BREDT, JOHANN VICTOR

(1879-1940)

   politician; served as Heinrich Briining's* Justice Minister. Born to a manufacturing family in Barmen, he worked in 1897-1898 as a trainee with a banking association. Studies in law and economics led to a doctorate in jurisprudence in 1901, a doctorate in phi-losophy in 1904, and, upon completion of his Habilitation in 1909, appointment as Privatdozent at Marburg. Well served by bureaucratic connections, he became Professor of State and Church Law at Marburg in 1910. During 1911-1918 he represented the Free Conservatives in Prussia's* Abgeordnetenhaus; he was among a small group of Free Conservatives who in early 1918 called for abo-lition of Prussia's three-class voting system.

   Following the collapse of the Kaiserreich, Bredt helped found the DNVP; however, annoyed by the Party's involvement in the Kapp* Putsch, he left it in the spring of 1920.Objecting to Hugo Preuss's* draft constitution,* he devised his Entwurfeiner Reichsverfassung (Model for a national constitution) as a sub-stitute merging the offices of President and Chancellor. After helping Hermann Drewitz found the Economic Party* in 1920, he was elected to the Prussian Landtag (1921-1924) and served in the Reichstag* during 1924-1933. At his bidding the Party changed its name in 1925 to National Party of the German Middle Class. In 1926 he joined the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the causes of Germany's military collapse. Active with the Evangelical Church, he wrote several legal opinions concerned with church politics; his research into church law remains of scholarly importance. Finally, during March-December 1930 he was Brüning's Justice Minister. When his Party opposed Brüning's allegedly prosocialist economic policy—that is, his willingness to accept Amer-ican requirements for dollar credits—Bredt reluctantly resigned his ministry. Bredt served briefly as the Economic Party's chairman in 1931. After the November 1932 elections he was his Party's lone representative in the Reichstag. In 1933 he returned to Marburg, where, despite openly opposing the NSDAP, he managed to continue teaching.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Larry Jones, German Liber-alism; NDB, vol. 2.