Paul Luchtenberg attended school in Gummersbach. He graduated in 1912 and went on to study philosophy and education at the University of Bonn and the University of Münster. During his studies he was a member of AMV Makaria Bonn, a student music society. After completing a PhD in Philosophy under Erich Becher, he began a probation year, teaching in a grammar school. He went on to teach in Remscheid until 1923. In addition, he qualified to be a professor at the University of Cologne in 1920, where he was a student of Max Scheler, whose material value-ethics he wanted to apply in his teaching. He assumed his first professorship in 1923 at the College of Economics and Political Science in Detmold. Between 1925 and 1931 he was initially an associate professor, and later a full professor, of education, philosophy and psychology at the Technical University of Darmstadt. From 1931 he was an associate professor of the same subjects at the Technical University of Dresden, where he also led the Pedagogical Institute for Teacher Training. By 1933, he was already a target for attacks by the National Socialist German Students’ League due to being a democrat. In 1936 he was dismissed, in implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, after long being protected by the Culture Minister for Saxony, Wilhelm Hartnecke.
Politics
Until 1945, Luchtenberg did not belong to any party. After the war, he was a co-founder of the FDP North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition, he was a member of the FDP federal executive committee from 1951 to 1958. Luchtenberg was a member of the German Bundestag from October 30, 1950, when he succeeded Friedrich Middelhauve as FDP state chairman, until the end of the first legislative period. He was a member of the Bundestag again from September 18, 1954, when he succeeded Willi Weyer as Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, until April 9, 1956. In 1956 the FDP switched coalition partners from the CDU to the SPD, which, at the federal level, led to the "ministerial wing" splitting from the party and founding the Free People's Party. After this, Luchtenberg served as Minister of Culture from February 28, 1956 to July 1958. As state minister of culture, Luchtenberg advocated the creation of a "Federal Ministry of Culture" in order to break up the very denominational cultural policy of the states of Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate in particular. Thus the Minister of Culture of Rhineland-Palatinate, Adolf Süsterhenn, was one of the harshest critics of these plans, while the Minister of Hesse, Arno Hennig, supported them.
Charity work
Luchtenberg was president of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation from 1961 up to 1970, after being vice president since 1958. From 1970 until his day of death, Luchtenberg was a honorary chairman of the foundation. In 1962, he founded the Paul Luchtenberg Foundation to support the culture of his hometown Burscheid. The House of Art in Burscheid is another example of his charity work. Documents about Luchtenberg's work for the Friedrich Naumann Foundation can be found in the Archive of Liberalism in Gummersbach.
