Zehrer, Hans

(1899-1966)

   journalist; central figure in the neoconserva-tive Tatkreis (Tat Circle). Born in Berlin* to a government official, he was active in the youth movement and volunteered for military duty at seventeen in 1916. While pursuing broad studies after the war, he was a Reichswehr* volunteer and helped quell the leftist uprisings that followed the Kapp* Putsch. Forced by the inflation* to abandon his studies, he took a position with Vossische Zeitung (Voss), an Ullstein* paper; he was foreign affairs editor when he began writing for Die Tat* in 1928.

   Zehrer was nostalgic for an agrarian past and believed that he personified a generation in conflict with its elders. His first piece for Voss, "Krisis des Par-lamentarismus (Crisis of parliamentarianism), embodied his dubious attitude toward democracy. When the liberal Voss learned in 1929 that he was secretly writing for Tat, it demanded his resignation. At the direction of Eugen Died-erichs, long-time editor and publisher of Tat, he became the weekly's unofficial editor in October 1929; two years later, after Diederichs s death, he became editor and publisher. Handpicking his coworkers, he formed the Tatkreis with Friedrich Zimmermann (known by the pseudonym Ferdinand Fried), Horst Grü-neberg, Ernst Wilhelm Eschmann, and Giselher Wirsing. Focusing on politics, economics, and sociology, the Tatkreis generated perceptive articles and at-tracted a wide readership.

   Surmising that the middle class was caught in a struggle between laissez-faire capitalism and proletarian socialism, Zehrer championed corporatism. Fearing both restoration and revolution, he proposed a "revolution from above in which the army, led by Kurt von Schleicher,* would join with the trade unions* and such Nazis as Gregor Strasser* to form a broad authoritarian administration. Strasser and Schleicher were introduced at Zehrer s home in the summer of 1932. With Schleicher s resources, Zehrer assumed control of the Berlin daily Tagliche Rundschau and used the paper to promote Schleicher and the notion of a German revolution. Strasser s espousal of Zehrer s scheme helped provoke the former's separation from the NSDAP in December 1932.

   Although Zehrer hoped to salvage his plan despite Hitler s* appointment as Chancellor, he soon grew cautious in Germany s new circumstances. In August 1933 he wrote his final article for Tat and then retired to the North Sea island of Sylt. Long avoiding politics, he eventually became chairman of a small Berlin publishing house. After World War II he returned to journalism, and eventually edited Die Welt.

   REFERENCES:Lebovics, Social Conservatism; George Mosse, Crisis; Jerry Muller, Other God; Stark, Entrepreneurs of Ideology; Fritz Stern, Politics of Cultural Despair; Struve, Elites against Democracy and "Hans Zehrer"; Von Klemperer, Germany's New Con-servatism.