Autor/Autorin
The personality and life of Otto Klepper: a rare politician in Germany, middle-class, non-partisan, with civil courage and the ability to work with people of all colours, a difficult personality who divided opinion, a man with vision who clearly recognised the danger of National Socialism even before 1933 and tried to combat it, and who was firmly convinced after the war that liberal democracy would ultimately prevail as the more convincing concept against communism.
Born in Thuringia in 1888 as a descendant of Huguenot ancestors and the son of a councillor of a higher regional court, he studied political science and became involved in agriculture and finance: Initially as chairman of the Domain Tenants‘ Association and founder of the Domain Bank, and from 1928 as president of the Prussian Central Co-operative Fund, which he reorganised financially and in terms of personnel. Through the rationalisation of the cooperative system and the reform of the agricultural credit system, he attempted to push through a reform of the East Elbe land ownership in order to strengthen the democratic forces of the Weimar Republic.
As the last Prussian finance minister in Otto Braun’s cabinet, he tried to preserve Prussia’s independence and to oppose Pope’s coup d’état without success. As he strictly refused to co-operate with the National Socialists, he had to emigrate and was chased halfway around the world by the National Socialists: Starting in Finland, where he wrote his first critical series of articles on the end of the Weimar Republic and the National Socialists‘ seizure of power in spring 1933, he became an agricultural and financial consultant in China in November, fled via the USA and Mallorca to Paris, where he worked with the incipient Popular Front, founded a resistance party against the National Socialists, the German Freedom Party , and wrote for the magazine Die Zukunft together with Willi Münzenberg and others. Three months before the start of the war, they founded the „Deutsch Französische Union“, which continued to operate after the war.
His entire thinking was focussed on a liberated Germany after the war, and as early as 1935 he developed concepts for a political, economic and cultural renewal of Germany. These concepts formed the basis of his articles in Zukunft and the two policy articles he wrote from Mexico for Deutsche Blätter .
After returning to Germany in the early summer of 1947 as an unwanted émigré with great difficulties and long waiting times, he did not return to politics as a non-partisan and uncomfortable lateral thinker, as the French had expected, but founded the „Wirtschaftspolitische Gesellschaft von 1947“ (Wipog) in Frankfurt together with Rudolf Mueller, a lawyer, and representatives from business, politics, trade and culture, to integrate the economy into responsibility for the common good, to create the conditions for a uniform economic policy that would coordinate the needs of agriculture, industry and trade with an appropriate financial and tax policy, and to promote the participation and co-determination of the workforce in the spirit of a social market economy, moving away from national economic thinking towards integration into a global economy based on the division of labour.
In order to further disseminate the liberal-democratic, non-party-affiliated concept of the „Wipog“ , it was decided to found a daily newspaper together with the Mainzer Allgemeine , where Erich Welter was editor. Thus, the founding of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , which did not see itself as a continuation of the old Frankfurter Zeitung but as a new foundation, was initiated and carried out by the „Wipog“ , i.e. Klepper and Mueller brought in the people important for the founding of the newspaper, the Mainz newspaper publisher, Ferdinand Rothe, the first editor: Erich Dombrowski as primus inter pares , Hans Baumgarten, Erich Welter, Paul Sethe and Karl Korn, and the financial backers, who were all members of the „Wipog “ , together, conducted the negotiations at all three levels and concluded the contracts. Thus, the „Wipog“ became the „sole shareholder of the newly founded Verlags GmbH FAZ“ and Otto Klepper its first managing director.
Although there was a break in 1950/51 for various reasons – above all because of differing views on the newspaper’s political line – it can be proven that the FAZ would not have come into being in this form without the „Wipog“ and above all without Otto Klepper, who helped the newspaper through a crucial financial crisis with American funds.
Another chapter is why the FAZ conceals the actual circumstances of its founding and only refers to „friends of the paper“ from 1949 and the „FAZIT Foundation from 1959“, thus provoking so-called ‚left-wing‘ critics to make the equally false claim that the FAZ was a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank and thus of Joseph Hermann Abs. In contrast to these oblique and shallow statements, the real founding history of the FAZ is complicated and an interesting document for the early post-war history of the Federal Republic of Germany, for the disputes about the appropriate way to deal with the ‚brown‘ past and for the struggle for the right path into the future with all the associated economic, political and cultural problems.
Klepper’s view of politics was elitist, in the sense of an ethic of responsibility, but at the same time democratic. It was demanding in its method. Although he was well aware of the necessity of demagogic utilisation of popular sentiment, he placed high demands on politicians in terms of expertise, reason and ethos. In this way, the political demands of the French Revolution would finally be implemented socially, effectively for all, and worldwide, because „the earth has become so small that statesmanship requires openness to the world“. Klepper was also ahead of his time in this realisation that the world had become small, which he had gained long before the effectiveness of the mass media, the internet and new transport technology.
Klepper could be accused of hopeless idealism and a lack of realism, but that would be to misunderstand his view of politics. It was clear to him that we live „on the ‚planet of interests'“ and that compromises have to be constantly found, but there had to be at least a certain number of politicians and a large number of citizens who were characterised by a sense of social responsibility, i.e. by the ethos he demanded, otherwise politics would degenerate into a pure power struggle for interests and the common good would be crushed between corruption scandals, partisan interest politics and resigned disenchantment with politics, i.e. exactly what he had experienced in the final phase of the Weimar Republic and what he feared as a danger to any democracy, especially when it was still poorly anchored in broad sections of the population. „It takes education,“ he said in 1952, „to determine the structure of community life from one’s own knowledge. An ethos is needed to translate the awareness of human freedom into the reality of concrete obligation.“
When Klepper then increasingly had to realise that nobody really wanted this commitment, that his political objectives did not fit in with the uplifting mentality of the early post-war period, he became lonely. As he lacked the counterbalance of a happy family life, which on the one hand was so close to his heart, but which he had also jeopardised through his above-average political commitment and was ultimately unable to regain, he lost his inner balance and politics took up too much space in his thinking.
To his great joy, his daughter Renate visited him in the spring of 1957, when he was already in hospital. He died alone in a Berlin clinic on 11 May 1957. One last wish was fulfilled. He was buried in the Zehlendorf forest cemetery on Onkel-Tom-Straße next to his first, much-loved daughter Gisela, who had died when she was just six years old and whom he remembered for the rest of his life, especially when his first granddaughter was born. The name „Uncle Tom“ created a coincidental connection to the rest of the family in America. None of them were able to attend the funeral on 15 May 1957; instead, his old friends from the Preußenkasse and the new Wipog team came.
To quote one of the many tributes, Theodor W. Adorno said that he and his friend Horkheimer were deeply impressed „by the unity of the most concrete world experience and intellectual power“ of Klepper, and that they were both „only too aware […] how much there is a lack of men of Otto Klepper’s kind: here we can truly speak of an irreplaceable loss.“
Klepper belonged to a minority in German society: he represented what was ultimately a very small segment of a self-confident middle class, which on the one hand supported democracy and thus cooperation with democratic politicians from the working class, but on the other was self-confident and politically experienced, without inferiority complexes towards the authorities, in order to defend the republic against state power if necessary. He tried to set an example of what he demanded of a politician: Truthfulness, civil courage and service to the public.
17 August 1888 born in Brotterode, district of Schmalkalden/Thuringia + 1908 A-levels in Hamm + 1908-1914 studies in law and political science + 1914-1919 military service and „Vaterländischer Hilfsdienstpflichtiger“ + 18 December 1917 marriage to Erna Gertrud Eickhoff, born in Oslo/Norway + 1918-1924 birth of four children, one of whom dies in 1925;
1920 second state examination in law + 1921-1923 legal adviser to the Reformbund der Gutshöfe in Bad Nauheim + 1922 admitted to the bar at Frankfurt am Main District Court + 1923-1928 managing director of the Domänenpächterverband and chairman of the board of the Domänenbank he founded, introduction of the agricultural credit system and the Pächterkreditgesetz + 1928-1931 president of the Preußische Zentralgenossenschaftskasse: His agricultural policy programme, financial and personnel reorganisation of the Prussian Fund, The Institute for Agricultural Market Research, rationalisation of the cooperative system;
1931-1932 Prussian Minister of Finance: defence of Prussia’s independence from the Reich;
1933-1947 Exile – preparation for a new Germany + 1933 Finland and Paris + 1933-1935 financial and agricultural advisor in China + 1935 study visit to the United States + 1935-1936 Palma di Mallorca/Spain + 1936-1940 Paris: founding of the German Freedom Party, the magazine Die Zukunft and the „German-French Union“, publication of numerous articles for a post-war Germany + 1940-1942 internment and hiding in southern France + 1942-1947 lawyer in Mexico;
1947 returned to Germany + 1947-1957 worked as a lawyer and publicist in Frankfurt + 1947-1957 co-founder and deputy board member of the „Wirtschaftspolitische Gesellschaft von 1947“ and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, its first managing director + 1954 travelled to the USA for three months – „Die Eigenverantwortung der Person“ – Klepper’s idea of a responsible elite;
11 May 1957 Death in Berlin.