Georg Gothein (1857-1940), German engineer, politician and economist.

© Article written by Gabriel Godeffroy for the Central Europe Foundation

Photo: Emil Bieber, “Georg Gothein”, 1904, Deutsches Historisches Museum

After his studies at the University of Breslau (today Wrocław) and at the Prussian Mining Academy in Berlin, Georg Gothein started his career as a Mining officer in Silesia and later also worked as Legal Advisor to the Chamber of Commerce in Breslau. Thanks to "his outstanding abilities, which were always employed in the spirit of liberalism and free trade“, Gothein entered the Prussian House of Representatives in 1893 and the German Imperial Assembly in 1901. After the First World War, he was not only a Member of the German National Assembly until 1924, but also briefly Minister without Portfolio and Treasury Minister in 1919, before he left the German government after the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles.

As a free trade advocate, Georg Gothein participated in the activities of the German Trade Agreement Association and the German Free Trade League, which was founded in November 1921, and presided the “German Group” of the Central European Economic Congress from 1926 to 1930. In this capacity, he criticized the Central European project of Elemér Hantos, who advocated an economic rapprochement between the Successor states of Austria-Hungary, for excluding Germany. Gothein was a strong advocate of the economic attachment of Austria to Germany, which he regarded as the only possible path towards the realization of a “Greater Central Europe” or an Economic Pan-Europe. Hantos was opposed to the economic and political attachment of Austria to Germany, because he feared the economic and political predominance of Germany and wanted the Successor States to be able to negotiate as more equal partners.

-- Georg Gothein: “Wirtschaftlicher Zusammenschluß Österreich-Deutschland: als Weg zum Anschluß und zur europäischen Einigung“ (Neue Freie Presse, 6. Mai 1928, Morgenblatt, p.)
-- “Siebzigster Geburtstag Dr. Gotheins” (Neue Freie Presse, 14. August 1927, Morgenblatt, p.)

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