Heinrich Held
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| Heinrich Held | |
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| In office 1924 – 1933 |
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| Preceded by | Eugen Ritter von Knilling |
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| Succeeded by | Ludwig Siebert |
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| In office 1927 – 1932 |
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| In office 1930 – 1932 |
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| In office 1932 – 1933 |
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| Born | June 6, 1868 Erbach, Germany |
| Died | August 4, 1938 Regensburg |
| Nationality | German |
| Political party | Bavarian People's Party |
| Residence | Regensburg, Bavaria |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Heinrich Held (6 June 1868 in Erbach – 4 August 1938 in Regensburg) was a conservative politician and the last freely elected Bavarian prime minister before the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933.
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[edit] Life
Heinrich Held was born in what is now the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate but was then part of Prussia. His father, Johannes Held, was a local farmer and musician, his mother was Susanne Held (born Kaiser).
Heinrich studied law at the universities of Straßburg, Marburg and Heidelberg before becoming a journalist in Straßburg in 1896. He moved to Heidelberg the year after and became editor of the Regensburger Morgenblatts, a newspaper in the Bavarian city of Regensburg, in 1899. He moved to take up the same position at the Regensburger Anzeiger the year after. From 1906, he became a co-owner of those two newspapers and begun his political involvement as a speaker in the conservative-christian workers movements.
Held became a member of the Bavarian parliament, the Landtag, in 1907, for the Zentrumspartei, and continued to be a member until 1933. His main interest was fiscal politics and he belonged to the left fraction of his otherwise conservative party.
He quickly rose to power within the party, becoming the leader of his parties fraction in the parliament in 1914 and shortly after also becoming the party leader. In 1917, Held was elevated to the title of Geheimer Hofrat, a member of the Bavarian privy council.
With the end of the monarchy in Bavaria in 1918, Heinrich Held was one of the co-founders of the Bayerischen Volkspartei (BVP), the Bavarian People's Party, a conservative-catholic party advocating Bavarian independence. He became the leader of the parties parliamentary fraction. Held also served as the president of the Deutscher Katholikentag from 1921, a regular gathering and discussion forum for the German catholics.
In July 1924, after the resignation of Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who held the almost dictatorial position of a State commissioner, Held became prime minister of Bavaria with the support of his own party and three other conservative parties, the Deutschnationaler Volkspartei, Deutscher Volkspartei and the Bauernbund. His politics as prime minister were aimed at reconciliation with the federal government and a move away from separatism. He also came to an agreement with the Vatican, the Bayerische Konkordat.
He archived a moderate showing in the 1925 German presidential elections, getting 3.7 percent of the votes.
He also held the offices of Ministers of State for Commerce, Industry and Trade and Ministers of State for Agriculture from 1930 to 1932. Both were merged to form the Ministry for Economy which he held from 1932 to 1933[1].
He continued to advocate the rights of the states within the German republic, publishing papers on the subject. From 1930, he ruled Bavaria in a minority government. He sharply criticized the removal of the Prussian prime minister Otto Braun by Reichskanzler Franz von Papen in 1932, a move he considered an illegal interferance of the central government in state matters[2].
An attempt supported by a wide coalition of parties, to establish Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, as a Staatskommisar with dictatorial powers in 1932 to counter the Nazis failed due to the hesitant Bavarian government under Held[3][4]. Held himselve had suggested the idea but wavered in the last minute, choosing not to make an announcement appointing the crown prince to the planned position[5].
The Bavarian government was forcibly removed by the Nazis on 9 March 1933. Held resisted the attempts by the SA to overthrow his government at first but due to receiving no support from the German army, who had orders from Berlin to stay out of domestic politics, he could ultimatly not hold of the Nazis[6]. The office of Bavarian prime minister was abolished and replaced by a Reichsstatthalter, a purely administrative position with no political power[7]. Held retired from politics, first escaping to Lugano, Switzerland, where his son Josef lived, later withdrawing to Regensburg. His government pension as a former prime minister was revoked by the Nazis[8].
His son Philipp became one of the first inmates at the Dachau concentration camp in 1933[9].
On 4 August 1938, Heinrich Held died in Regensburg.
[edit] Honors
- Honorary doctorate at the universities of Munich, Innsbruck and Würzburg
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- Website of the Deutsch Historische Museum, Berlin - Biography of Heinrich Held (in German)
- Opfer und Verfolgte des NS-Regimes aus bayrischen Parlamenten (in German)
- Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg - Bosls bayrische Biographie - Heinrich Held (in German), author: Karl Bosl, publisher: Pustet, page 327
[edit] References
- ^ Ministers of Bavaria
- ^ Time Magazine - Fair or Foul 11 July 1932
- ^ Royals and the Reich: The Princes Von Hessen in Nazi Germany google book review, Page 72, author: Jonathan Petropoulos, accessdate: 29 April 2008
- ^ Rupprecht von Bayern (in German). Kirchenlexikon. Retrieved on 2008-04-29.
- ^ The Royal Family, the Nazis, and the Second World War
- ^ A History of Modern Germany, 1800-2000 google book review, author: Martin Kitchen, Blackwell Publishing
- ^ Ministers of Bavaria
- ^ Opfer und Verfolgte des NS-Regimes aus bayrischen Parlamenten - Heinrich Held (in German), accessed: 6 May 2008
- ^ Opfer und Verfolgte des NS-Regimes aus bayrischen Parlamenten (in German), accessed: 6 May 2008
| Preceded by Eugen Ritter von Knilling |
Prime Minister of Bavaria 1924 – 1933 |
Succeeded by Ludwig Siebert |
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