Hermann Scheffknecht

Hermann Scheffknecht (born April 26, 1891 in Lustenau , † 1982 in Lustenau ) was an Austrian entrepreneur. During the National Socialism he was imprisoned from May 1941 to December 1943, his company and his real estate were confiscated and not restituted after the Second World War. The "Scheffknecht case" not only occupied several courts in Switzerland and Austria, but also the Austrian Commission of Historians and the Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland - Second World War (Bergier Commission).

Life

The father Ferdinand Scheffknecht (1850–1918), like many others in the municipality of Lustenau, entered the booming embroidery industry and became a manufacturer. Together with his wife Maria Christina, geb. Bösch (1855-1930) he had twelve children, nine of whom reached adulthood. Hermann Scheffknecht was the third youngest child and attended elementary school in Lustenau and then the newly founded business school in 1903, soon after finishing school he began to work in his father's company. Ferdinand Scheffknecht had registered his ship embroidery as a trade in 1900, and in 1910 he began automatic embroidery, which consistently replaced the manual work on the machine, which replaced stickers with "followers" and "puncher". In “Compass”, the Austrian company address book, the year 1912 is given as the year Ferdinand Scheffknecht was founded, as the company was recorded in the commercial register that year. In 1913 the company officially employed 48 workers.

The company expanded, in 1915 a branch was opened in the neighboring town of Au (Canton St. Gallen) in Switzerland (dissolved again in 1919). In 1914, when he was 23 years old, Hermann Scheffknecht and his older brother Rudolf received the power of attorney. In the autumn of 1918, both brother Rudolf and father Ferdinand Scheffknecht died. Hermann Scheffknecht now took over the father's company, from 1922 he was considered the sole owner, a younger brother Wilhelm (1892–1967) held the power of attorney until 1939.

Hermann Scheffknecht married Maria Grabher (1894–1974) in 1919, with whom he had four children, expanded the company and in 1920 had Willibald Braun, one of the most renowned architects in the country, build and furnish him a splendid Art Nouveau villa very close to his company ( today: Rheindorferstrasse 3). Scheffknecht made great profits in the 1920s through exports mainly to India and from 1928 to North Africa. He invested most of his profits abroad, especially in neighboring Switzerland. At that time he was considered one of the richest Vorarlberg industrialists. In 1928 he was appointed a deputy member of the income tax assessment commission of the Feldkirch assessment district and in 1934 - by decision of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Austria - a member of the equal arbitration tribunal that was established within the framework of a 1934 contract between Switzerland and Austria on restructuring measures for the embroidery industry was intended to be a consequence of the great embroidery crisis that began to emerge in 1930 and had serious consequences for the entire industry in the following years.

After Austria was annexed to the National Socialist German Reich, Hermann Scheffknecht tried to come to terms with it. However, due to his international business activities, he was targeted by investigative authorities and was arrested on May 7, 1941 for tax evasion, foreign exchange offenses and fraud. Since he was threatened with a long prison sentence, he sought a court settlement in a so-called submission procedure. After long negotiations between the Reich Ministry of Economics, the Reich Ministry of Finance, the Reich Ministry of Justice, the Reichsbank and the public prosecutor's office in Feldkirch, a settlement was reached in March 1943 in which Scheffknecht committed himself to high tax refunds and penalties. Assets that he had invested in Switzerland in the form of insurance policies were turned over to the Deutsche Reichsbank at the instigation of a Swiss lawyer. Since Scheffknecht also undertook to realize his remaining assets in Switzerland (it was US, Canadian and British securities), he was released in December 1943. In a submission hearing on February 15, 1944, Hermann Scheffknecht acknowledged a tax liability of 3.3 million and accepted a fine of one million Reichsmarks. Hermann Scheffknecht and his family fled to Switzerland on the night of February 18-19, 1944. An extradition procedure sought by the Feldkirch customs investigation office failed. Scheffknecht's company "Ferdinand Scheffknecht" and its real estate were sold in 1944 by an absentee curator. Scheffknecht tried to challenge this sale in a civil lawsuit and ultimately failed before the Supreme Court. A restitution procedure carried out under the 3rd Restitution Act also failed; In addition, Scheffknecht was arrested on February 21, 1949 while entering Austria in order to secure endangered tax claims amounting to millions and imprisoned in the District Court of Dornbirn. This tax procedure, which continued that from the Nazi era, was finalized by a decision from the Federal Ministry of Finance. After negotiations with his lawyer, the republic waived the collection of the Reichsfluchtsteuer in the amount of 1.6 million Reichsmarks and Scheffknecht was released from prison on March 3, 1949 after a deposit of 300,000 Austrian schillings for the outstanding tax claims; two complaints made by Scheffknecht to the Administrative Court on this matter were dismissed in 1950. In Switzerland, Scheffknecht went to court against the lawyer who had delivered his insurance policies to the Deutsche Reichsbank and failed. Incidentally, this story had a memorable aftermath in Switzerland: The Swiss historian and politician Walther Hofer (1920–2013, 1960–1988 Full Professor of Modern History at the University of Bern) referred to Wilhelm in an article in 1983 in the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” Frick, because of his behavior in the Scheffknecht case as "one of the lawyers of trust of the German Consulate General in Zurich and a Gestapo department in Feldkirch" and was accused of "defamation", "defamation of a deceased, possibly for defamation of a deceased", initially acquitted, but then sentenced by the Swiss Federal Court in 1986. In 1997 Hofer applied for a retrial and ultimately failed again in 1999. The legal assessment of historiographical interpretations caused a sensation - not only in Switzerland - drew an interpellation on June 21, 2000, which was answered on August 30, 2000 and triggered a discussion in the Swiss Council of States (September 19, 2000). It had consequences for the participation of historians in media productions in particular.

literature

• Peter Melichar : A special cross-border commuter: The entrepreneur Hermann Scheffknecht from Lustenau In: Nicole Stadelmann / Martina Sochin D'Elia / Peter Melichar (eds.): Hüben & Drüben. Cross-border economy in the central Alpine region (vorarlberg museum Schriften 48; series of publications by the working group for the interregional history of the central Alpine region 5), Innsbruck 2020, pp. 171–209.
• Peter Melichar, Displacement and Expansion. Expropriations and restitution in Vorarlberg, publications of the Austrian Historical Commission 19, Vienna and Munich 2004, pp. 90-102.
• Stefan Karlen et al., Swiss insurance companies under the control of the “Third Reich”, Part 1 (Publications of the Independent Expert Commission Switzerland - Second World War, Vol. 12, 1), Zurich 2002, 335–348.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Melichar, Displacement and Expansion. Expropriations and restitution in Vorarlberg, publications of the Austrian Historical Commission 19, Vienna and Munich 2004, pp. 90-102.
2. ↑ Stefan Karlen et al., Swiss insurance companies in the sphere of influence of the “Third Reich”, Part 1 (publications of the Independent Expert Commission Switzerland - Second World War, Vol. 12, 1), Zurich 2002, 335–348.
3. ↑ Peter Melichar : A special border crosser: The entrepreneur Hermann Scheffknecht from Lustenau In: Nicole Stadelmann / Martina Sochin D'Elia / Peter Melichar (eds.): Hüben & Drüben. Cross-border economy in the central Alpine region (vorarlberg museum Schriften 48; series of publications by the Working Group for the Interregional History of the Central Alpine Region 5), Innsbruck 2020, pp. 171–209, here 175.
4. ↑ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 176-178.
5. ↑ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 176-178.
6. ^ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 178.
7. ^ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 180.
8. ^ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 182 f.
9. ^ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 187.
10. ^ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 197.
11. ^ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 198.
12. ^ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 199.
13. ↑ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 199 f. and 202-204.
14. ↑ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 200 f.
15. ^ Melichar: Scheffknecht, 201.