Axel August Gustav Johann Freiherr von Freytagh-Loringhoven (1 December 1878 – 28 October 1942) was a Baltic German who became a professor of constitutional and international law and emigrated from Russia to Germany in 1917. He was a Völkisch-minded, antisemitic, nationalist and monarchist. A founding member of the German National People's Party and an opponent of the Weimar Republic, he supported Adolf Hitler becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He served as a Reichstag deputy from 1924 to 1942 and was a member of the Prussian State Council. He was also Germany's representative on the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
Life in Russia through the First World War
Freytagh-Loringhoven came from a Baltic German noble family. He was born in Arensburg (today, Kuressaare) in what was then the Russian Governorate of Estonia. He attended the Gymnasium in Arensburg and Riga. He then studied law from 1897 to 1901 at the University of Dorpat (today, the University of Tartu), where he was a member of the German-speaking student association . From 1901 to 1902, he performed military service as a one-year volunteer with the Imperial Russian 13th Vladimir Dragoon Regiment as a lieutenant of reserves. He later took part in the Russian Revolution of 1905 with the Baltic Defense Force. After receiving a Doctor of Law degree in 1908, he became a lecturer at Saint Petersburg State University, also writing political articles as the editor of a German-language newspaper, the Sankt Petersburger Zeitung. In 1910 he became an associate professor of international law at Yaroslavl State University. In 1911 he received a full professorship at the University of Dorpat, however, during the First World War, he had to flee Russia and emigrated to Germany. Because of his knowledge of Russia and the Russian language, in 1917 he became a legal advisor to the Oberbefehlshaber Ost, the Supreme Commander of German Forces in the East. He was also appointed as a judge at the high court in Kaunas.
Career in the Weimar Republic
In 1918, Freytagh-Loringhoven received an appointment as professor of law at the University of Breslau (today, the University of Wrocław), teaching constitutional, administrative and international law there until his death. He was not a supporter of the German Revolution of 1918–1919. He was opposed to the democratic system of government that was instituted and remained a committed monarchist. In 1919, he became a member of the board of the local Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, the largest and most influential antisemitic organization in Germany. He was also a member of the monarchist Bund der Aufrechten (League of the Upright), which was also antisemitic. Both organizations were banned after right-wing extremists murdered Walter Rathenau, the German Foreign Minister who was Jewish. Freytagh-Loringhoven rejected the Weimar Constitution because, among other factors, its chief author, Hugo Preuß, was Jewish. He blamed the Social Democrats (SPD), the Communists and the Jews for Germany's defeat in the First World War that he believed resulted from the revolution, the so-called stab-in-the-back myth. Since most of the parties in the Weimar Coalition, such as the SPD, the German Center Party and the German Democratic Party had supported the signing of the Versailles Treaty, he held them responsible for its adverse provisions, including reparations and the war guilt clause.
Freytagh-Loringhoven was a bitter enemy of the Weimar Republic and expressed anti-republican views in his books and newspaper articles, including the legal opinion that its constitution was illegitimate because of its revolutionary origins, and that Prince Max von Baden, Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann were traitors. He also advocated these theories in his lectures and was able to fend off disciplinary proceedings that were initiated against him by citing parliamentary immunity after he was elected as a parliamentary deputy in 1924.