Reinhold Quaatz (born 8 May 1876 in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

- died 15 August 1953 in

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

) was a German

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

politician who was active during 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 al ...

. Although associated with

right-wing Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authorit ...

and völkisch tendencies, Quaatz was half-

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

in ancestry. Quaatz, a member of the Reichstag, was first elected in

1920 Events January * January 1 ** Polish–Soviet War in 1920: The Russian Red Army increases its troops along the Polish border from 4 divisions to 20. ** Kauniainen, completely surrounded by the city of Espoo, secedes from Espoo as its own ma ...

for the

German People's Party The German People's Party (German: , or DVP) was a liberal party during the Weimar Republic that was the successor to the National Liberal Party of the German Empire. A right-liberal, or conservative-liberal political party, it represented politi ...

(DVP) before he switched to the

German National People's Party The German National People's Party (german: Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP) was a national-conservative party in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Before the rise of the Nazi Party, it was the major conservative and nationalist party in Wei ...

(DNVP). He retained his seat until the establishment of the

Nazi regime Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. He had been a member of the ''Nationalliberale Vereinigung'', a landowners' group that was affiliated to the DVP and also included the likes of Johann Becker, Moritz Klönne,

Albert Vögler Albert Vögler (8 February 1877 – 14 April 1945) was a German politician, industrialist and entrepreneur. He was a co-founder of the German People's Party, and an important executive in the munitions industry during the Second World War. V� ...

and Alfred Gildemeister, but he then clashed with the leadership and switched to the DNVP in early 1924. As a result, Quaatz ran on the DNVP ticket from the May 1924 election onward. As a DNVP member, Quaatz was personally close to party leader

Alfred Hugenberg Alfred Ernst Christian Alexander Hugenberg (19 June 1865 – 12 March 1951) was an influential German businessman and politician. An important figure in nationalist politics in Germany for the first few decades of the twentieth century, Hugenbe ...

. The media baron frequently confided in his friend, as has been demonstrated by Quaatz's diaries, published in 1989. Despite his mother being Jewish, Quaatz endorsed

anti-Semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

policies as a DNVP politician and even encouraged Hugenburg to work closely with

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

for fear of both

socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

and the

political Catholicism The Catholic Church and politics concerns the interplay of Catholicism with religious, and later secular, politics. Historically, the Church opposed liberal ideas such as democracy, freedom of speech, and the separation of church and state unde ...

of the Centre Party. Away from politics, he was an industrialist and financier and in early 1933, he was appointed to the board of the

Dresdner Bank Dresdner Bank AG was a German bank and was based in Frankfurt. It was one of Germany's largest banking corporations and was acquired by competitor Commerzbank in May 2009. History 19th century The Dresdner Bank was established on 12 Novemb ...

.Gerald D. Feldman, Wolfgang Seibel, ''Networks of Nazi Persecution: Bureaucracy, Business, and the Organization of the Holocaust'', Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 48 He was removed from that position in February 1936, as the Nazi laws barred the ''

Mischling (; " mix-ling"; plural: ) was a pejorative legal term used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of mixed "Aryan" and non-Aryan, such as Jewish, ancestry as codified in the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. In German, the word has the general denota ...

'' from such positions.Hermann Weiss & Paul Hoser (eds), ''Die Deutschnationalen und die Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik. Aus dem Tagebuch von Reinhold Quaatz 1928-1933 (Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59)'', Oldenbourg: Munich 1989, p. 17 He was briefly crossexamined by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

in the aftermath of the

20 July plot On 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia, now Kętrzyn, in present-day Poland. The ...

on Hitler's life in 1944, but generally, his high-level contacts meant that he endured little state attention. He was a founder member of the Christian Democratic Union in Berlin after the war.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Quaatz, Reinhold 1876 births 1953 deaths Businesspeople from Berlin German people of Jewish descent German People's Party politicians German National People's Party politicians Christian Democratic Union of Germany politicians Members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic German bankers