Wolfgang Kapp (24 July 1858 – 12 June 1922) was a German civil servant and journalist. A strict nationalist, he is best known for being the leader of the Kapp Putsch. Early life Kapp was born in New York City where his father Friedrich Kapp, a political activist and later Reichstag delegate for the National Liberal Party, had settled after the failed European revolutions of 1848. In 1870 the family returned to Germany and Kapp's schooling continued in Berlin at the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium (High School). Wolfgang Kapp married Margarete Rosenow in 1884; the couple had three children. Through his wife's family, Kapp acquired a family connection with politically conservative elements. In 1886, he graduated at the conclusion of his law studies at the University of Tübingen and was appointed to a position in the Finance Ministry the same year. Political activist After an ordinary official career, Kapp became the founder of the Agricultural Credit Institute in East Prussia which achieved great success in promoting the prosperity of landowners and farmers in that province. He was consequently in close touch with the Junkers of East Prussia, and during the First World War made himself their mouthpiece in an attack on Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. Kapp's pamphlet, entitled Die Nationalen Kreise und der Reichskanzler and published in the early summer of 1916, criticized German foreign and domestic policy under Hollweg. This pamphlet appeared about the same time as the attacks of "Junius Alter" and evoked an indignant reply from Hollweg in the Reichstag, in which he spoke of "loathsome abuse and slanders." In 1917, along with Alfred von Tirpitz, Kapp founded the Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (Fatherland Party), of which he briefly became chairman. He was one of a number of prominent figures of the right, including General Ludendorff and Waldemar Pabst, who set up in August 1919 the Nationale Vereinigung (National Union), a right-wing think-tank which campaigned for a counter-revolution to install a form of conservative militaristic government. The Nationale Vereinigung did not, however, press for the restoration of the monarchy, the Kaiser having bowed to Army pressure and left for his exile in the Netherlands in November 1918. In 1919, which saw the consolidation in Germany of the Weimar Republic, Kapp was a member of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People's Party). Germany's defeat in the First World War was seen by nationalists such as Kapp as a humiliation and a betrayal.