MINISTER RESIGNS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17233, 12 April 1930, Page 14

MINISTER RESIGNS

HIS MORALS IN QUESTION DENOUNCER LEAVES PARTY BERLIN, March 3. Is it permissible l’or a Prussian Minister of the Interior to live with a lady to whom he is not legally married? That is the question over which a serious and unprecedented controversy has broken out here. On Friday it was suddenly announced that the Socialist, Herr Grzesinski, had resigned his post. His friends said that bad health was the reason for his retirement. Others said that he had been thrown as a sop to discontented partners in the Prussian Government Coalition, who believed that ho unduly favored his own party in the distribution of offices. Now, however, it has leaked out that tho final decision was provided by Herr Grzesinski’s conjugal affairs. Not that these affairs were a revelation, or could in themselves have forced him from of lie*. It has long been known that llerr Grzesinski parted company with his legal wife 10 years ago, and has since lived in free union with another lady. Nor does anyone doubt that this irregular association would have becomo a second marriage, had not tho real Frau Grzesinski refused to liberate her husband by divorce. But now the situation has been changed by a blow from an unexpected quarter, it was struck by a prominent member of his own party, who attained a certain celebrity as Prefect of Dussoldorf during the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, and is now a presiding judge of tho Chief Administrative Court, which deals with offences by civil servants. On February 3, Herr Grutzncr wrote to the Socialist Prussian Premier, Herr Braun, a letter in which lie drew attention to tho anomalous character of Herr Grzesinski’s marital relationship. EXTR AORDIN A.RY SEQUEL. But tho sequel to tho disclosure of tho letter will probably ho astonishing to many readers. Though it. lias not yet. been seriously suggested that Judge ihutzner had any other motive than might result, from a conscientious interpretation of tho duties of his office, ho has become the butt of a general stonethrowing and mud-slinging, and Herr Grzesinski has been elevated to the rank of the hero of tho hour, on the demo cratic side of politics, at any rate. The Socialist, group in the Prussian Parliament called upon their executive to expel the judge from their midst, “fot dishonorable conduct prejudicial to tho interests of the party.” At the same time they unanimously “voted their thanks to and confidence in Comrade Grzesinski, and sent their heartiest wishes for an early recovery.” The party organ Vorwarts declared that Judge Grutznor’s action “constitutes the worst degeneration of political morality, is the invasion of politics by blackmailing ruffianism, and, moreover, is an outcome of hypocritical double morality.” In fact, is is “a dirty and treacherous method of fighting.”