Born to
Silesian nobility, the son of a judge, Posadowsky-Wehner studied law in
Berlin,
Heidelberg and
Breslau and earned a
doctorate in law in 1867. He subsequently acquired an agricultural property, and entered politics in 1871, when he became a member of the province government in Posen. In 1882 he became a member of the Parliament of Prussia, and was appointed Landeshauptmann of Posen in 1885. Posadowsky was a crucial figure for the election reform in 1903. He took care of a new voting technique to protect the secrecy of the ballot for the German parliament. Posadowsky-Wehner was the candidate of the
German National People's Party for the
Presidency of Germany in
1919, but he lost to
Friedrich Ebert. Posadowsky-Wehner would begin to distance himself from the DNVP in the aftermath of the
Kapp Putsch, eventually leaving the party at the end of 1920. ==Honours==