Anton Fehr

1. Ravensbrück concentration camp
   Dates unknown

Anton Fehr (24 December 1881 - 2 April 1954) was a German politician and dairy scientist of the Bavarian Peasants' League (BB) and the Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture in 1922. Fehr was born in Lindenberg im Allgäu, a city he lived in until the end of his life. After attending the agriculture school of Akademie Weihenstephan he attended the TUM School of Life Sciences. Upon completing his education, he became a dairy inspector and then a professor and teacher at his alma mater of TUM. He eventually entered the Reichstag in 1920 for Upper Bavaria–Swabia, where he stayed until 1933, where he created the Reich Milk Act (1930) and helped create an electoral alliance with the Economic Party of the German Middle Class as one of the top members of the BB. He was eventually appointed Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture in 1922 in Joseph Wirth's cabinet. He primarily dealt with a grain levy, which resulted in protests, and was the go-to person for Bavarian affairs after anger in Bavaria from the emergency decree enacted after Walther Rathenau's assassination, helping create the "Berlin Protocol" to appease them. In 1924 he then became Bavarian State Minister for Agriculture, a position he kept until 1930 when he resigned because of a schlachtsteuer (slaughter tax). He helped expand of dairy schools in the region, dealt with the reconstruction of Bavarian animal breeding after World War One, and promoted hop cultivation. Eventually, in 1935, he was forced to resign from all his positions because of Der Stürmer on accusations of bribery stemming from a 1929 case. It was not until the 20 July plot that he received attention again, when he was arrested on accusations of being part of Franz Sperr's circle, a resistance group of Bavarian monarchists, and was held in Ravensbrück concentration camp until the end of the war. Afterwards, he was allowed to return to his professorship and became the first Head of the Association of the German Dairy Industry, but died soon after in 1954. Fehr was generally considered a right-wing, conservative member of the Bavarian Peasants' League for most of his career, which led him to draw close to the NSDAP although he never fully joined and generally retired from politics after his defeat in 1933. He was considered a pioneer of the German dairy industry and helped to secure the dairy industry in the German economy. Fehr played a major part in growing the industry during a collapse and subsequent decline.

External references

• Wikipedia
• Wikidata (Q589257)