Georg Michaelis (8 September 1857 – 24 July 1936) was the chancellor of the German Empire for a few months in 1917. He was the first (and the only one of the German Empire) chancellor not of noble birth to hold the office. With an economic background in business, Michaelis' main achievement was to encourage the ruling classes to open peace talks with Russia. Contemplating that the end of the war was near, he encouraged infrastructure development to facilitate recovery at war's end through the media of Mitteleuropa. A somewhat humourless character, known for process engineering, Michaelis was faced with insurmountable problems of logistics and supply in his brief period as chancellor.
Biography
Early life
Michaelis, born in Haynau in the Prussian Province of Silesia, grew up in Frankfurt (Oder). He studied jurisprudence at the University of Breslau, the University of Leipzig and the University of Würzburg from 1876 to 1884, becoming a Doctor of Laws.
From 1885-89, he lived and worked in Tokyo, Japan as a law professor of the Law School of the Society for German Sciences.
After his return to Germany, he became a member of the Prussian administration. In 1909 he was appointed as undersecretary of state to the Prussian Treasury in Berlin. From 1915 onward, he headed the Imperial Grain Office, which was responsible for the administration of Prussian corn and wheat during World War I.
Chancellor
After the Reichstag and the High Command (OHL) forced the resignation of Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg on 10 or 13 July 1917, Michaelis emerged as the surprise candidate for both chancellor of Germany and Minister President of Prussia. Army commander Paul von Hindenburg agreed because Michaelis was the army's man.
He had visited the OHL on several occasions in his position as Undersecretary of State in the Prussian Ministry of Finance and Commissioner of Food Supplies, when his brusque manner had made a good impression on staff officers present. “The truth was that anyone more radical than Bethmann would have been unacceptable to the High Command as Chancellor, while anyone more reactionary would have been unacceptable to the Reichstag; the only way out was to choose a nonentity.”
Michaelis was described as "Germany's first bourgeois chancellor", as he was the only non-titled person to serve as chief minister during the Hohenzollern monarchy's 400-year rule over Prussia and Germany. But the forces of the German General Staff remained in control behind the scenes.
On 19 July, the Reichstag passed Erzberger's Peace Resolution for "a peace without annexations or indemnities", after the chancellor's speech "devalued" the Peace. The inability of the government to impose controls on rising prices, demands for wage increases, strikes, and mounting economic chaos, drove the "political fixers" towards a military takeover of the reins of power. The Kaiser wanted a chancellor who could manage the Reichstag, and the army wanted a chancellor who would bring about a "German Peace".
On 25 July 1917, Michaelis told the crown prince that the devil was in the detail; "I have deprived it of its most dangerous features by my interpretation of it. One can make any peace one likes with this resolution", he reassured the heir to the throne. But it was a feint, and Michaelis’ role in the discreditable episode was designed to facilitate a permanent closure of the Reichstag.
The army perceived the majority parties as posing a threat to stability in Germany in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution had brought an end to the Russian war effort. But this had left him very "uncertain" as to the place of the Central Powers. Knowing Austro-Hungary was bankrupted by the fighting, he understood their demand to sue for peace; but the military was unwilling to relinquish any power to the civilian authorities. The OHL hoped to destabilize Ukraine and the Baltic States so as to bring Russia's ailing Tsarist regime to the negotiations, while guaranteeing Germanic frontiers, in more than Michaelis' status quo ante bellum.
But Michaelis was a pragmatist and a realist, whatever the Kaiser might have believed about military victory.
The Chancellor chaired the Second Kreuznach Conference discussing the fate of Alsace-Lorraine on 14 August 1917.