Otto Heinrich von der Gablentz

Otto Heinrich von der Gablentz (11 September 1898 – 27 April 1972) was a German political scientist, and member of the Kreisau Circle resistance group.

Biography

Gablentz was the son of an officer who fell at Verdun in 1916. His mother came from a Berlinese Huguenot family. He served during the First World War, in which he was seriously wounded in 1917. Gablentz studied political science and was awarded a doctorate in 1920. He was a member of the St. Michael's Brotherhood and advocated religious socialism, as defended by Paul Tillich.

His first job after graduation took him to the Reich Ministry of Economics and the Reich Statistical Office as a consultant in 1925. From 1931 to 1933, he was an expert witness at numerous international conferences in Lausanne, Basel, and London, which dealt with German reparations after the First World War. The National Socialists expelled him from his position in the Reich Ministry of Economics in 1933. He then transferred to the Chemical Industry Economic Group and remained there during World War II. In his new work environment, he met Horst von Einsiedel. In 1940, he was one of the first to join the Kreisau Circle. He was counted by the National Socialists among the assassins of July 20, 1944, but this could not be proven against him.

After the end of World War II, Gablentz was one of the founding members of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in Berlin. In 1965, he resigned from the party, accusing it of a lack of willingness to reform.

From 1948 to 1950, he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Administration for Economics in Bizone and the Federal Minister for Economics, respectively. In 1948, Otto Heinrich von der Gablentz was one of the re-founders of the German Academy for Politics and its director from 1955 to 1959.

In 1953, he was appointed professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin. In 1966, he became emeritus professor. He was a co-founder and from 1955 to 1958 chairman of the Evangelical Working Group (EAK) of the CDU Berlin and from 1953 to 1956 a member of the board of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Berlin.

His son Otto von der Gablentz was German ambassador to the Netherlands, Israel and Russia.

Honors

Since September 11, 1998, a street in the Berlin district of Reinickendorf has been named after Otto Heinrich von der Gablentz, which until then had borne the name of the German general and SS officer Karl Hoefer.

Works

• Die Tragik des Preussentums (1948)
• Geschichtliche Verantwortung Zum christlichen Verständnis der deutschen Geschichte (1949)
• "Reaktion und Restauration." In: Zur Geschichte und Problematik de Demokratie: Festgabe für Hans Herzfeld (1958; edited by Wilhelm Berges and Carl Hinrichs)
• Die versäumte Reform. Zur Kritik der westdeutschen Politik (1960)
• Der Kampf um die rechte Ordnung. Beiträge zur politischen Wissenschaft (1964)
• Einführung in die Politische Wissenschaft (1965)
• Politische Schriften / Immanuel Kant (1965)
• Die politischen Theorien seit der amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitserklärung (1967)

External links

• Works by Otto Heinrich von der Gablentz at German National Library