Walther Rathenau

This deeply informed biography of Walther Rathenau (1867-1922) tells of a man who—both thoroughly German and unabashedly Jewish—rose to leadership in the German War-Ministry Department during the First World War, and later to the exalted position of foreign minister in the early days of the Weimar Republic. His achievement was unprecedented—no Jew in Germany had ever attained such high political rank. But Rathenau's success was marked by tragedy: within months he was assassinated by right-wing extremists seeking to destroy the newly formed Republic. Drawing on Rathenau's papers and on a depth of knowledge of both modern German and German-Jewish history, Shulamit Volkov creates a finely drawn portrait of this complex man who struggled with his Jewish identity yet treasured his “otherness.” Volkov also places Rathenau in the dual context of Imperial and Weimar Germany and of Berlin's financial and intellectual elite. Above all, she illuminates the complex social and psychological milieu of German Jewry in the period before Hitler's rise to power.

Originally published in 1971. Walther Rathenau and the Weimar Republic examines reparations in Germany following the First World War. Financial reparation was the most difficult and dangerous of the conditions imposed upon Germany by the Versailles Treaty. The amount of reparations - three times the country's annual income - was beyond Germany's capacity to pay. The United States, by insisting on the payment of Allied war debts, forced the Allies in turn to insist on reparations. Postwar polemics concentrated on German aggression and war crimes, but the real issue was the damage done to the world's economic mechanism. In the end all nations suffered, including the United States.

WALTHER RATHENAU: HIS LIFE AND WORK. CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION 3 I. FATHER AND SON 5 II. THE WAY OF THE INTELLECT 21 III. SOCIAL INTERLUDE 43 y IV. THE REPUDIATION OF THE INTELLECT 55 V. FRIENDSHIPS 64 VI. THE REALM OF THE SOUL 74 VII. THE PATH TO THE ABYSS 117 VIII. IN DAYS TO COME 169 IX. ISOLATION 222 X. THE NEW FOREIGN POLICY THE FIGHT FOR PEACE 268 XI. THERE IS NO DEATH 34 APPENDIX 365 INDEX TO RATHENAUS WORKS 371 INDEX 373 ILLUSTRATIONS WALTHER RATHENAU IN THE CAR IN WHICH HE WAS ASSASSINATED WALTHER AND ERICH RATHENAU 1 8 WALTHER RATHENAU, FROM THE PORTRAIT BY EDVARD MUNCH 5 2 EMIL RATHENAU 6O THE C BREVIARIUM MYSTICUM 7 WALTHER RATHENAU BEFORE THE WAR IO4 ROOM IN THE SCHLOSS FREIENWALDE .138 WALTHER RATHENAUS MOTHER 3 2 WALTHER RATHENAU

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