Johannes Popitz

Hermann Eduard Johannes Popitz ( born December 2, 1884 in Leipzig, † February 2nd 1945 in Berlin- Plotzensee ) was a German politician and resistance fighter against National Socialism. He was the father of the sociologist Heinrich Popitz.

Life

The son of a pharmacist studied law and political science in Lausanne, Leipzig, Berlin and Halle. His political career began Popitz 1914-1919 as officers in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. During this time he made ​​his first moves to introduce a VAT in Germany. This actually reaching the so-called spiritual father of the tax in 1919, when he took up his duties in the Finance Ministry. There he worked from 1925 until his retirement in 1929 as Secretary of State. In addition Popitz was from 1922 Honorary Professor of Tax Law and Public Finance at the University of Berlin. Popitz was 1929 to 1944 and president of the Society for Ancient culture whose cultural and political program was the third humanism, which strove for a realization of the ideas of antiquity. In their journal Antiquity, published by prominent philologist Werner Jaeger, also published Popitz. He joined in 1932 the company Wednesday in which members met regularly lectures on their area of ​​expertise. On November 1, 1932 Popitz Reich Minister without Portfolio and acting director of the Prussian Treasury. Took place on April 21, 1933 Popitz's appointment as Prussian Minister.

Popitz received - like all ' bourgeois ' Cabinet Ministers Hitler - on 30 January 1937 by the leaders personally the Golden Party Badge of the NSDAP awarded ( Mitglieds-Nr. 3805233 ). This was associated with the expectation that this will become a member of the Nazi party would be created, but this internally remained controversial and unsettled. After all belonged Popitz also the Bureau founded by Hans Frank, the Nazi German Law Academy and took over the chairmanship of the Committee on Legal and young economists. His revolt against the Nazi regime began in the years 1937/1938, when he saw how the Jews were persecuted and deported. Popitz therefore lodged a 1938 letter of resignation, which was refused. Thereupon, the monarchist and national conservative embossed Popitz began to engage in resistance circles, including with individual members of the Wednesday Club, a conservative opposition group of senior officials and scientists. The writer Paul Fechter, who got to know Popitz in the Wednesday Society, later wrote of him: " Popitz was a fierce opponent of the Nazi state and his men. He it was who made ​​the Mittwochsgesellschaft slowly and carefully a cell of resistance; he has tried at every opportunity, people who had been an opponent of the system at risk, to help them to escape with the help of his connections to the network into which they had entangled. " For Carl Goerdeler, one of the leading conspirators against Hitler Popitz prepared a " Preliminary state law " which should enter into force in Germany after the coup against Hitler.

However, to achieve the change of power legally and without bloodshed, Popitz occurred in the summer of 1943, Carl Langbehn with Heinrich Himmler in contact he tried to persuade her to enter into peace negotiations with the Western powers. At this time, however, Himmler refused to comply with this proposal. Popitz was soon provided thereon by the conspirators around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg as a finance and minister of education, should succeed in the assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. When Himmler completely withdrew because of an intercepted radio message in September 1943 from the talks with Popitz and Goebbels noted in his diary that Hitler Popitz considered an enemy, this plan had failed. Popitz moved from the center of the movement, due to a dislike of the circle of the younger officers around Stauffenberg and the trade union wing of the opposition. At the last ministerial lists the opposition lacked Popitz's name. After the assassination attempt had failed, Popitz was a day later arrested, sentenced on October 3, 1944 by the People's Court under Roland freisler to death and hanged in Plotzensee.

Memory

In the vicinity of the execution site Plotzensee the Popitzweg in 1957 named after him.

At the former Prussian Finance Ministry, the Palais at the moat, at the moat 1 in Berlin -Mitte, Berlin since 1994, is commemorated by a plaque on it. His name also reflects the historic ballroom in the Palais, the Popitz was installed in 1934 to its rescue in the ground floor of a demolished house and the citizens of Berlin had been designed by Schinkel.

By decision of the Leipzig City Council since 2011 carries a street in the district of Gohlis- middle name Popitzweg. Since the sixties, there is also a Popitzweg in Göttingen and in 1956 a John Popitz -Str. in Leverkusen

Writings (selection )

  • Present tasks of the financial and tax policy, Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1927.
  • The memory of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, In: Antiquity, Volume 18, 1942, pp. 1-9;
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