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Revision as of 21:23, 17 January 2009
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Andreas Hermes (18 July 1878 – 4 January 1964) was a German Christian Democratic Union politician, agricultural scientist and a member of the resistance to Nazism.
He was born in Cologne and he studied agriculture and philosophy at the universities of Bonn, Jena and Berlin. He then taught agriculture and was an agricultural adviser to a livestock breeder. 1906 he was awarded a doctorate by Jena University for a thesis on 'the optimization of the rotation’. Before and during the First World War, he served in various scientific and advisory functions in the agricultural field.
In 1919 he was appointed to the Reich Ministry for Economic Affairs in Berlin. In 1920 he became Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture and from October 1921 to August 1923 he headed the Reich Ministry of Finance. From 1924 to 1928 he was a member of the Prussian parliament and from 1928 to 1933 he was also a member of the Reichstag. He belonged to the Centre Party. He was president of the Reich Association of German agricultural cooperatives from 1930 to 1933 and President of the Association of German Farmers' Associations, that was renamed the Christian Association of German Farmers' Associations in 1931.
He openly opposed the Nazis from 1933 and served four months in prison. In 1936 he went into exile in Colombia. As he was separated from his family he returned to Germany at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. He then developed contacts with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and the Kreisau Circle and was earmarked to be the Minister of Agriculture had the July 20 plot succeeded. He was sentenced to death by the People's Court on 11 January 1945, but due to the efforts of wife his execution was postponed and he survived the war.
After the war he was the co-founding chairman of the CDU in Berlin in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. Facing opposition by the Soviets he moved to Bad Godesberg, and joined the CDU in West. From 1947 to 1948 he was a member of the Economic Council, and chairman of the nutrition committee. From 1948 to 1955 he was president of the German Farmers' Association.