MOLDENHAUER, PAUL

MOLDENHAUER, PAUL (1876–1946), industrial leader and politician; served as Economics and Finance Minister in the last cabinet of Hermann Mu¨ller.* 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 Reichstag* 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 Berlin* 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 Mu¨ller'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 Mu¨ ller's government), the steadily deteriorating crisis led him to reintroduce it in June 1930 as Heinrich Bru¨ning's* Finance Minister. When the DVP repudiated the proposal, Moldenhauer resigned; he had served Bru¨ning 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 employee pension accounts upon the liquidation of IG Farben.