Gustav Stresemann
(Berlin, 1878-1929) German politician of the Interwar period.Belonging to a family of beer entrepreneurs, he had studied economics and came to chair the Federation of Industrialists of Saxony (1902).
Gustav Stresemann
Then he launched into politics, in the ranks of the National-Liberal Party (later called the Popular Party), a right-wing, nationalist and expansionist group that it took a long time to accept the republican and democratic regime established by the Weimar Constitution (1919) and the Versailles Peace Treaty (1918) from which the new regime had been born.He gradually moderated his positions and led the party (which he had led since 1917) to accept the clauses of the Treaty most harmful to Germany, as a way to regain understanding with the Western powers and thus relaunch the country's economic and political influence abroad.
In 1923 Gustav Stresemann was called to preside as Chancellor of the "grand coalition" of government that sought to resolve the critical economic and political situation of the country (aggravated by the occupation of the Rhur mining basin by France as a guarantee the collection of their war indemnities, which the ailing German economy could not pay).
Stresemann had the courage to suspend the policy of passive resistance decreed by his predecessors and very popular among the population, in order to seek a negotiated solution; it managed to stabilize the framework, and thwarted the attempted ultra-nationalist coup d'état (the "beer hall putsch", 1923) led by Hitler.Although he fell from power that same year, he remained Minister of Foreign Affairs in all governments until his death in 1929.
With his policy of dialogue and consensus, he managed to strengthen Germany's international position and, indirectly , its internal stability: it improved relations with France and Great Britain by accepting the Dawes Plan for the payment of war reparations (1924), the border and security pacts of the Locarno Conference (1925) and the Briand-Kellogg Pact of renunciation of war in international relations (1928); it obtained the evacuation of the Rhur (1925), the entrance of Germany in the League of Nations with a permanent position in the Council (1926) and the withdrawal of the military control of the allies (1927).
Gustav Stresemann received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926, shared with Aristide Briand.He died of a stroke when he had just publicly announced his support for Briand's proposed European political integration plan.
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