Eduard Hamm

Eduard Hamm (7 March 1881 – 2 September 1944) was a German lawyer and politician who served in several government positions during the Weimar Republic. Hamm studied law at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) and subsequently worked in the Bavarian civil service. He later became a member of the Bavarian Landtag and the German Reichstag, representing the German Democratic Party. Hamm served as Minister for Trade, Industry and Commerce in the government of the Free State of Bavaria from 1919 to 1922, and later as Reich Minister for Economics under Chancellor Wilhelm Marx.

After retiring from politics in 1933, Hamm worked as a lawyer in Berlin and Munich. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 following the 20 July Plot and died under mysterious circumstances in prison. Hamm was married to Maria von Merz and had three children.

Early life

The son of an Oberlandesgerichtsrat attended high schools in Metten and Deggendorf and graduated from in Augsburg. He then began studying law at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) and passed the first exam in 1902 and the second in 1905. Hamm was a scholarship holder of the and a member of the .

After passing the exam, Hamm entered the Bavarian civil service and worked as a "helper" (Hilfskraft) in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice from 1906, then as a Third Public Prosecutor at the , as a legal advisor in Lindau (Bodensee), and as an assessor in the district office of Memmingen in 1908/09.

In 1911, he was appointed to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior and in 1916 was seconded from it as a board member to the . Subsequently, he worked as a councilor at the War Food Office in Berlin until he returned to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior in 1917. In early 1918, he became a Legation Councilor in the Trade Department of the .

Political career After the November Revolution and the end of the Munich Soviet Republic, Hamm was a member of the from 15 July to 14 October 1920. He resigned his seat in the state parliament after being elected to the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic in the June 1920 German federal election, where he served until 1924.

From 31 May 1919 to 24 July 1922, Hamm was Minister for Trade, Industry and Commerce in the governments of the Free State of Bavaria led by the Prime Ministers Hoffmann, von Kahr and Lerchenfeld-Köfering. In 1922/1923, he was a State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery under Wilhelm Cuno, and from 30 November 1923, to 15 January 1925, he was Reich Minister of Economics under Chancellor Wilhelm Marx.

After leaving the federal government, Hamm was a member of the executive board of the German Industry and Commerce Day from 1925 to 1933, a member of the and editor of the Deutsche Wirtschaftszeitung [German Economic Newspaper], in which he criticized the economic program of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

As early as 1920/1921, Hamm had denounced the "anti-Semitic propaganda" of the National Socialists in the Bavarian cabinet and had requested a ban on the Völkischer Beobachter.