Paul von Hindenburg (2.10.1847 Posen/Poland – 2.8.1934 Gut Neudeck/Poland)

The son of the Prussian officer and landowner Hans Robert Ludwig von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg likewise pursued a military career. As a Lieutenant, he took part in the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. In 1879, he married Gertrud von Sperling and had three children from this union. In the following four decades of peacetime, he enjoyed an extraordinarily successful military career until he was retired as Commanding General of an army corps in 1911.

At the start of the First World War, Hindenburg was taken back into active service and assumed command of the 8th army. Together with his chief of staff, Major General Erich Ludendorff, he succeeded in inflicting a crushing defeat on the Russian forces that had advanced into East Prussia. This success not only earned him the appointment of Field Marshal, but also laid the foundations for the myth of the “hero of Tannenberg”: Hindenburg was now considered a national hero in large sections of the population. In August 1916, he took over the Supreme Army Command (OHL), again with Ludendorff as his chief of staff, which in the second half of the war formed not only the military but also the political power center of the Reich.

Following the 1918 defeat, Hindenburg pressed Emperor Wilhelm II to abdicate and go into exile. By cooperating with the Council of People’s Representatives in Berlin, he secured the transfer of the field army to the homeland and thus significantly strengthened the new government’s power base. He resigned in July 1919. In the first post-war years, Hindenburg made it his main task to further develop his reputation as a “military commander”. With all his authority, he advocated the stab-in-the-back myth, according to which the army remained “undefeated on the battlefield” and the left, which had destroyed the “home front”, was responsible for the defeat.

In the second round of voting for Reich President on March 29, 1925, Hindenburg,at the age of 77, was elected Reich President as the candidate of the right-wing parties. In the first years of his presidency, Hindenburg governed in accordance with the constitution and particularly supported Stresemann’s foreign policy in the face of strong conservative opposition. However, following the onset of the financial crisis, he resolved in the spring of 1930 to invoke his special presidential authorities as per Article 48 to permanently disengage the government from parliamentary accountability and henceforth govern through “presidential cabinets”. On March 29, 1930, he appointed the Center Party politician Heinrich Brüning as Chancellor and dissolved the Reichstag when the latter vetoed an emergency presidential decree in June 1930. In the subsequent Reichstag elections in September 1930, the Nazi Party increased its share of the vote from 2.6% to 18.3%, which meant that Brüning was dependent on the support of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) for the continued parliamentary toleration of his cabinet.

In the Reich President election of 1932, Hindenburg was confirmed in office for another seven years, but only because the Social Democrats and the Center Party had spoken out in his favor. This circumstance prompted Hindenburg to make a decisive move to the right in domestic policy. He broke with Brüning and attempted to govern with right-wing conservative cabinets, initially with Franz von Papen, then with Kurt von Schleicher. However, the Nazi Party did not succeed in gaining parliamentary toleration; instead, it used its election successes in July and November 1932 (37.4% and 33.1% respectively) to pursue a policy of obstruction. Hindenburg, however, shied away from an unconstitutional dissolution of parliament without calling for new elections. Finally, on January 30, 1933, after much hesitation, the president consented to Hitler’s chancellorship, believing he could “surround” him with right-wing conservative ministers.

With a series of presidential ordinances, Hindenburg enabled Hitler to take the first steps towards a dictatorship. At the ceremonial opening of the newly elected Reichstag in Potsdam on March 21, 1933, Hitler’s submissive demeanor seemed to place him under the authority of the aged military commander. Hindenburg believed that Hitler was the accomplisher of a project of national unification that he had initiated, and renounced the exercise of his constitutional position of power in future. The Enabling Act passed on March 23, 1933 allowed the government to legislate itself anyway and was therefore no longer reliant on the Reich President’s right to issue emergency decrees. With Hindenburg’s death in August 1934, a law passed the day before came into force, according to which the offices of Reich Chancellor and Reich President were combined to create one position, occupied by Hitler.