Georg Gradnauer (16 November 1866 – 18 November 1946)
was a German newspaper editor and politician for the
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and the first elected
Minister-President of Saxony
This article lists the Leaders of the Government (german: Vorsitzende des Gesamtministeriums) in the Kingdom of Saxony from 1831 to 1918 and Minister-presidents (german: Ministerpräsidenten) of the Saxony, Free State of Saxony since 1918.
List o ...
following the end of the
monarchy
A monarchy is a government#Forms, form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The legitimacy (political)#monarchy, political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from restric ...
.
Born in
Magdeburg
Magdeburg (; nds, label=Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river.
Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdebu ...
, Gradnauer earned a
PhD in 1889, and became editor of the ''Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung'' (later '), the SPD paper in
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
, in 1891.
A relative moderate within the Saxon SPD, he was replaced as editor by radicals
Alexander Parvus
Alexander Lvovich Parvus, born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand (8 September 1867 – 12 December 1924) and sometimes called Helphand in the literature on the Russian Revolution, was a Marxist theoretician, publicist, and controversial activist in the ...
and
Julian Marchlewski
Julian Baltazar Józef Marchlewski (17 May 1866 – 22 March 1925) was a Polish communist politician, revolutionary activist and publicist who served as chairman of the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee. He was also known under the al ...
in 1896.
[Pulzer, p. 158] Gradnauer subsequently moved to the SPD's
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
paper, ''
Vorwärts
''Vorwärts'' (, "Forward") is a newspaper published by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Founded in 1876, it was the central organ of the SPD for many decades. Following the party's Halle Congress (1891), it was published daily as ...
'', where he worked from 1897 with fellow
reformists
Reformism is a political doctrine advocating the reform of an existing system or institution instead of its abolition and replacement.
Within the socialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can e ...
Friedrich Stampfer and
Kurt Eisner
Kurt Eisner (; 14 May 1867 21 February 1919)"Kurt Eisner – Encyclopædia Britannica" (biography), ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 2006, Britannica.com webpageBritannica-KurtEisner. was a German politician, revolutionary, journalist, and theatre c ...
, until 1905, when they were ousted in favor of editors from the SPD's left wing.
Gradnauer then returned to head the ''Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung'' once more, meanwhile renamed ''Dresdner Volkszeitung'',
and remained in that role until the outbreak of the
German Revolution in 1918.
In parallel with this newspaper work, he served as an SPD delegate to the
Reichstag, in two stints: 1898 to 1907, and 1912 to 1918.
Following the
German Revolution, Gradnauer initially served as Minister of Justice in the new republican government of Saxony in 1918, and soon succeeded
Richard Lipinski as Minister of the Interior and chair of the provisional government.
[Pulzer, p. 209] The SPD won a plurality of the votes in the first Saxon elections under the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is ...
, on February 2, 1919, and Gradnauer ended up forming a minority government, becoming Saxony's first constitutional Minister-President on March 14. His minority government was formed after an attempt to form a coalition with the
Independent SPD (USPD) foundered over the USPD's demand for recognition of workers' councils, and Gradnauer's preferred alternative, a coalition with the
German Democratic Party
The German Democratic Party (, or DDP) was a center-left liberal party in the Weimar Republic. Along with the German People's Party (, or DVP), it represented political liberalism in Germany between 1918 and 1933. It was formed in 1918 from the ...
(DDP), was rejected by the majority of SPD delegates.
Gradnauer served as Minister-President for a little over a year. In May 1919, he used the military and
Freikorps
(, "Free Corps" or "Volunteer Corps") were irregular German and other European military volunteer units, or paramilitary, that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. They effectively fought as mercenary or private armies, rega ...
to put down left-wing radicals in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
, in a small-scale reprise of the actions taken by the SPD national government under
Friedrich Ebert
Friedrich Ebert (; 4 February 187128 February 1925) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the first president of Germany from 1919 until his death in office in 1925.
Ebert was elected leader of the SPD on t ...
in putting down the
Spartacist uprising
The Spartacist uprising (German: ), also known as the January uprising (), was a general strike and the accompanying armed struggles that took place in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the November Revolutio ...
some months prior. This furthered the rift with the USPD, but enabled an SPD–DDP coalition in October 1919, with Gradnauer continuing as Minister-President at the head of the now-majority government. Left-wing resentment within the SPD began to build in early 1920, however, and Gradnauer was forced to resign in April 1920, with opposition to his use of the military against the radical left being joined by discontent over his unwillingness to replace conservative elements of the bureaucracy with Social Democrats. He was succeeded as Minister-President by
Wilhelm Buck
Johann Wilhelm Buck (12 November 1869 in Bautzen, Kingdom of Saxony – 2 December 1945 in Radebeul) was a German politician and representative of the Social Democratic Party and the splinter party, Old Social Democratic Party of Germany. From ...
.
[Lapp, p. 46]
After resigning as Minister-President, Gradnauer was reelected to the Reichstag, serving from 1920 to 1924, and briefly (1921) holding a cabinet post as
Minister of the Interior
An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...
under
Joseph Wirth
Karl Joseph Wirth (6 September 1879 – 3 January 1956) was a German politician of the Catholic Centre Party who served for one year and six months as the chancellor of Germany from 1921 to 1922, as the finance minister from 1920 to 1921, a ...
. He also served as delegate of the Saxon state government to Berlin from 1921 to 1932.
He was initially arrested by the
Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...
in 1933, but released.
Being of Jewish origin,
he was eventually sent to
Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination ca ...
in 1944, but survived and was liberated in 1945.
Gradnaur joined the
Socialist Unity Party in 1946 and died a few months later in Berlin.
Notes
References
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*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gradnauer, Georg
1866 births
1946 deaths
Politicians from Magdeburg
People from the Province of Saxony
19th-century German Jews
Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians
Interior ministers of Germany
Ministers-President of Saxony
Members of the Reichstag of the German Empire
Members of the Weimar National Assembly
Members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic
Theresienstadt Ghetto survivors
German newspaper editors
German male non-fiction writers