Karl Jarres

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Karl Jarres (21 September 1874 -20 October 1951) was a politician of the German People's Party (Deutsche Volkspartei, or DVP) during the Weimar Republic. Jarres was born in the city of Remscheid in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia and after legal studies in Bonn as a young adult, pursued an administrative career. He was mayor of his native Remscheid from 1910 until 1914 and was subsequently the mayor of Duisburg, located in the Ruhr region, from 1914 until 1933. During the Weimar period he served in the cabinets of Gustav Stresemann and Wilhelm Marx.

Jarres was the candidate of the DVP in the 1925 German Presidential election, the first direct election to the office of President of the Reich (Reichspräsident). In the first round of the election he received the largest number of votes with over ten million and his plurality was at nearly 39%. The next major candidates were Otto Braun of the Social Democrats with nearly eight million votes (29%) and Wilhelm Marx of the Catholic Center Party with nearly four million votes (14.5%). Jarres withdrew his candidacy in the second round of voting in favor of Paul von Hindenburg who would go on to win the closely fought second round of elections against Marx and Ernst Thälmann, the candidate of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

Jarres was shunted out of public life with the rise the Nazi party in 1933 and spent the rest of his career in industry.