Gustav stresemann significance level

_ Dr. Karl Heinrich Pohl, professor emeritus, Kiel University. 2012.*

If one takes a brief look at the life and political work of Gustav Stresemann, then it seems almost pointless to ask if he can be considered a liberal role model.

Who else, if not Gustav Stresemann, possessed the necessary personal, political and statesmanlike qualities and the sustainability in political work to enter the collective memory of the Germans and become a (perhaps not only) liberal role model for the Federal Republic after 1945?

The originally imperial liberal, the supporter of the monarchy and the “wild warmonger” of the First World War, changed – so the general opinion – into a personality who practiced peaceful forms of problem solving in both domestic and foreign policy since 1923.[1] Stresemann is therefore honoured in journalism and academia as a good German and at the same time as a great and early European.[2] As a “Republican out of reason”,[3] he courageously commi