Matthias Erzberger was born on September 20, 1875 in Buttenhausen (today part of Münsingen) in the Kingdom of Württemberg. He attended the seminaries in Schwäbisch Hall and Bad Saulgau, graduating from the latter in 1894.
Erzberger began his career as a primary school (Volksschule) teacher. At the same time, he also studied constitutional law and economics at Fribourg, Switzerland. In 1896, Erzberger became a journalist working for the Catholic Centre Party’s publication, Deutsches Volksblatt, in Stuttgart, where he also worked as a freelance writer. He eventually joined the party and was promptly elected to the Reichstag in 1903 for Biberach.
By virtue of unusually varied political activities, Erzberger took a leading position in the parliamentary party. He became a specialist in both colonial and financial policy, contributing to the financial reforms of 1909. Three years later, Erzberger became a member of the Fraktionsführung, the leadership of the parliamentary party. He supported a significant build-up of the German military in the years 1912 and 1913.
PATRIOT TURNED PEACEMAKER
Like many others in his party, Erzberger initially supported Germany’s declaration of war in August 1914, carried along by a wave of nationalistic enthusiasm. A month later, he wrote a memorandum, laying out his view on Germany’s war aims, advocating the annexation of Belgium and parts of Lorraine.
Erzberger was also rapporteur to the Reichstag’s Military Affairs Committee, and the “right-hand man” of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. He was in charge of foreign propaganda, especially relating to Catholic groups, and set up a system of information gathering using the resources of the Holy See and of the Freemasons.
Expanding his portfolio, Erzberger was also involved in some diplomatic missions. For example, he worked with Bernhard von Bülow in a failed attempt to keep Italy from entering the war in the spring of 1915. Erzberger wrote letters to leading military authorities with extravagant plans for German annexations… claiming to have “no convictions, but only appetites”.
In the summer of 1917, with the German armies at a stalemate both East and West, Erzberger changed his political stance, and he became one of the leading opponents of unrestricted submarine warfare. Earlier that spring, he met a Russian envoy in Stockholm, Sweden to discuss peace terms. In a speech to the Reichstag on July 6, 1917, Erzberger called on the government to denounce territorial ambitions and conclude a negotiated end to the war. The speech was remarkable at the time… in that he carefully delineated the extent of German military weakness.
The devastating attack on unrestricted submarine warfare had radicalized the socialists in the Reichstag, thus precipitating the shift in foreign policy. Along with the oratory of Friedrich Ebert, Matthias Erzberger galvanized moderate opponents of the ‘war party’ to pacify the starving workers. The intrigues undermined Bethmann-Hollweg’s government, dividing the Chancellor from the Reichstag.
The advance of a manhood suffrage bill precipitated the downfall of Bethmann-Hollweg. Without such legislation, a socialist revolution would be even more certain! That failure along Ludendorff’s refusal to support the war minister triggered his resignation. Erzberger hoped that Bernhard von Bülow would be the next Chancellor, but the post went to Dr. Georg Michaelis. The latter was the nominee of Erich Ludendorff, whose position in the Oberste Heeresleitung (High Command) made him a virtual dictator of Germany.
On July 19th, Erzberger put to a vote what he called a “peace resolution”, which embodied all the points he had made in his speech two weeks earlier:
“As on August 1, 1914, so also now on the verge of a fourth year of war, the words of the speech from the throne still hold: ‘We are not impelled by the lust of conquest.’ Germany took up arms in defense of her freedom, her independence, and the integrity of her soil. The Reichstag strives for a peace of understanding and a lasting reconciliation of peoples. Any violations of territory, and political, economic, and financial persecutions are incompatible with such a peace.
“The Reichstag rejects any plan which proposes the imposition of economic barriers or the solidification of national hatreds after the war. The freedom of the seas must be maintained. Economic peace alone will lead to the friendly association of peoples. The Reichstag will promote actively the creation of international organizations of justice.
“However, as long as the enemy governments refuse to agree to such a peace, as long as they threaten Germany and her allies with conquest and domination, so long will the German people stand united and unshaken, and they will fight until their right and that of their allies are made secure. Thus united, the German people remain unconquerable. The Reichstag feels that in this sentiment it is united with the men who have fought with courage to protect the Fatherland. The undying gratitude of our people goes out to them.”
The resolution passed 212 to 126… receiving additional support from the new Chancellor. But at the same time, Michaelis hamstrung the resolution by merely stating, “as I interpret it”. His proviso became an excuse to ignore the resolution altogether!
During the same month at a closed conference in Frankfurt, Erzberger revealed the content of a pessimistic secret report from Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Ottokar Czernin, to Emperor Karl I. The same report also found its way into the hands of the Allies! Although it has never been proven that Erzberger was responsible, the extreme political right wing now saw him as a traitor to Germany.
The restructuring of the German War Office was deemed vital to moderating extreme militarism. One success was via the Budget Committee of the Reichstag, which Erzberger used successfully to navigate the Auxiliary Service Bill into law. At the end of November 1917, he spoke with eloquence and passion on modernizing the administration, winning widespread socialist support for trying to protect the civil rights of citizens in the Bundesrat. It was an important victory for civilian lawmakers.
In early October 1918, Erzberger entered the new government of Prince Maximilian von Baden as Secretary of State without a specified portfolio. His public attacks on the war effort and the dissemination of information about the fragility of the German military created a climate in which the government found it increasingly difficult to maintain the belief that the conflict could be won. When the Imperial German Navy mutinied at Kiel later that same month, the sailors informed their officers that what they wanted was “Erzberger”, a name that became synonymous with “peace”.
On November 6, 1918, a reluctant Erzberger was sent to negotiate with the Allies in the Forest of Compiègne. Prince Max supposed that Erzberger, being a Catholic civilian, would be more acceptable to the allies than a Prussian military officer. In addition, he believed that Erzberger’s reputation as a man of peace was unassailable.
But hopes that Erzberger would be able to obtain better conditions from the Allies quickly soured. Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the chief Allied negotiator, was unwilling to make any concessions, with the exception of additional time allotted to the German Army for withdrawal from France and Belgium. Erzberger was unsure whether he should hold out for further changes in Germany’s fortunes. On November 10th, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg personally telegraphed Erzberger that the armistice should be signed, with or without modifications. A short while later, Friedrich Ebert, the Social Democrat and Prince Max’s replacement as Chancellor, also telegraphed Erzberger and authorized him to sign the armistice.
As head of the German delegation, Matthais Erzberger signed the armistice ending World War I at Compiègne on November 11, 1918 with the French representative, Marshal Ferdinand Foch. He made a short speech on the occasion, protesting the harshness of the terms, and concluded by saying, “A nation of seventy million can suffer, but it cannot die.” Foch ignored Erzberger’s attempt to shake his hand and was said to have replied, “Très bien” (“Very well”).
Returning to Berlin, Erzberger agreed to serve under Ebert as Chairman of the Armistice Commission, a difficult and humiliating task. He soon fell out of favor with Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau (the eventual Foreign Minister of the new Weimar Republic) for advocating the handing over of Karl Radek to the Entente. Radek was a Bolshevik diplomat and agitator following the collapse of the German Revolution.
After the elections for the Weimar National Assembly in January 1919, Erzberger entered the government of the new German Republic led by Philipp Scheidemann. He was again minister without specified portfolio, but responsible for matters relating to the armistice. But in mid-June of that year, Scheidemann resigned as Chancellor over the harsh terms imposed by the Allies at Versailles. A new government was formed (led by Gustav Bauer), and Erzberger became finance minister and vice chancellor.
POST-WAR SCRUTINY
After the Weimar Constitution came into force in August 1919, Erzberger remained in that position. He supported the Treaty of Versailles, as he saw no military or political alternatives. Erzberger was treated with particular contempt by the nationalist right wing as the man who signed what was being viewed as a humiliating and unnecessary surrender.
However, Erzberger succeeded in pushing new taxation measures through the National Assembly. In July 1919, he introduced what became known as “Erzberger finance reform”. It pursued two goals: (1) to give the German federal government supreme authority to tax and spend, thus ending the dependency of the central government on the constituent states, and (2) to significantly redistribute the tax burden in favor of low to moderate income households. Kriegsabgaben (war levies) on income and wealth, as well as the first German inheritance tax, were introduced. By year’s end, an additional Reichsnotopfer (a one-time “emergency” tax on wealth) was levied, causing outrage among the upper classes.
In March 1920, a federal income tax followed, and its high rates made Erzberger even more unpopular with many on the political right.
The German tax code still bears Erzberger’s imprint. He stabilized national finances, although they remained strained by the burden of reparations. He also reformed and unified the previously independent state railway administrations into the German Reichsbahn, which began to make a profit for the first time and helped pay the war reparations.
In his disputes with the political right, Erzberger put himself in particularly sharp opposition to the German National People’s Party (the old conservatives), on whom he laid the responsibility for the war. The result was a personal dispute with the leader of the Nationalists (the war-time Secretary of State for the Treasury, Karl Helfferich), who published a brochure titled “Fort mit Erzberger!” (“Get rid of Erzberger!”). It ultimately compelled Erzberger to bring legal action against Helfferich for slander. The case was heard in a Berlin court from January 19 to March 12, 1920. The action resulted in a small fine for Helfferich, as German law did not make provision for any damages or penalties for slander. The court, however, took the line that Helfferich’s allegations regarding Erzberger’s corrupt business practices and untruthful statements were partly justified. As a result, Erzberger was consequently compelled by his party to resign his ministerial office and give up his seat in the National Assembly. During the trial, an attempt was made on Erzberger’s life upon exiting the court, leaving him seriously wounded.
He returned once more to the Reichstag (which replaced the National Assembly) in the general election of June 1920. But in accordance with the wish of his party, Erzberger abstained from immediate participation in politics, as proceedings had been instituted against him on a charge of tax evasion.
That same year, Erzberger published a memorandum endeavoring to justify his position during the war. He followed it up with disclosures regarding the attitude of the Holy See in 1917 and the mission of the papal legate in Munich, Eugenio Pacelli (who would become Pope Pius XII in 1939).
Erzberger’s power in German politics was based on his great influence with the Catholic working classes in the Rhineland, Westphalia, central Germany, and Silesia. In the districts’ industrial regions, the Catholic workers were organized in their own trade unions on lines of very advanced social policy, and Erzberger became the leading exponent of their views in the Reichstag. On the other hand, he incurred the strong opposition of the conservative and landed section of the Catholics (some of the higher clergy such Cardinal Archbishop Felix von Hartmann of Cologne) and the Bavarian agricultural interests… as represented by the Bavarian Catholic People’s Party in both the State Diet at Munich and the Reichstag.
Erzberger also was the leader of the left-wing of the Zentrum with Joseph Wirth. Going as far as to say at a meeting of the Reich party committee that ‘left is life, right is death’.
He continued to be pursued by the relentless animosity of the reactionary parties, including conservatives and the national liberals of the German People’s Party. This hostility, which amounted to a vendetta, was based not so much upon Erzberger’s foreign policy — his negotiation of the armistice terms and the decisive influence which he exercised in securing the acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles — as upon his financial policies. Erzberger was suspect for his activities as finance minister in 1919, as the supporter of liberal Catholic trade unions, and (it was said) as political adviser of the Catholic Chancellor of the Reich, Joseph Wirth (who prepared a fresh scheme of taxation designed to impose new burdens upon capital and upon the prosperous landed interests in the summer of 1921).
ASSASSINATION
The denunciations of the conservative and national liberal press went beyond the ordinary limits of party polemics. The Tägliche Rundschau observed, in allusion to Erzberger’s personal appearance:
“He may be as round as a bullet, but he is not bulletproof.”
The climax of these attacks was the murder of Matthias Erzberger on August 26, 1921 in Bad Griesbach, a spa in the Black Forest (Baden) while he went out for a walk. Due to his signing the armistice, Erzberger was regarded as a traitor by many on the political right. Manfred von Killinger, a leading member of the Germanenorden, masterminded the killing by recruiting two members of the ultra-nationalist death squad Organisation Consul: Heinrich Tillessen and Heinrich Schulz. Both were former navy officers and members of the disbanded Marinebrigade Ehrhardt. Erzberger’s assassins were later smuggled into Hungary and prosecuted after the end of the Second World War.
The funeral of Matthias Erzberger turned into a political rally, and one of the speakers was Joseph Wirth. The man who signed the armistice of November 1918 was buried in the Catholic cemetery of Biberach an der Riss. He was forty-five years old.
LEGACY
Erzberger was instrumental in preparing the German nation for peace and in ensuring that the Catholic Centre Party, the predecessors of today’s Christian Democratic Union, retained a modicum of power in an increasingly radicalized Germany. His financial, federal, and rail reforms transformed Germany. With his optimism and sense of responsibility, Erzberger never retreated even in the face of the most difficult tasks.
However, his greatest and most tragic legacy was his signature on the armistice! This, despite the fact that the military was actively pressuring Erzberger to sign as soon as possible, was pointed out for decades afterwards as evidence for the Dolchstoßlegende (“stab-in-the-back myth”), which portrayed the surrender as betrayal by the civilians on the home front, especially Socialist politicians for personal gain, undermining the German Army’s will to fight. Later, the Dolchstoßlegende helped propel Adolf Hitler to power, who made it an integral part of Nazi propaganda. For his role, Matthias Erzberger was branded as one of the Novemberverbrecher (“November Criminals”).