Berthold Beitz

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Berthold Beitz (1972)
Berthold Beitz (1986)
Berthold Beitz in 1969 in Kiel

Berthold Beitz (born September 26, 1913 in Zemmin, today a district of Bentzin ; † July 30, 2013 in Kampen , Sylt ) was a German manager . He was chief representative Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach and influential industrialists in the coal and steel industries of the Ruhr .

During the Second World War , he saved the lives of several hundred Jewish forced laborers in the German-occupied General Government by classifying them as indispensable for the oil industry and employing them in the factories he managed. For this he was declared Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel in 1973 . After the end of the war, he met Alfried Krupp and at his birthday party on September 26, 1952, Alfried Krupp made Beitz the general representative of his company with a handshake. Together with him he rebuilt the Krupp Group . Alfried Krupp contributed his assets, especially the Krupp company, to a charitable foundation named after him. Beitz played a considerable part in this path and in 1968 became chairman of the board and board of trustees of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation . In this role, he played a key role in shaping the structural change in the Ruhr area and the transformation into a scientific and cultural region.

Beitz was a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1972 to 1988 and its vice-president between 1984 and 1988.

Life

Origin and childhood

Berthold Beitz was born in Zemmin , a district of the Bentzin community in what was then the Demmin district in Western Pomerania , as the son of Erdmann Beitz (* 1888) and Erna Beitz (* 1892). His mother was the daughter of the estate manager Karl Stuth, who looked after the von Sobeck family's possessions in Zemmin. At that time the father was serving as a sergeant in the 2nd Pomeranian Uhlan Regiment No. 9 and played the trumpet in the regimental orchestra. In October 1913, this unit was now subordinated to the 4th Squadron of the Jäger Regiment on Horseback No. 10 and relocated to Angerburg . The parents lived there until the beginning of the First World War, when Erdmann Beitz was deployed as a reporting and liaison rider of the 224th Division in changing theaters of war on the eastern and western fronts. Erna Beitz then returned with her son to the parental estate in 1914, and so Berthold grew up with his mother and grandmother, together with his uncles, who were only a little older.

When the father returned in November 1918 and could not remain in the army due to demobilization , he found a job in Demmin in the local tax office. So the family, to which her sister Brunhild, who was born in 1916, also belonged, moved to the trading town on the Peene, where Beitz attended elementary school and the first grade of secondary school.

Youth and education

In 1925 the father was transferred to the branch of the Reichsbank in Greifswald , and the family moved into an official apartment there. There Beitz was in the just for the one of the first boys coeducation shared Lyceum added Empress Augusta Victoria. At this school, which was attached to the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Gymnasium in 1947 , he met Karl-Heinz Bendt . This saved Beitz from a very precarious situation in the winter of 1942: Beitz was denounced for having treated Poland “too well” and for having helped Jews to leave the German territory; In the presence of Beitz, Bendt destroyed a report that had been received by the SD head section and contained these allegations.

During these years, Beitz was an avid sportsman who mainly devoted himself to sailing and rowing . His academic achievements were mostly only sufficient and he had to repeat the upper secondary. After successfully passing his Abitur in 1934, he would have liked to study medicine, but due to the family's financial situation after the wage cuts in the wake of the global economic crisis , this was not possible. Because of his father's good contacts, Berthold received an apprenticeship as a banker at the Pommerschen Volksbank in nearby Stralsund . During his two-year apprenticeship, he lived with the architect Ferdinand Streb for a while as the subtenant of an elderly widow .

After completing his training, he was initially transferred to the branch in Stettin before he was promoted to deputy branch manager of the Pomeranian Bank in Demmin within a year. But he disliked the narrowness of the village and the prospect of a leisurely life as a banker. So he applied to the German-Asian Bank , and only his mother's veto finally prevented him from taking up the position in Tientsin . Instead, he went to Rhenania-Ossag , a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, in Hamburg in May 1938 .

Between 1937 and 1939 Beitz took part in several military exercises of the Wehrmacht , which was set up in 1935 , although he was exempt from military service due to his age . It is not clear whether the voluntary participation in the comparatively easy exercise weeks was at the insistence of his father or in order to be “released from all other organizations”, but in spring 1939 he had the rank of sergeant in the reserve and had applied for the rank of officer .

The first years of the war

In April 1939, Beitz switched to the audit department of the Rhenania-Ossag corporate headquarters as a commercial clerk, where he met his future wife Else , who worked as a clerk for oil transports.

At the beginning of the war he escaped mobilization because his regiment did not have any vacant officer positions. Instead, his superiors proposed him to the Army High Command as a representative of the Rhenania-Ossag for work in the East Galician oil fields , which in the newly formed General Government was entrusted with the development and exploitation of the oil deposits there. So after the attack on Poland was over , Beitz went to the small town of Jasło in southern Poland . Now released from the Wehrmacht as indispensable , he became an expert in the commercial field of oil production, which is important for the war effort.

In the spring of 1940 he was transferred to the neighboring Krosno . As a manager for bookkeeping and shipping, Beitz worked there for the Beskydy Erdöl -gewinnungs-GmbH, also a subsidiary of Rhenania-Ossag. After his daughter Barbara Ingrid was born, his wife Else - they had married in December 1939 - followed him to occupied Poland, where she found a job as a secretary.

The time in Boryslaw

Boryslaw around 1920

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union , in July 1941, Berthold Beitz was appointed commercial manager of the Karpathen-Öl AG in Boryslaw , which exploited the now occupied, previously Soviet part of the oil field.

It is estimated that prior to the occupation of Poland, about 10 percent of the country's population was Jewish ; in Galicia , the center of the Jewish settlement area in Europe, their share was up to thirty percent. They lived in the shtetl in often simple circumstances and earned their livelihood as merchants, craftsmen and, above all, as workers in the oil industry - as in Boryslaw, where Beitz, as manager of the Carpathian oil, had a certain scope for action in terms of supply, accommodation and had the safety of its workers, about twenty percent of whom were Jewish. One of his first decisions was to set up the Mraschnitzka company warehouse .

Between 1941 and 1944 he saved many Jews from the extermination camps by claiming them to be indispensable for the production of his war-important company (see blue paper ). One of his employees was Hilde Berger , who later was Oskar Schindler's secretary in the Plaszow concentration camp . When the German management took over the oil production, the Jewish employees were initially kept on, despite instructions from the Reich government to the contrary.

Finally, in March 1944, Beitz was drafted into the fighting force. Many of the Jews he had protected up to this point then fled to the surrounding forests and were thus able to survive until the end of the war in Galicia. The forced labor camp of the Carpathian Oil AG was disbanded in fear of the advancing Soviet troops on 22 July 1944, the remaining prisoners were in the concentration camps Auschwitz and Mauthausen deported . Beitz was accepted among the Righteous Among the Nations in 1973, his wife Else in 2006.

After the end of the war

Also because of his attitude during the World War, he was appointed Vice President of the Zone Office of the Reich Insurance Supervisory Office in Hamburg by the British occupation in August 1946, after fleeing from Soviet captivity. From 1949 to 1953 he was general director of the insurance company Iduna-Germania in Hamburg. In this capacity he met Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach in 1952 , who appointed him as a general representative in the Krupp Group.

Krupp Group

The President of Togo, Sylvanus Olympio , visits the Ruhr area; Visit of the Villa Hügel in Essen accompanied by Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach. Alfried Krupp (right); in the background in the middle Berthold Beitz

The Essen Krupp factory was declared a Wehrmacht factory by the Wehrmacht High Command on September 1, 1939 . Alfried Krupp took over the management of the group from his father Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach in 1943. At this point in time, the Krupp Group's production was largely determined by the wartime economic requirements , which severely restricted entrepreneurial autonomy.

Alfried Krupp was arrested and interned by US troops immediately after the war. Three years later he was found guilty of a war criminal by the Allies. In addition to the confiscation of his property, he was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment in the Landsberg War Crimes Prison . On January 31, 1951, Alfried Krupp was pardoned on the basis of an opinion by American experts. As a result of the Mehlemer contract signed in 1953, all of his assets were returned to him subject to strict unbundling . In March 1953 Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was able to take over the management of the company again, the production facilities of which in Essen had largely been destroyed or dismantled at that time.

Alfried Krupp and Berthold Beitz met by chance in the summer of 1952 in the Essen studio of the sculptor Jean Sprenger , from whom Beitz had ordered a representative sculpture for the entrance hall of the new Iduna Germania insurance building in Hamburg that he had commissioned. A few weeks later, on September 26, 1952, Alfried Krupp and Berthold Beitz met again at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Hamburg and Krupp offered Beitz the position of general representative of the group. Beitz agreed and in November 1953, after the company was transferred back, he became Krupp's closest confidante and held the position as general representative until 1967.

From 1970, Beitz was chairman of the supervisory board of the Krupp Group, and since 1989 honorary chairman of the supervisory board. He had this status at ThyssenKrupp AG since 1999 .

Krupp Foundation

Shortly before Alfried Krupp's death in 1967, Beitz managed to transfer Krupp's private fortune to a foundation. Beitz became chairman of the board of trustees of the non-profit Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation and thus executor and trustee of Krupp's assets. He held this office until his death. There is no information about the amount of the annual remuneration for this activity.

At the beginning of March 2013, Beitz withdrew his deputy and designated successor (then Group Supervisory Board Chairman) Gerhard Cromme from trust. He - Beitz - wants to continue "as long as I can do that and I am still clear in my head". He wants to leave the question of who will follow him one day to the Foundation's Board of Trustees.

Charitable and social engagement

Günter Mittag (left) and Berthold Beitz (right) at the Hanover Fair 1987

From 1972 to his death, Beitz was a member of the National Olympic Committee of Germany and from 1972 to 1988 also a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its vice-president between July 26, 1984 and 1988. Since 1988 he has been an honorary member of the IOC.

Since the 1970s he was known for his commitment, especially in cultural and sporting exchanges with the Soviet Union and Russia. Since Willy Brandt he has therefore been a regular member of the advisory staff of the federal governments for reconciliation with Poland and the Soviet Union / Russia .

The Ruhr-University Bochum handed Beitz after the death of Alfried Krupp the important collection of books the library of the Villa Hugel , which formed the basis of the university library. As chairman of the foundation's board of trustees, he also sponsored numerous research projects at Bochum University and the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina zu Halle / Saale .

The University of Greifswald and the city of Greifswald have received funding from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation for decades through Beitz, who comes from Pomerania. Beitz has received several awards for this commitment to science, including as an honorary senator, honorary doctor and namesake of the central Berthold-Beitz-Platz on the university's science campus. Among other things, he campaigned for the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald . Among his numerous honors, the most important to him was the appointment as a founder of the University of Greifswald, which was given as thanks for his great commitment to the city and the university. Beitz was also a "Personally Supporting Member" of the Max Planck Society .

In 1953, the Krupp family ensured that their previous home, Villa Hügel, with its unique architecture, its art treasures and the associated parkland was made accessible to the public. Beitz successfully campaigned to preserve Villa Hügel as a nationally important cultural center and to fill it with new life. The founding of the Ruhr Cultural Foundation , which is based in the Villa Hügel, also goes back to him. For decades, Beitz was the most important sponsor and patron of the Folkwang Museum , as his foundation, as the sole sponsor, provided the funds for the new building of the Folkwang Museum.

Private life

Berthold Beitz had been with Else , geb. Hochheim married. They had three daughters (Barbara, Susanne and Bettina) and seven grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. Beitz described himself as a "loner". Apart from the Kiel Yacht Club , he belonged to neither an association nor a party. Beitz was considered impatient and made many decisions based on gut instinct (“When I walk into a room, I know 80 percent how the negotiations are going”). He never went into politics because there he would have had to take a long time to coordinate his decisions with others. “A sober pomeranian by heart ”, Beitz lived in Essen for decades. “I have the task of fulfilling Alfried Krupp's last will, and that will also determine my future life,” said Beitz after Krupp's death in 1967. Even after more than six decades in the Ruhr area, one could still hear the language of his Pomeranian homeland.

For many years, Beitz used the foundation's privileges at the expense of the Krupp company (later ThyssenKrupp ). However, new rules were agreed in 2013 for the hunts, the Kiel Yacht Club and also the flights with the company jet. A few months before his death, Beitz had paid a handsome sum for the use of the company aircraft.

Appreciation and criticism

Since the beginning of the joint work of Alfried Krupp and Berthold Beitz, there has been disagreement as to who was responsible for the extraordinary rise of the group in the years from 1955 onwards.

On July 1, 2010, the long-standing Russia / Eurasia Center at the German Society for Foreign Policy (DGAP) was renamed the Berthold-Beitz-Center, competence center for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Central Asia . The center is sponsored by the Eastern Committee of German Business and Deutsche Bank . With the naming, the German economy honored Beitz 'services as a co-architect of the German Ostpolitik in the 1960s.

The Berthold-Beitz-Boulevard in Essen, the Berthold-Beitz-Platz in Greifswald , the Berthold-Beitz-Ufer on the Kiel Fjord and the Berthold-Beitz-Straße in his home town of Zemmin are named after Beitz. A rescue vessel of DGzRS bears his name.

His funeral took place on August 7, 2013 in the immediate family circle on the area of ​​the Bredeney municipal cemetery , the official funeral service took place on September 26, 2013 in the Villa Hügel in Essen. On this day Berthold Beitz would have completed his hundredth year. Federal President Joachim Gauck paid tribute to his life's work, musically accompanied by Daniel Barenboim and members of his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra . The funeral service was broadcast on a large screen at ThyssenKrupp headquarters . Around 150,000 employees worldwide had the opportunity to follow the memorial hour on the Internet.

Even if public criticism out of respect for Berthold Beitz's life achievement was rare, it did exist.

Beitz's good contacts with the Warsaw Pact states at the time of the Cold War were viewed with suspicion by parts of the political leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany . An example of this is a statement by Konrad Adenauer from 1958, in which he expressed doubts about the "national reliability" of Beitz.

In 1988 the von Bohlen and Halbach family and their descendants claimed that Beitz kept them out of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation , which had recently been founded and then ruled the company . Whether this happened at Alfried Krupp's request, as Beitz claims, cannot be proven. The von Bohlen and Halbach family tried to enforce claims to participation in the foundation's board of trustees in several instances. These were rejected on December 7, 2000 by the Federal Court of Justice.

In 2013, Friedrich von Bohlen and Halbach, nephew of Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach, attributed joint responsibility to Beitz for undesirable developments and recent financial losses.

Awards

literature

Movies

  • Berthold Beitz - The Lord of the Three Rings. Documentation, Germany, 2003/2008, 45 min., Script and direction: Reinhold Böhm, Cathrin Leopold, production: WDR , broadcast: September 22, 2008, summary ( memento of September 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) by WDR.
  • Berthold Beitz - Death of a Patriarch - Exclusiv im Erste - ARD documentation from 2013.
  • The Krupp complex. Part 1: The power of tradition. Part 2: The steel thriller on the Ruhr. A film by Reinhold Böhm. With music by Simon Stockhausen . WDR 2003.
  • "Berthold Beitz - A life between duty and freedom". Documentation by WDR , 45 min., 2019, by Reinhold Böhm.
  • The secret of freedom . Germany, 2020. Screenplay: Sebastian Orlac , Director: Dror Zahavi . ARD, 90 min.

Web links

Commons : Berthold Beitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ThyssenKrupp - press release on the death of Berthold Beitz ThyssenKrupp, July 31, 2013
  2. ↑ Handelsblatt: Thyssen-Krupp mourns Berthold Beitz - death of an economic miracle man , accessed on July 31, 2013.
  3. ^ Gerhard Hirschfeld: Careers in National Socialism , 2004, p. 112.
  4. ^ Norbert F. Pötzl: Beitz - A German story ; Page 43 with further references
  5. ↑ J. Käppner: Berthold Beitz - The Biography ; Page 39 with further references
  6. ↑ J. Käppner: Berthold Beitz - The Biography ; Page 539 mwN
  7. ^ Ellen Land-Weber: To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue - Conditions for the Jews in Poland.
  8. ↑ Thomas Sandkühler: "Final Solution" in Galicia ; P. 167 and 461.
  9. ^ Norbert F. Pötzl: Beitz - A German story ; P. 64.
  10. ^ Labor camp in occupied Poland - District of Galicia. In: Deathcamps.org, accessed November 28, 2010.
  11. ↑ Berthold Beitz - his activity to save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust , on the Yad Vashem website.
  12. ↑ a b c d e Walter Habel (Ed.): Who is who? The German who's who. XLVI . Edition 2007/08 (founded by Walter Habel - formerly Degeners wer ist's), Lübeck 2007, p. 78.
  13. ↑ Gerhard Hirschfeld, Tobias Jersak: Careers in National Socialism; Campus Verlag 2004, page 115
  14. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung March 18, 2013 (sueddeutsche.de March 17): Beitz wants to remain at the head of the Krupp Foundation
  15. ↑ a b c d e Susanne Kippenberger: The Patriarch. In: Der Tagesspiegel , January 30, 2010, accessed October 3, 2012
  16. ↑ see list of sponsoring members of the Max Planck Society ( Memento from April 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  17. ^ Museum Folkwang Competition , accessed on August 11, 2013
  18. ↑ Obituaries of Berthold Beitz In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , accessed on August 3, 2013
  19. ^ Words of thanks from Prof. Berthold Beitz on the occasion of the award of honorary citizenship of the state capital Kiel on February 12, 2004. In: Stadt Kiel, PDF file, 2 pp.
  20. ↑ Krupp is my life's work. In: stern , September 25, 2003.
  21. ↑ Thyssen-Krupp There will be no one Beitz successor , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 1, 2013
  22. ^ Berthold-Beitz-Center founded in Berlin. ( Memento from January 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Eastern Committee of German Business, June 30, 2010.
  23. ↑ Krupp Foundation head Berthold Beitz buried in the closest circle. In: WAZ. August 7, 2013, accessed August 9, 2013 .
  24. ↑ ThyssenKrupp press release of August 5, 2013: Berthold Beitz memorial service , accessed on August 11, 2013
  25. ↑ Beitz - Star in the East. In: Der Spiegel. June 5, 1963, accessed January 16, 2020 .
  26. ^ Ruhr dynasty: feud with the stranger. In: www.zeit.de. October 14, 1988. Retrieved July 16, 2019 .
  27. ↑ BGH decides in favor of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation
  28. ↑ Joachim Hirzel: Beitz failed. In: Focus Online. March 17, 2013, accessed on October 13, 2014 (German).
  29. ↑ a b "The city bows before a great man"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) - city grants honorary citizenship rights to Professor Berthold Beitz. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / old.krupp-guertel.essen.de Press release from the city of Essen on May 10, 2007
  30. ↑ Merit holders since 1986. State Chancellery of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on March 11, 2017 .
  31. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
  32. ^ First Polish-German award "Pomerania Nostra" awarded to the German Berthold Beitz. ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Kulturforum Ostliches Europa, October 20, 2003.
  33. ^ List of honorary doctorates from the Weizmann Institute. ( Memento from January 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  34. ↑ a b c Christoph Stehr: Joint commitment , video from December 12, 2011 on wdr.de, viewed August 15, 2018
  35. ^ Josef König: RUB honorary doctorate for Berthold Beitz. In: Informationsdienst Wissenschaft (idw), June 10, 1999.
  36. ↑ Jens Wylkop: Academic year celebration. 40 years of the Ruhr University Bochum. In: RUB-aktuell, Ruhr University Bochum , June 21, 2005.
  37. ↑ Speech by the Lord Mayor on the occasion of the groundbreaking ceremony on Berthold-Beitz-Boulevard on April 4, 2007 ( Memento of July 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) PDF document 3S., Accessed on August 13, 2012.
  38. ↑ cht / dpa : Harvard names the chair after Berthold Beitz. In: Spiegel Online , October 6, 2008.
  39. ↑ Award of the Moses Mendelssohn Medal 2010 to Prof. Dr. hc mult. Berthold Beitz - Moses Mendelssohn Center - Potsdam. Retrieved August 28, 2019 .
  40. ↑ Article in: The West
  41. ↑ Late honor in: FAZ of November 14, 2011, page 27
  42. ^ Berthold Beitz receives Lew Kopelew Prize , derwesten.de, April 15, 2012, accessed on April 15, 2012
  43. ↑ Leopoldina honors Berthold Beitz with the Kaiser Leopold I Medal , Leopoldina press release, May 25, 2012, accessed on August 4, 2012.
  44. ↑ Honorary Citizen of the UDE , UDE, accessed on July 13, 2012
  45. ^ Obituary notice in the Tiroler Tageszeitung , accessed on August 6, 2013
  46. ↑ Die Seenotretter - DGzRS. Retrieved December 15, 2017 .
  47. ↑ Frank Stenglein: Biography: Berthold Beitz and the freedom to act. In: DerWesten , November 21, 2010.
  48. ^ "Berthold Beitz - A life between duty and freedom", WDR documentation by Reinhold Böhm, December 17, 2019 [1]
  49. ↑ Alexander Cammann : "The Secret of Freedom": The Book That Never Was Die Zeit , January 2, 2020
  50. ↑ Nikolaus von Festenberg: Berthold Beitz and Golo Mann: Guilt from Steel Der Tagesspiegel , January 14, 2020
  51. ↑ Kevin Knitterscheidt: TV review: Krupp manager Berthold Beitz - the last Ruhrbaron Handelsblatt , January 15, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Beitz, Berthold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German manager
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Zemmin , Western Pomerania
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 2013
Place of death Kampen (Sylt)