Kuno von Westarp | |
|---|---|
 Westarp in 1924 | |
| Chairman of the German National People's Party | |
| In office 24 March 1926 – 20 October 1928 | |
| Preceded by | Johann Friedrich Winckler |
| Succeeded by | Alfred Hugenberg |
| Member of theReichstag | |
| In office 24 June 1920 – 4 June 1932 | |
| Constituency | Potsdam II |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 12 August 1864 |
| Died | 30 July 1945(1945-07-30) (aged 80) |
| Political party | |
| Occupation | Jurist |
CountKuno Friedrich Viktor von Westarp (12 August 1864 – 30 July 1945) was a conservative politician in Germany.
Westarp was born inLudom (present-day Ludomy,Poland) in the PrussianProvince of Posen, the son of a senior forestry official. He attended theGymnasium secondary school inPotsdam and studiedjurisprudence at the universities ofTübingen,Breslau,Leipzig, andBerlin, passed theStaatsexamen in 1886 and did his military service inBreslau and Potsdam, where he was elevated to a reserve officer of the1st Foot Guard regiment.
In 1887 he began his career in civil service at the administrative district (Landkreis) office inFreienwalde,Brandenburg whose head wasTheobald von Bethmann Hollweg, the laterChancellor of Germany. After his secondStaatsexamen in 1891 Westarp continued his career as anassessor inGostyn andBomst in Posen, and inStettin. He joined the service of the Prussian State Ministry in 1902 and became Chief of Police in theSchöneberg andWilmersdorf suburbs ofBerlin, before in 1908 he was appointed a senior judge at the Prussian administrative court.
Westarp had joined theGerman Agrarian League in the 1890s, his political advancement began in 1908 as a member of the GermanReichstag parliament as a member of theGerman Conservative Party, from 1913 to 1918 as head of the parliamentary group. DuringWorld War I, he agitated against the 1917Reichstag Peace Resolution, advocated the use of unrestrictedsubmarine warfare and rejected the reform of thePrussian three-class franchise initiated by Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg.
After theGerman Revolution of 1918–19, Westarp became one of the founding members of theGerman National People's Party (DNVP). From 1919 he worked as an editor of the conservativeKreuzzeitung newspaper whose shareholder he became in 1925. While his career in civil service ended with his retirement in 1920, he was again elected into theReichstag parliament of theWeimar Republic. Initially an exponent of thefar-right, anti-democratic forces within his party, he was involved in the preparations of the failedKapp Putsch, however, he adopted more centrist positions in the mid-1920s, rising to become head of the DNVP parliamentary group and party chairman in 1926.
In 1925 the DNVP had temporarily abandoned its anti-republican attitude by joining the German cabinet in a liberal-conservativecoalition government under ChancellorHans Luther. However, in the1928 federal election, the party suffered a disastrous defeat and had to accept the formation ofSocial Democratic government under ChancellorHermann Müller. Westarp resigned as chairman; when in 1930 his support for the government ofHeinrich Brüning did not meet with the approval of his party, and because of the anti-republican tendencies of his successorAlfred Hugenberg which became manifest during the1929 referendum, he finally left the DNVP in 1930. In the same year he andGottfried Treviranus were among the founders of the moderateConservative People's Party (KVP), with which he sat in the Reichstag until 1932.
Westarp did not stand for another seat in the1932 federal election whose outcome was a triumph of the risingNazi Party. Upon the 1933Machtergreifung he retired into private life. Suspected by theNazi authorities to be involved in the20 July plot, preliminary investigations against him furnished no proof. At the end ofWorld War II, he was temporarily arrested bySoviet occupation forces in Berlin but soon released and died shortly afterwards.
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