Ernst Trendelenburg

Ernst Trendelenburg (13 February 1882 - 28 April 1945) was a German politician and civil servant of the DDP and later an independent politician in the Weimar Republic. He most notably served as Reich Minister of Economics for two terms, serving from 1930 to 1931 and as acting minister in 1932. Prior to this, he had served for 9 years as a State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Economics. Trendelenburg was also briefly Head of the Reich Group Industry from 1935 to 1936 in Nazi Germany.

Ernst was born in Rostock in the German Empire, the son of prominent surgeon Friedrich Trendelenburg. The Trendelenburg's had been a notable family as philologists and philosophers prior. He studied law at university, graduating from the University of Greifswald. After graduating he was an unskilled worker, but eventually rose in the ranks when he transferred to the Reich Ministry of Economics in 1917 while being a senior member of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG). He joined the DDP in 1918, and a year later was appointed Reichskommissar for Import and Export Permits, but he later went back to the Ministry of Economics where he became State Secretary until 1932. That same year he became Under-Secretary General to the League of Nations, where he helped lay the foundations for economics but he resigned after a year following Germany's withdrawal from the league.

In June 1930 he was appointed Reich Minister of Economics by chancellor Heinrich Brüning, due to him being non-partisan and supporting Brüning's policies. His time there saw the start of the European banking crisis of 1931. He supported foreign competition and breaking up cartels, and criticized government regulations on the economy. He left this role in October 1931, but served as acting minister in May 1932. After leaving, he served as Chairman of Vereinigte Industrieunternehmungen AG (VIAG) and Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft, but did not join the NSDAP although he worked closely with the Nazi regime. He was appointed Head of the Reichsgruppe Industrie for a year starting in 1935, and was later briefly Head of the Reich Iron Association (RVE) in 1942. He committed suicide in 1945 by overdosing on Veronal, a sleeping aid, after the rape of his daughter following the Battle of Berlin by Russian soldiers.