Heinrich Brüning personal archive and Brüning family archive

Heinrich Brüning was Chancellor of Germany from March 30, 1930, until May 30, 1932. From 1937 to 1952, he was affiliated with Harvard University, first as a visiting lecturer and resident of Lowell House, and then as Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Government.

Born November 26, 1885, in Münster, Germany, Heinrich Aloysius Maria Elisabeth Brüning was the youngest son of Friedrich Wilhelm Brüning (1827-1887) and Bernardine Brüning (née Beringhoff) (1846-1924). The Brüning family’s conservative Catholic roots in Westphalia went back several generations. When Heinrich Brüning was born, Friedrich Wilhelm Brüning owned a successful wine and liquor shop, having previously taken over his father’s vinegar factory in Münster.

Heinrich Brüning’s father died when he was only a year old, leaving Heinrich, his older sister Maria (1880-1955), and his older brother Hermann Joseph (1876-1924) fatherless, in the care of their devoted and devout mother Bernardine. Hermann was ordained to the priesthood, joined the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (the Picpus Fathers), studied in Leuven, Belgium, and later worked as a priest in Lancashire in England. Maria worked as a social worker in Münster, after several years living in the homes of various relatives and friends, including the Duruflé family in northern France.

Heinrich Brüning attended the Gymnasium Paulinum in Münster, completing his secondary education with his Abitur in 1904. He then began university study in law in Munich, although he left after only a semester. He subsequently studied philosophy, history, German, and political science in Strasbourg before starting graduate studies in Bonn, researching in Great Britain and spending time with his brother Hermann during his studies. Brüning’s doctoral thesis "Die finanzielle, wirtschaftliche und gesetzliche Lage der englischen Privateisenbahnen unter Berücksichtigung der Frage ihrer Verstaatlichung“ (The financial, economic and legal status of English private railroads considering the question of their nationalization) was supervised by the economist Heinrich Dietzel, and Brüning earned his doctorate in 1915.

The First World War brought a number of changes to the Brüning family. The entire family’s correspondence with friends and their own relatives in France quickly became impossible. After the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, Hermann Brüning was interned briefly as an enemy national. The Catholic hierarchy secured Hermann Brüning’s transfer to a diocese in the United States, and correspondence with his family in Münster remained possible via neutral Holland until the United States entered the war. Heinrich Brüning volunteered for military service in the German army, and despite his frail physical health and short-sightedness, he joined Infanterieregiment Graf Werder Nr. 30 and later transferred to MG Scharfschützen Abt.12. During the war, he was quickly promoted as an officer, was wounded several times, and was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery.

When the First World War ended, Hermann Brüning found himself in the United States as the representative of the Catholic bishops, working to promote awareness and raise funds for Catholic relief efforts in Central Europe. Hermann Brüning’s work in the United States earned the endorsement of the Pope, and Pius XI named him a domestic prelate. Hermann Brüning’s Catholic relief work came to an abrupt end with his death in 1924, only a few months before his mother Bernardine died. Unlike his brother Hermann who worked for the Catholic Church abroad, Heinrich Brüning entered Catholic politics in interwar Germany. In 1918, Heinrich Brüning moved to Berlin, where he eventually worked as an assistant to Adam Stegerwald, then the Prussian welfare minister and a Catholic trade union leader. Brüning moved in 1920 to a leadership role in Stegerwald’s non-socialist trade union, the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund. From Brüning’s position in the union, he worked closely with the union newspaper Der Deutsche, editing it for several years. Brüning entered parliamentary politics when he won a seat in 1924 representing Breslau for the Catholic Center Party, over time becoming close and well acquainted with his Silesian constituents. In the Reichstag Brüning made a name for himself as a financial and tax expert, working across party lines crafting solutions to practical economic issues. Although a newcomer to leadership in the Center Party, in December 1929, Brüning was unanimously elected leader of his party’s group in the Reichstag.

When a broad parliamentary coalition collapsed in late March 1930, German President Paul von Hindenburg intervened to create a cabinet that excluded the socialists. Brüning was appointed chancellor leading this minority government. Brüning’s first cabinet confronted a dire economic situation not only due to the world economic crisis but also a result of particular German issues related to reparations payments and bank instability. A desire to cut costs and pursue deflationary policies shaped Brüning’s entire period in office. Because of his government’s lack of a majority in the Reichstag, the cabinet was often forced to rely on the president’s powers under article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to issue emergency decrees in lieu of legislation. When one of these decrees was overturned by the Reichstag in 1930, the parliament was dissolved and a new election was called.

The elections of 1930 marked a radical break in the history of the Weimar Republic. Support for the radical Nazi and Communist parties surged, and together they won almost a third of the Reichstag’s seats. This forced an informal alliance between the socialists and Brüning’s government in which the socialists tolerated the conservative cabinet to avoid a more right-wing government that incorporated the Nazis. President Hindenburg frequently applied pressure to push the cabinet in a more right-wing direction, and he prompted the October 1931 cabinet reshuffle that led to Brüning taking on the duties of foreign minister. As chancellor, Brüning spearheaded Hindenburg’s reelection campaign, enlisting socialist and Catholic voters to support the elderly field marshal over Adolf Hitler. Only a few months after Hindenburg’s successful reelection, behind-the-scenes political maneuvering led to Hindenburg replacing Brüning with Franz von Papen.

After his dismissal as chancellor, Brüning returned to the Reichstag until the Nazi seizure of power led to the dissolution of political parties and the parliament. During the early years of the Third Reich, Brüning was targeted by the Nazis for political repression, and he fled Germany over the Dutch border into exile in 1934. Brüning’s first years in exile were spent traveling to various western European countries visiting old friends and drafting his memoirs, although he eventually settled semi-permanently in London. While in Great Britain, Brüning embarked on an academic career starting with lectures at Oxford University. In 1936, he was invited to give six lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, which were followed by Brüning’s 1937 Godkin Lecture at Harvard on "The Essentials of Free Government and the Duties of the Citizen." Brüning immigrated to the United States in 1937 and came to Harvard as a visiting lecturer, beginning his long-term residence in Lowell House. In 1939, he was named Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Government in the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration. During the Second World War, Brüning worked behind the scenes to save friends trapped in Europe and drafting memos on the possibilities for a postwar peace. Brüning also continued work on various drafts of his memoirs, aided by his long-term secretary Claire Nix, who worked for Brüning from his early years at Harvard through the end of his life.

After the Second World War, Heinrich Brüning remained active behind the scenes putting together affidavits and testimony for old colleagues’ denazification trials and corresponding with many friends. Brüning retired from Harvard in 1952, taking up an appointment as Professor of Political Science at University of Cologne. Although there was always speculation about Brüning’s return to politics in West Germany, his greatest postwar political act was a 1954 speech at the Rhein-Ruhr-Klub in Düsseldorf in which he criticized Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s foreign policy. After the subsequent uproar in the press and his sister Maria’s death in 1954, Brüning retired and returned to the United States to live in quiet seclusion in Norwich, Vermont until his death on March 30, 1970. His memoirs, on which he worked from his earliest days in exile in 1934, were published posthumously.