GERMANY: Raffendes, Schaffendes

Last week Adolf Hitler lost an old and helpful friend.

In 1919 feverish, ambitious young Adolf Hitler heard a lecture by a disgruntled young construction engineer named Gottfried Feder. Feder, a native of Würzburg, boiled down Germany’s economic troubles to too much raffendes Kapital (“international, Jewish, exploitive”), too little schaffendes Kapital (“national, purely German, creative”). Later Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “When I heard Feder . . . the idea instantly flashed through my head that I had now found my way to one of the prime essentials for the foundation of a new party.”

Gottfried Feder marched with Hitler in the abortive Munich Putsch of 1923. When Hitler came to power ten years later he made Feder Secretary of State in the Ministry of Economics.

But Feder’s monetary views were radically opposed to those of Hitler’s financial wizard, Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht. In 1934 Feder was “temporarily” retired on half pay. Thereafter he pottered about with city planning.

Last week in Murnau, Upper Bavaria, grey Gottfried Feder, 58, whose mustache was even smaller than Hitler’s left the world where he had been obsessed by notions of raffendes and schaffendes Kapital.