Moldenhauer, Paul

(1876-1946)

   industrial leader and politician; served as Economics and Finance Minister in the last cabinet of Hermann Müller.* Born to a middle-class family in Cologne, he studied political science before taking a doctorate in law in 1899. After he wrote his Habilitation in 1901 at Cologne s Handelshochschule, he joined the institution s faculty. In 1920 he moved to the University of Cologne. Wartime service as an officer stimulated a political interest that led him to the DVP at war s end. He represented the DVP's right wing in Prussia's* assembly during 1919-1921 and held a Reichs-tag* mandate during 1920-1932. He was a member of IG Farben s* supervisory board and was petitioned by the chemical industry in 1923 to serve on the Reichstag s so-called Kalle Committee; named for DVP deputy Wilhelm Kalle, it promoted Gustav Stresemann's* foreign policy.* Moldenhauer's later proposal for an indigenous directory to govern the Rhineland* was rejected in both Ber-lin* and Paris.

   Due to Stresemann s death in October 1929, Moldenhauer became Economics Minister when Julius Curtius* assumed the Foreign Office; two months later he added the Finance portfolio, which permitted him to represent fiscal policy at the Hague Conference* of January 1930. In March 1930, during the final days of Muller's government, he proposed a tax on all adult citizens in an effort to meet unemployment insurance costs in the deepening depression.* Although the DVP s industrial wing induced him to drop his proposal (with the consequent collapse of Muller's government), the steadily deteriorating crisis led him to reintroduce it in June 1930 as Heinrich Bruning's* Finance Minister. When the DVP repudiated the proposal, Moldenhauer resigned; he had served Brüning for three months.

   Moldenhauer opposed efforts to unite the DVP with the DDP. Antisocialist and privately anti-Semitic,* he briefly favored the NSDAP in early 1932 due to his hatred of the DNVP, "the eternal men of yesterday. After defeat on 5 March 1933 in his final run for the Reichstag, he advised the DVP to disband. He then accepted appointment in July to the World Disarmament Conference.* During 1931-1943 he was an honorary professor at both Berlin s Technische Hochschule and the University of Berlin. After World War II he adjusted em-ployee pension accounts upon the liquidation of IG Farben.

   REFERENCES:David Abraham, Collapse ofthe Weimar Republic; Hayes, Industry and Ideology; James, Reichsbank; Larry Jones, German Liberalism; Taddey, Lexikon.