Andreas Hermes (16 July 1878 – 4 January 1964) was a German agricultural scientist and politician. In the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...

, he was a member of several governments, serving as minister of food/nutrition and minister of finance for the Catholic Zentrum. During the rule of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

, Hermes was part of the

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

resistance, for which he was imprisoned and sentenced to death, but never executed thanks to the intervention of his wife. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, he co-founded the Christian Democratic Union in East Germany.

Early life

Hermes was born on 16 July 1878 in

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

, then part of the Prussian

Rhine province The Rhine Province (), also known as Rhenish Prussia () or synonymous with the Rhineland (), was the westernmost Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822 to 1946. ...

, as the son of Andreas Hermes (1832–1884), a railway worker, and his wife Theresia (1839–1905, née Schmitz). He was raised as a

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

Mönchengladbach Mönchengladbach (, ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany, west of the Rhine, halfway between Düsseldorf and the Netherlands, Dutch border. Geography Municipal subdivisions Since 2009, th ...

, and lost his father at the age of 8. Hermes studied agricultural science and philosophy at

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 in ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. At that time he also travelled widely in Europe and South America, and he developed an interest in crossbreeding European with South American animal stock. In 1901 he became a teacher of agriculture at

Cloppenburg Cloppenburg (; ; ) is a town in Lower Saxony, in north-western Germany, capital of Cloppenburg District and part of Oldenburg Münsterland. It lies 38 km south-south-west of Oldenburg in the Weser-Ems region between Bremen and the Dutch ...

, and from 1902 to 1904 was assistant to an animal breeder at Bonn. In 1905/06 Hermes was awarded a doctorate at Jena with a dissertation on the optimization of crop rotation and then became a research associate at the animal breeding department of the ''Deutsche Landwirtschaftsgesellschaft '' ( German Agricultural Society) in Berlin. In 1911 Hermes was appointed director of the agricultural department of the

International Institute of Agriculture The International Institute of Agriculture (IIA) was the first organization to systematically produce and exchange global data on crops, cultivated land, and trade flows. The late 19th century called for a demand in worldwide data on production, st ...

in Rome. With the start of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, he returned to Germany and worked first for the general staff, then in several functions in the bureaucracy in charge of the national food supply (''Kriegsernährungswirtschaft''), including organising the cultivation of oil seed in the

Danube The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...

district and in the area near

Lake Constance Lake Constance (, ) refers to three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (''Obersee''), Lower Lake Constance (''Untersee''), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein (). These ...

Weimar Republic

After the end of the war, in 1919, Hermes headed the department on agriculture and forestry of the '' Reichswirtschaftsministerium'' (Ministry of Economic Affairs). He joined the Catholic Zentrum. In the

first Müller cabinet First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

Hermes became ''Reichsernährungsminister'' (Minister for Nutrition/Food) in March 1920. Also in 1920, Hermes married Anna Schaller (b. 1894). They had three sons and one (or according to a different source, two) daughters. During his period in office, the '' Reichsernährungsministerium'' was restructured according to his suggestions. In 1922 Hermes in addition to his post as ''Reichsernährungsminister'' became

Minister of Finance A ministry of finance is a ministry or other government agency in charge of government finance, fiscal policy, and financial regulation. It is headed by a finance minister, an executive or cabinet position . A ministry of finance's portfolio ...

. After a short while he resigned from the former post but remained in charge of Finance. He stayed in that office until the resignation of the cabinet of

Wilhelm Cuno Wilhelm Carl Josef Cuno (2 July 1876 – 3 January 1933) was a German businessman and politician who was the chancellor of Germany from 1922 to 1923 for a total of 264 days. His tenure included the beginning of the occupation of the Ruhr by ...

in August 1923. Whilst serving as a minister, Hermes managed the transition from technocratic expert to politician. In 1924 he was elected for the Zentrum to the Prussian Diet and in

1928 Events January * January – British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly demonstrating that DNA is the genetic material. * January 1 – Eastern Bloc emigration and defection: Boris B ...

to the Reichstag. In 1927 he was a member of the German delegation at the International Economic Conference at Geneva. In 1928 he led the German delegation in trade negotiations with Poland. At the same time, Hermes was active in the lobbying/umbrella organizations of the German agricultural industry. In 1928, he became president of the Association of the German Farmers Associations and after the economic crisis of the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

started, this organization became part of the "Green Front". In 1930, he became president of the ''Reichsverband der deutschen landwirtschaftlichen Genossenschaften-Raiffeisen'' (National Association of German Agricultural Cooperatives).

Nazi Germany

In March 1933, even before the passage of the '' Ermächtigungsgesetz'' he resigned from the Reichstag in protest against Nazi policies. He was arrested, charged and, on 12 July, sentenced to four months in prison for his opposition to the Nazis. He then was either affected by an amnesty, or released as his time served in jail counted towards the sentence, according to different sources. He resigned from his positions in the agricultural organizations and in 1936 emigrated to

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

. There he worked as an economic advisor to the government in Bogota from 1936–39. He returned to Germany to collect his family, but the eruption of

prevented his departure back to South America. From 1942, Hermes was in touch with members of the resistance like

Carl Friedrich Goerdeler Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (; 31 July 1884 – 2 February 1945) was a German conservative politician, monarchist, executive, economist, civil servant and opponent of the Nazi regime. He opposed anti-Jewish policies while he held office and was op ...

and the

Kreisau Circle The Kreisau Circle (German: ''Kreisauer Kreis'', ) (1940–1944) was a group of about twenty-five German dissidents in Nazi Germany led by Helmuth James von Moltke, who met at his estate in the rural town of Kreisau, Silesia. The circle was co ...

. Immediately after 20 July 1944 he was arrested and on 11 January 1945 sentenced to death for being an active member of the conspiracy to kill Hitler. In one of Goerdeler's lists he was named as a post-putsch minister for agriculture. However, his wife succeeded in delaying his execution until the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

occupied Berlin.

Post-war

On 7 May 1945, the Soviet occupation authorities appointed Hermes as chief of the nutrition/food department of the city of Berlin. On 19 May 1945, Hermes became one of four deputy mayors of Berlin. He was the only non-communist/socialist member of the city council. He used his positions to work against the threat of a division of Germany. On 26 June 1945 he was one of the founder-members and the first chairman of the ( CDU) of Berlin and the Soviet-occupied zone. As a result of his attempts to lead a pan-German policy and his refusal to agree to the so-called ''Bodenreform'', he was deposed on 19 December 1945 by the Soviet occupation forces as chairman of the CDU. Seeing no chance of continuing to work in Eastern Germany, he left for

Bad Godesberg Bad Godesberg () is a borough () of Bonn, southern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. From 1949 to 1999, while Bonn was the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, most foreign embassies were in Bad Godesberg. Some buildings are still used as br ...

in Western Germany at the end of 1945 where he continued to work against a division of the country. He founded the (Society for the Reunification of Germany) placing himself in opposition to the views of

Konrad Adenauer Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman and politician who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of th ...

. At a party convention at Neheim-Hüsten the western CDU passed a new party manifesto in February 1946, mostly ignoring Hermes' views. In 1947, Hermes became a member of the Bizonal Economic Council (), as chairman of the food committee. In 1948, he was elected president of the , which he founded. He was also made president of the . In 1949, he founded the , an organization working towards the reunification of Germany and an improvement in political relations with Eastern Europe, views that were highly controversial in the CDU at that time. From 1954-58, he was president, later until his death honorary chairman, of the European Confederation of Agriculture (CEA). Simultaneously he served as vice-president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers. Hermes died on 4 January 1964 in Krälingen/

Eifel The Eifel (; , ) is a low mountain range in western Germany, eastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Com ...

References

External links

Biography of Andreas Hermes on the website ''Gedenstätte Deutscher Widerstand'' (German)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hermes, Andreas 1878 births 1964 deaths Scientists from Cologne Politicians from the Rhine Province Scientists from the Rhine Province German Roman Catholics Centre Party (Germany) politicians Christian Democratic Union (East Germany) politicians Christian Democratic Union of Germany politicians Finance ministers of Germany Members of the Reichstag 1928–1930 Members of the Reichstag 1930–1932 Members of the Reichstag 1932 Members of the Reichstag 1932–1933 German political party founders German conservatives in the German Resistance German prisoners sentenced to death Roman Catholics in the German Resistance Members of the 20 July plot People condemned by Nazi courts Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany