24 Facts About Walther Rathenau

Walther Rathenau negotiated the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo, which normalised relations and strengthened economic ties between Germany and Soviet Russia.

Two months after the signing of the treaty, Walther Rathenau was assassinated by members of the ultra-nationalist Organisation Consul in Berlin in the belief that he was a literal "Elder of Zion".

Walther Rathenau was born in Berlin to Emil Walther Rathenau, a prominent Jewish businessman and founder of the Allgemeine Elektrizitats-Gesellschaft, a producer of electricity and electrical equipment, and Mathilde Nachmann.

Walther Rathenau studied physics, chemistry and philosophy in Berlin and Strasbourg, and received a doctorate in physics in 1889 after studying under August Kundt.

Walther Rathenau worked as a technical engineer in a Swiss aluminium factory and then as a manager in a small electro-chemical firm in Bitterfeld, where he conducted experiments in electrolysis.

Walther Rathenau returned to Berlin and joined the AEG board in 1899, becoming a leading industrialist in the late German Empire and early Weimar Republic.

Walther Rathenau set up power stations in Manchester, Buenos Aires and Baku.

Walther Rathenau developed an expertise in business restructuring and turning companies around.

Walther Rathenau made substantial profits from commercial lending on a wide industrial scale, which he then reinvested in capital and assets.

Walther Rathenau became close friends with the businessman Bernhard Dernburg, who was appointed Germany's first colonial secretary in May 1907.

Walther Rathenau argued that the colonial justice system must treat Africans fairly.

Walther Rathenau held a sense of inferiority in society due to his Jewishness, realising, in the words of Hans-Ulrich Wehler, "that he had come into the world as a second-class citizen and that no amount of ability and merit could ever free him from the condition".

Walther Rathenau was a strong proponent of full and radical assimilation of German Jews into German society.

Walther Rathenau played a key role in convincing the War Ministry to set up the War Raw Materials Department, of which he was put in charge in August 1914 and where he established its fundamental policies and procedures.

Walther Rathenau left the KRA in March 1915 and became president of AEG upon his father's death in June of that year.

Walther Rathenau's ideas were influential in postwar governments, although in 1919 when his name was mentioned in the Weimar National Assembly as a candidate for president of Germany, there was a burst of laughter among the other members.

Walther Rathenau supported Wirth's "fulfilment policy", which attempted to show that Germany was unable to meet the Entente's reparations demands by making a good faith effort to fulfil them.

In 1922, Walther Rathenau became foreign minister in Wirth's second cabinet.

Walther Rathenau angered them by negotiating the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Union, which was signed on 16 April 1922 on the sidelines of the Conference of Genoa.

Walther Rathenau carefully saw to it that no connections between him and the assassins could be detected.

The Nazis systematically wiped out public commemoration of Rathenau by destroying monuments to him, closing the Walther-Rathenau-Museum in his former mansion and renaming streets and schools dedicated to him.

Walther Rathenau is generally acknowledged to be, in part, the basis for the German noble and industrialist Paul Arnheim, a character in Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities.

Walther Rathenau appears as the ghostly subject of a Nazi seance in a famous scene in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

In 2017, the events and aftermath of Walther Rathenau's assassination were depicted in the first episode of the National Geographic series Genius.