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Concept
Hans-Joachim von Merkatz
Summary
Hans-Joachim von Merkatz (7 July 1905 – 25 February 1982) was a German politician. He was Federal Minister of Justice from 1956 to 1957. He was a member of the Bundestag from 1949 to 1961. He was a member of the German Party before joining the Christian Democrats in 1960.
Merkatz was born at Stargard in the Prussian province of Pomerania into a family of Prussian officers and functionaries, ennobled in 1797. His father, a Hauptmann (Captain) in the Imperial German Army, died near Vilnius in 1915, on the Eastern Front of World War I. Merkatz received his primary education in Wiesbaden (Hesse), Jena and Naumburg (both in Thuringia). Initially immatriculated for agriculture, he turned to study law and national economics at the University of Jena from 1928 to 1931.
Merkatz received his doctorate at the University of Jena in 1934 and his approbation as a lawyer in 1935. The same year, von Merkatz started lecturing foreign and international law at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in Berlin. In 1938, he became secretary general of both the Ibero-American Institute and the German-Spanish Society, both in Berlin. The German-Spanish Society, founded in 1918, was concerned with the public relations to Spain. Since the Nazi take-over of 1933, the society was increasingly incorporated into the Nazi propaganda apparatus, and used to propagate the New Order ideology.
When World War II broke out in 1939, he was drafted into Wehrmacht service, but retired in 1941 due to a severe illness. He then continued to work at his post in Berlin, until the Soviet Red Army advanced towards Berlin. The final stages of the war had confronted Merkatz with decreasing loyalty to the Axis powers in Spain and seizure of Eastern Germany by the Soviets. He nevertheless remained confident in the final succession of the New Order and in the ability of the German forces to repel and avenge the Soviet forces. During the Battle of Berlin, Merkatz's parents-in-law were killed by Soviet forces in Wusterwitz (Brandenburg), and the family fled westward to settle in Hämelschenburg near Emmerthal (Lower Saxony).
Official source
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