Oswald Rösler

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Oswald Rösler (born May 26, 1887 in Schweidnitz ; † May 23, 1961 in Brannenburg ) was a member of the Management Board from 1933 to 1945, Spokesman for the Management Board from 1943 to 1945 and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank from 1957 to 1960 .

Life

Oswald Rösler grew up in modest circumstances as the son of a master glove maker who died at an early age. After an apprenticeship in a bank, he first worked as an accountant in a textile house in Wroclaw . In 1907 he became an employee of the Barmer Bankverein Hinsberg, Fischer & Co. , one year later, in July 1908, his career began at Disconto Bank , where he was managing director and director from 1921.

With the merger of Deutsche Bank with Disconto-Gesellschaft to form “Deutsche Bank und Disconto-Gesellschaft” on October 29, 1929, the Supervisory Board appointed Rösler as a deputy member of the board of the new bank. In 1933 he and Karl Ernst Sippel became full board members after the Jewish board members Theodor Frank and Oscar Wassermann had previously been forced to resign at the suggestion of Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht .

Among other things, Rösler was chairman of the supervisory board of the Bohemian Union Bank , which had been taken over by Deutsche Bank in 1939 and which carried out extensive takeovers and transactions in the " Aryanization " of Jewish assets in the occupied Czech Republic . It was not until 1943 that he judged the activities of the responsible employee Walter Pohle extremely critically in a memo distributed among the board.

Nevertheless, as a committed Catholic, Rösler was aloof from National Socialism . After the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 , he was arrested in September 1944 for complicity. Due to a lack of solid evidence, however, he was acquitted on November 14, 1944 in the process before the People's Court.

From 1943 to May 1945, Rösler was CEO of Deutsche Bank. At the end of the war he stayed in Berlin and was able to work at the Deutsche Bank headquarters until his arrest by the Soviets on June 17, 1945. This was followed by internment in special camp No. 2 in Buchenwald , which lasted until January 1950. In February 1950, a denazification committee found that Rösler "belonged neither to the party nor to any of its branches and had in no way promoted National Socialism".

In 1950 Oswald Rösler became a member of the management of Rheinisch-Westfälische Bank AG in Düsseldorf , a regional bank of the broken Deutsche Bank. After the recentralization in 1952 he was active there as a board member. At Deutsche Bank, which was newly founded in 1957, he finally took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board from 1957 to 1959, and was honorary chairman from 1960 to the end of his life in 1961. He also held the position of chairman of the supervisory board at Bayer AG and Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralf Banken: National Socialism in Company History; The special economic situation is leaving its mark. In: Accumulation Information of the Working Group for Critical Corporate and Industrial History No. 20/2004, p. 25. ( Memento from June 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 497 kB)
  2. ↑ Lothar Gall et al .: Die Deutsche Bank: 1870-1995 , Verlag CH Beck Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-38945-7 , p. 336.
  3. ^ Lothar Gall et al .: Die Deutsche Bank: 1870–1995 , p. 376.
  4. ^ Lothar Gall et al .: Die Deutsche Bank: 1870–1995 . P. 431.
personal data
SURNAME Rösler, Oswald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German bank manager
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Schweidnitz
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1961
Place of death Brannenburg