was expressed both in his work as secretary of the Association of German Chocolate Manufacturers in Dresden and in his political speeches and writings – as well as in his focus on national economic autonomy: in a dispute with the sugar cartel that emerged in 1903, he demanded German sugar production independent of international price agreements in favor of the chocolate industry. In the debate about new trade agreements around 1904, he developed strategies to give the industry – and thus the bourgeoisie – political influence in an empire dominated by aristocratic agrarians.

As early as 1903, he had gained access to the upper middle class through his marriage to Käte Kleefeld, who came from a Jewish family. A little later, he left the rather intellectual National Social Association, to which he had belonged since 1901, and joined the National Liberal Party (NLP), which was dominated by dignitaries. The NLP owed its lasting influence, despite a declining electorate, above all to close ties with powerful associations such as the Industrial Association and the imperialist-völkisch Alldeutsche Verband. From 1900 onwards, it also relied on the German Naval Association, which played a decisive role in the development of a war and merchant navy, which made the colonial programme of the German Reich in Africa and the Pacific possible in the first place. Stresemann, who had spoken out against colonialism as a primary, propagated the further expansion of the German war fleet as a prerequisite for its continuation, as he considered colonies indispensable both for the desired world power position and for the internal pacification of class antagonisms. In addition, this fleet was to serve the protection of the German merchant navy, which had become a serious competitor to the British in world trade. From Friedrich Naumann, the father of today's FDP, with whom he belonged to the National Socialists in Dresden, he adopted a certain social Darwinism in dealing with peoples to be subjugated, as well as later the Central Europe concept, i.e. the unification of East-Central Europe under German leadership. Stresemann conceived this continental hegemony as a supplement or replacement for the overseas colonies, which the old colonial powers had already almost completely divided among themselves. In 1905 he declared that this would ensure "the world position of Germanism in the middle of Europe, which is envied on both sides of the country's borders". [4]

He succeeded in entering the Reichstag in 1907 in the Saxon constituency of Annaberg against the Social Democrat, who had been leading until then, with a program of aggressive colonial foreign policy. The elections in January 1907 were referred to as the "elections" because the fight against the uprising of the Herero and Nama in Namibia, the then German colony of German Southwest, was a central theme of the election. Under the leadership of General Lothar von Trotha, the actions of the German troops against the Herero and Nama had very quickly developed into a genocide that was not recognized as such by the German side until 2021. News of von Trotha's order to kill captured insurgents and let women and children die of thirst also reached the German Reich from 1905 onwards and led to lively debates in parliament and the newspapers. Social Democrats and Catholics protested eloquently against the German approach, which did not fit in with the German claim to pursue a "different", less violent and murderous colonialism than the Spanish, English and French. Stresemann's attitude to this genocide is unclear: his election campaign speeches have not survived. The only thing that is certain is that he advocated the resolute continuation of colonialism and naval construction. [5]

After his election, Stresemann specified a program in which colonies and other supplementary areas were to be developed economically in order to be usable both as suppliers of raw materials and as sales areas. In the same year, he supported the attempt by the Mannesmann company to secure mining rights in Morocco against French resistance and without state backing. Stresemann was not a pacifist representative of pure commercial imperialism: in the Agadir crisis, when the German Reich positioned a gunboat off the coast in response to the French occupation of Fez, and Great Britain unexpectedly sided with France, he criticized the fact that the government did not follow up this gesture with diplomatic and military action. In 1910, Stresemann returned to Berlin. He no longer lived in proletarian Friedrichshain, but near Tauentzien, which was more appropriate for an upwardly popular petty bourgeoisie[6]; two years later, he lost his seat in the Reichstag until by-elections in 1914. From then on, he de facto took over the leadership of the NLP parliamentary group.

Like all German parties, including the SPD, Stresemann's NLP followed the "Burgfrieden" proclaimed in 1914 and enthusiastically and offensively supported the expansive war aims policy of the German Reich. This applied not least to the plan to colonize large parts of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states as imperial expansion areas: Stresemann imagined a merging of the entire "German ethnicity" – accordingly also the resettlement of ethnic Germans from Russia – into a "greater Germany" that would reach as far as Riga and thus contain western parts of the Tsarist Empire. [7] He continued his enthusiasm for the imperial war fleet seamlessly in an unconditional support of submarine warfare – including attacks on civilian ships. Also in line with his line was the construction of railway lines in the German colonies and colonial supplementary areas such as the Baghdad Railway in the Ottoman Empire. Stresemann had been familiar with this imperial project and its use in the Armenian genocide since a conversation with Enver Paşa in 1916. Unlike many other colonial politicians, however, he rejected German settlements, at least in the extraterritorial colonies. Their economic exploitation was intended to prevent emigration by enabling the workers to have a decent standard of living in the country. The situation was different in the eastern provinces, where Stresemann advocated harsh economic, settlement and cultural policy action against the Polish population in the sense of strengthening "Germanness".

Unlike the monarchist and later fascist right, Stresemann quickly and largely completely integrated himself into the republic. In view of his efforts to gain more political influence for the bourgeoisie, this was not surprising. As early as 1917, he had advocated an extension of the right to vote and a development into a parliamentary monarchy in order to be able to win the war by including the politically marginalized classes. [8] After the defeat, as a quasi-undogmatic power and pragmatic foreign policymaker, he was better able than some of his right-wing conservative party colleagues to deal with the new European constellation – and Germany's status as an officially demilitarized loser state obliged to pay reparations. At the same time, there could be no doubt about his focus on a German Reich with a regained global political and economic status, but this did not prevent criticism from the more extreme right. This was especially true during his brief intermezzo as head of government during the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923: Stresemann supported passive resistance, but above all committed himself to a line of understanding with France. The highlight of this strategy was the Locarno Treaties, in which the German Empire accepted the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, which had been annexed in 1871, as well as a plan to pay the immensely high reparations. However, the treaties were only aimed at a compromise with the major Western powers: while France, Germany and Belgium refrained from military border revisions, the Stresemann government, with British support, rejected any stipulations regarding the border with the Republic of Poland. The Prussian orientation towards imperial supplementary and expansion areas in the east and the "negative Polish policy" pursued throughout the 19th century thus remained. In fact, Stresemann saw the possibility of a new war, but with the Locarno policy he wanted to restore the economic power of the German Reich, which had been permanently weakened not least by the French occupation of the Ruhr area in 1923, on the one hand, and on the other hand to avoid a war on two fronts as in 1914–1918. This goal was also served by the Treaty of Friendship with the Soviet Union, concluded in 1922 and renewed in 1926, which in turn sought a way out of international isolation in alliance with the German Reich.

Nevertheless, the Locarno policy was seen as a farewell to armed conflicts and as a transition to a permanently peaceful coexistence of the European powers as a whole. The German Reich gained international prestige, especially its admission to the League of Nations. Stresemann received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926 together with his French counterpart Aristide Briand – at a time when, with his approval and support, the secret rearmament of the Reichswehr was further accelerated with the establishment of flight and tank schools in the Soviet Union.

The fixed point in Stresemann's deliberations and activities was the striving for internationally recognized national greatness, for a world power position of the German Reich – a "place in the sun". His much-invoked transformation from an aggressive colonial politician to a "convinced European" did not touch this fixed point, but influenced the ways in which he wanted to achieve this goal in accordance with current political configurations: with offensive navy, armaments and colonial policy until 1918, with a peaceful understanding with the victorious powers in the West during his time as foreign minister. The successful attempt to make the German Reich an autonomous power factor again via the European track earned him and his French counterpart Briand the Nobel Peace Prize. In doing so, however, Stresemann kept open the option of a violent revision of the eastern border via the secret rearmament of the Reichswehr within the framework of the Locarno policy. At the international level, Stresemann was quite successful in the constellation of the time, also with regard to the end of the Ruhr occupation in 1930, which he did not live to see because of his early death on 3 October 1929.

Stresemann was active as a proponent of an active colonial policy, especially before the First World War – albeit not in Berlin, but in Saxony. For him, colonies primarily had the function of supporting Germany's position in the world economy. After these were lost in 1918 and the German Reich was already in an extremely precarious international situation, he pragmatically and successfully sought political conditions during his time as Foreign Minister that would enable the restoration of Germany's economic power and thus an appropriate global economic positioning. During this time, he sought expansion areas in Eastern Europe.