Werner Küchenthal

Werner Küchenthal (13 January 1882 - 20 June 1976) was a German jurist and public official who became a leading politician (DNVP, NSDAP) in what was then the Free State of Brunswick ("Freistaat Braunschweig").

Life Werner Küchenthal was born in Münchehof, a small manufacturing country town focused on limestone extraction and cement production, positioned in the countryside between Braunschweig to its north and Göttingen to its south. After leaving school he studied jurisprudence, passing his Level 1 national law exams in 1903. As a student he became a member of what became the "Alte Turnerschaft Eberhardina-Markomannia Tübingen" student fraternity. He received his doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1907 On 1 October 1930 these two, with the other smaller parties to the new governing coalition, voted Werner Küchenthal in as chair of the Council of Ministers / Minister-president of Braunschweig, the duties to be combined with departmental responsibilities for Finance and Justice. The application was not successful. Over the next seven years applications for German citizenship were submitted by or on behalf of Hitler in various other parts of Germany, but it became increasingly clear that they were all being blocked by Berlin, mindful of Hitler's attempt to overthrow the government back in 1923.

On 1 May 1933 Werner Küchenthal joined the Nazi Party less than two months after the Enabling Act of 1933 which enshrined in statute the transformation of Germany into a one-party state. After Oskar Stübben had been persuaded to resign the position, Küchenthal took over as president of the board at the Braunschweig State Bank. (Stübben was not Jewish and he was certainly not a communist, but he was not a Nazi either.) Küchenthal remained in charge at the bank until relieved of his duties there on 13 August 1945 in the aftermath of another national military defeat.

He spent the rest of his life as a farmer in Hedeper.