Barmat scandal

As Barmat scandal or Barmat Kutisker scandal two originally separate scandals during the Weimar Republic are referred to, which were often referred to collectively in the then public, as they were known at the same time and because the damaged banks and therein involved politicians partly were identical.

The case Kutisker

On December 10, 1924, the Berlin criminal police arrested the 1873 in Russian Poland born, resident since 1919 in Berlin, with the sale of German army material employed Ivan Baruch Kutisker on charges of property crimes to the detriment of the Prussian State Bank. The judicial preliminary investigations and the investigation of the investigating committee of the Prussian Landtag revealed that he uncovered in the amount of the Prussian State Bank exchange loans Had received 14.2 million RM. The suspicion of bribery leading members of the SPD by Kutisker could be neither confirmed nor eliminated during investigation, the suspicion of bribery has been confirmed, however. After the hitherto longest criminal trial of the German judicial history with 198 days of the hearing he was on June 30, 1926 for fraud and bribery to 5 years in prison, sentenced 10 years loss of civil rights, a fine of 4.5 million RM and to banishment after serving the sentence. Kutisker went against the judgment in appeal, but died on July 13, 1927, the day before the announcement of the Court of Appeal, in Berlin.

The case Barmat

Also on charges of fraudulent financial transactions and also on charges of bribery of officials was on 31 December 1924 in Uman (Ukraine ) -born, resident in the Netherlands since 1906 and since 1908 active in the local Social Democratic Party in 1887, since 1919 in Berlin resident Julius ( Judko ) Barmat arrested. The investigation also led to the indictment of his 1892 born in Łódź brother Henry ( Herschel ) Barmat, while the other three siblings were not involved in the scandal. Contacts with German Social Democrats passed since the visit of a SPD delegation in the Netherlands in late 1918.

By 1924, the brothers Barmat the Amexima Group built thanks to inflation gains of up to 14,000 employees on which the field of food imports to Germany was mainly active, but among other things the the paper mill AG Chromo in Altenburg ( Thuringia), the Westerwald lignite AG in Hergenroth, the terracotta art AG in Regensburg, the Berlin- Burger iron works and iron foundry and machine shop J. Roth AG, Berlin belonged.

The end of 1924 This group collapsed in debt. The total losses amounted to about 39 million marks, of which 34.6 million RM were not sufficiently secured loans of public banks ( including 14.5 million RM, shortly before the collapse of the imperial post and RM 10.3 million of the Prussian State Bank). The General Court held that the Reich postal minister was possible to determine Anton Hoefle ( center ) to the granting of credit " in part by unpaid, partly by dahrlehnsweise grants " (interest- free ) by the Barmat brothers. Among the leading members of the SPD, especially the former Chancellor Gustav Bauer had by his statement before the investigating committee of the Reichstag, " no financial benefit " from Barmat to have acquired, greatly compromised their Wahrheitswidrigkeit proved by proof of payment of commissions from Barmat Bauer. In contrast, similar allegations against the former president, Friedrich Ebert proved to be completely unfounded.

Since the allegations of fraud before the trial by jury could not be proved, the conviction took place on March 30, 1928 only because of active bribery: Julius Barmat was eleven, Henry Barmat six months in prison, followed by five months in detention suffered were counted. 1929 Julius Barmat received probation for the remainder of his sentence. After that he was doing business until his death in Lithuania and Latvia, but probably lived mostly in Belgium and the Netherlands, where he died in Brussels on 6 January 1938. At the time of Julius ' release from prison, the public interest in the case had been cooled to the point that news about the fate of Henry's and the other siblings are missing.

Contemporary reception

Both partial scandals aroused in the contemporary press as well as other business activities, a lively response, but with quite different peak. While the right wing and radical press regarded the cases as examples of the silting up of the republican system, recognized the radical left-wing press in the cases, rather the evidence of the Verfaultheit of capitalism. Only the SPD and the Center Party affiliated newspapers rated from but for obvious reasons the scandal less negative.

The fact that both Kutisker and the Barmats were Eastern European Jewish origin, was indeed mentioned in general terms, but otherwise played a quite subordinate role. So reported the Bavarian government in a memorandum on the " profound and dangerous rebellion " among the local peasant and commercial population, because " measured with the use of state funds to extend credit with unjust measures " will. It will certainly " be charged that much of the news appearing in the press tendentious inaccurate or exaggerated," the population is. However, "what is not disputed and can not be disputed is already sufficient in itself to elicit these effects. With great distrust one is the parliamentary measures to remedy these issues with, and even confidence in the judicial inquiry is not as unshaken as ever. "

Reichstag President Paul Lobe (SPD ), however, accused on 27 February 1925 on a public meeting in Wroclaw heavy industry to try to distract with the scandal reports in the bourgeois press of the Ruhr compensation.

A agitational " second flowering " witnessed the scandal in the last days of the Weimar Republic, when he spoke of the Nazi Party, along with other cases like the Sklarek scandal as proof of their accusations against the state as "Jews" - was used and " slide Republic."