Oskar Hergt

Who was Oskar Hergt?

Oskar Hergt was a German nationalist politician, who served simultaneously as Minister of Justice and vice-chancellor from 28 January 1927 to 12 June 1928. Hergt attended the prestigious Domgymnasium Naumburg before reading law at Würzburg, Munich and Berlin. He worked as a Gerichtsassessor in Saxony, and also as a judge in Liebenwerda. Hergt held various senior offices at the Prussian Ministry of Finance from 1904 to 1914. Previously a member of the FKP, which was dissolved after the First World War, Hergt was a founding member of the right-wing monarchist DNVP and the first party chairman. First elected to the Reichstag in 1920, he was seen as one of the more moderate members of the party, and his support for the Dawes Plan in 1924 was seen as a betrayal of the party's line and led to his replacement with the more hardline conservative Kuno von Westarp. As vice-chancellor, Hergt was the most senior DNVP politician in Wilhelm Marx's coalition government, but after losing the DNVP's leadership election in October 1928 to Alfred Hugenberg, he became an increasingly minor figure in the radicalised DNVP. After the rise of the Nazi Party, Hergt retired from politics.