Eastern Aid (Osthilfe)
Encyclopedia
Osthilfe was a policy of the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Government of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...

 (1919-1933) to give financial support from Government funds to bankrupt estates in East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...

.

The policy was implemented beginning in 1929-1930, in spite of the generally dire economic situation and the lack of government funds, because of the overwhelming need of the Government of the German Republic to retain the support of the influential Junker
Junker
A Junker was a member of the landed nobility of Prussia and eastern Germany. These families were mostly part of the German Uradel and carried on the colonization and Christianization of the northeastern European territories during the medieval Ostsiedlung. The abbreviation of Junker is Jkr...

 owners of these estates, although it was opposed by such important politicians as general and Chancellor of Germany Kurt von Schleicher
Kurt von Schleicher
Kurt von Schleicher was a German general and the last Chancellor of Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic. Seventeen months after his resignation, he was assassinated by order of his successor, Adolf Hitler, in the Night of the Long Knives....

.

This policy produced a major scandal in Germany in December 1932 and January 1933, the Osthilfeskandal. A considerable number of Junkers were found out to have wasted the money on what was considered to be luxury items, such as cars and vacations. The ensuing investigations into the scandal also implicated the President of the Republic, General Paul von Hindenburg
Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg , known universally as Paul von Hindenburg was a Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and politician, and served as the second President of Germany from 1925 to 1934....

. It came to the light that the Hindenburg family's highly indebted estate in East Prussia at Neudeck
Ogrodzieniec, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship
Ogrodzieniec is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Kisielice, within Iława County, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately east of Kisielice, west of Iława, and west of the regional capital Olsztyn....

 (owned by the president's brother) had been clandestinely bought in 1927 by a number of industrialists and given to the president as a gift, seemingly in exchange for political influence. Some historians believe that the scandal was instrumental in weakening Hindenburg's position to the point where he caved in to industrialist pressure to appoint Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 as chancellor at the end of January 1933.

After the donation of a further 5000 acres (20.2 km²) to this property, and after the Nazis came to power, the matter ceased to command attention in the censored press of the Third Reich.
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