DR. HEINRICH BRUENING

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1931, Page 9

DR. HEINRICH BRUENING

TRADE UNIONIST CHANCELLOR.

DEVOTION TO HIS COUNTRY.

"The following article by Major A. G. Church, D. 5.0., M.P., in Headway, derives special interest from the present economic political crisis in. Germany. In February, 1926, while I was a guest in Berlin, my host invited a : group of the leaders of the Christian Trade Union Movement in Germany to meet me. Among the group were.its President, Dr. Adam Stegerwald, and its genera! secretary, Dr. Heinrich Brueniiig, who had just a year previously -been returned to the- Reichstag for the first time. In February, 1931, .exactly five- years later, Dr. Bruening, now Chancellor of Germany, welcomed mo in the residence which was formerly that of the great Chancellor Bismarck. In 1926 I made a tour of the Ruhr district to give a series of addresses at the principal towns on the post-war economic position of Great Britain, and to make a study of their own movement and industrial conditions.. Throughout that tour Dr. Bruening was . my travellingcompanion, host and interpreter.. In the autumn of the -same year he fulfilled the same offices for me on a tour of Silesia and Eastern Prussia;

On our travels I gathered up details of Dr. Bruening’s career. He was born of Catholic parent© in Munster in ISSS, and. educated at the local State school, from whence he passed.through the Gymnasium to the Uniyergityrnf.’Munich. From Munich he wbpt'-to/-Strassburg, and later to Bonn. At-the;t-hree.universi-ties he studied history,' philosophy, poli-

tical science, and economics. In 1911 he came to England and remained here for two years to familiarise, himself with our language while making a study of the English railway system for a thesis for his Ph.D- (Bonn). He had intended to follow the career of university teacher, but the intervention of the War changed the course of his life, like that of many others who survived it. During the War, in which ho was wounded, he fought on the Western Front. The War over, he first became private secretary to Dr. Stegerwald, then occupying the post of Prussian Minister of Health, and then in 1920 General Secretary of the Christian Trade Union Movement. In 1924 he was returned to the Reichstag as a member for the Breslau district, and as a representative of the Centre, (Catholic) Party, the backbone of which is the Christian Trade Union movement, although the two arc not identical. The latter contains now a large number of Protestants who are represented in the Reichstag by Christian Socialists, Conservatives, and members of the People’s Party. Nobody could be less like the conventional trade union leader than Dr. Bruening. And he is even less like the "typical”’ German of our imagination. He is a dark-haired Saxon, above the average in height, spare and erect, with clear-cut features and dark eyes which light with kindly humour behind their powerful spectacles, with a. pleasing cultured voice in which there is no°traee of' intellectual arrogance, and the air, manner and bearing of priest, rather than politician. But he is a. natural leader of men, quick to appreciate the best qualities in others, aware of, but generous of, their faults, slow to anger or resentment, companionable without being cheaply familiar, ready and courteous in address, and has a. mind stored with properly digested knowledge. There

is neither meanness nor vanity in him. He is passionately devoted to his own country and his own people, but he. is neither blind to their faults nor to the virtues, of their neighbours. For England he has a genuine admiration based on his knowledge of our country and our post-war difficulties. He understands the French, too, and undoubtedly he would welcome any step taken by our three countries towards closed co-opera-tion. It was to promote some fuller measure of co-operation between England and Germany that he first invited me to Germany. In furtherance of his aim. between my two visits to Germany in 1926 he paid one to London, and endeavoured to get in touch with our trade union leaders and prominent members of our Labour Party. In this respect he was not very successful, all except Mr. Ernest Bevin and Mr. Sidney Webb (now Lord Passfield) being reluctant 'to meet, even unofficially, a representative of the Catholic Centre, and what they regarded as a secessionist trade union movement. In 1927 Dr. Bruening paid another visit to England, in company with representatives of the German Government of the day. ' On that occasion he met Mr. Frank Hodges, then Secretary of the Miners’ International, and pointed out to him that it would be better to make an attempt to solve the difficulties facing the mining communities in Great Britain and Germany oy fixing a world export price for coal and reaching agreement on the allocation of

coal markets than indulging in further cut-throat competition with the inevitable corollary of reduced wages and increased hours of work of the miners in both countries.

Among others with him on his 1927 visit was Captain Gottfried Treviranus, an ex-naval officer, for whom President Hindenburg is said to have a. great personal affection, and it is believed that

it was due to his influence that the President turned to Dr. Bruening on the defeat of the Muller Cabinet in March, 1930. This I can say: When I first met Captain Treviranus in in 1926 he told me that he regarded Dr. Bruening as a future Chancellor of Germany. In 1927 he was positive that his friend would ,be Chancellor within five years.. lit 1929, just before the Hague Conference, he told, me that he expected Dr. Bruening. would be Chancellor within 12 months. Events have justified his assertions, and there is no doubt that he has helped to shape the events.’