Gerlach, Helmut Georg von

Journalist, politician

Born: 08.02.1866 in Mönchmotschelnitz, district of Wohlau (Silesia)

Died: 01.08.1935 in Paris

After studying law in Geneva, Strasbourg, Leipzig and Berlin and completing his legal clerkship, Gerlach left the civil service to work as a journalist.

He became a member of the Conservative Party and sat in the Reichstag for the Marburg-Kirchhain-Frankenberg constituency from 1903-08. In 1908, he moved to Berlin, where he was one of the co-founders of the so-called Democratic Association with Rudolf Breitscheid and others. For a short time in 1918, he held the post of State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, before turning his full attention to journalism.

As editor-in-chief of the Berlin newspaper "Welt am Montag", he fought against the "Kapp Putsch" and "Stahlhelm" as well as anti-Semitism. In his articles, he campaigned for Poland's independence and for Franco-German understanding.

As a member of the pacifist New Fatherland League and chairman of the German League for Human Rights, he took part in several international peace congresses, for example in Paris in 1925. In 1931, following Ossietzky's imprisonment, he also took over the management of the "Weltbühne". In 1933, Gerlach first emigrated to Austria, then accepted an offer to found a department for German refugees in the French League for Human Rights and emigrated to Paris, where he died in 1935.

At the request of his family, his urn was buried in a grave of honor in the South Cemetery in December 1968.