Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg , 1856-1921, German chancellor. A career civil servant, he became minister of the interior (1905) and secretary of state (1907), and in 1909 succeeded Bernhard von Bülow as chancellor. He favored some reform and worked for a comprehensive insurance law, extension of the franchise, and greater autonomy for Alsace-Lorraine; his legislative efforts were supported in the Reichstag by a coalition of conservatives and centrists. He, along with Admiral von Tirpitz and the Kaiser, bears heavy responsibility for World War I. He greatly increased the German peacetime army, and appearances to the contrary, was anxious to use the Austro-Serbian conflict to break the "encirclement" of the Allies. Although contemptuous of his ally, Austria-Hungary, he accepted the German General Staff's war aims for gaining equality with Britain and Russia by dominating a new "Mitteleuropa." Nevertheless, Bethmann-Hollweg worked for US mediation of the war, and restricted submarine warfare to keep the US neutral. He was forced to resign by Conservatives angered by his promise of electoral reforms in Prussia, and was replaced (1917) by Ludendorff and Hindenburg.

Bibliography: See biography by K. H. Jarausch (1973).

Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von (b. 29 Nov. 1856, d. 2 Jan. 1921). Chancellor of Germany and Minister President of Prussia 1909–17 From 1899 the chief commissioner (Oberpräsident) of the Prussian province of Brandenburg, he became Prussian Minister of the Interior (1905) and German Secretary of State for Home Affairs (1907). Following the failure of his predecessor, von Bülow, to build a parliamentary majority for his government, he tried to seek the consent of parliament as little as possible, with the result that urgently needed reforms, most importantly of the country's finances, could not take place. This political stalemate, and Germany's increasing inability to find the necessary finances to keep up with the arms race, contributed directly to the sense of crisis that led Germany into World War I. More directly, his contribution to the outbreak of the war lay in his unconditional support of Austria after the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo in 1914, in the hope that any ensuing war would be restricted to Russia. From 1916 he became subject to Hindenburg's direction of the war and he was dismissed the following year.