Carl Goetz (bank manager)

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Carl Friedrich Goetz (born June 12, 1885 in Frankfurt am Main ; † August 26, 1965 in Essen ) was a German bank manager. From 1933 to 1936 he was spokesman for the board of directors of Dresdner Bank and then chairman of the supervisory board until 1945. After the war he was chairman of the supervisory board of a successor bank and again chairman of the board of directors of Dresdner Bank from 1957 to 1965.

Life

Ascent

Goetz entered the banking profession in 1902. Between 1904 and 1914 he worked for the Banque Internationale de Bruxelles. There he was promoted to head of auditing and human resources. During the First World War he was interned in France. Between 1918 and 1920 he was an authorized signatory at Werthheimber & Cie. in Frankfurt. Then he worked for the Commerz- und Privatbank . Initially he was head of the branch in Frankfurt am Main. From 1922 he was a deputy board member in Berlin . From 1928 he was a full member of the board. He also gained a reputation as a banking specialist, so that the government around Heinrich Brüning appointed him to the board of the nationalized Dresdner Bank during the banking crisis in July 1931. In addition to Samuel Ritscher , he soon played a key leadership role. Goetz was considered a confidante of Finance Minister Hermann Dietrich . Reichsbank President Hans Luther and his successor Hjalmar Schacht also appreciated him. He was responsible for the difficult merger of the Darmstädter and National Bank and the Dresdner Bank. As a result, he made a significant contribution to the restructuring of the company.

time of the nationalsocialism

Since December 1933 he was also officially the board spokesman. He also held numerous supervisory board mandates. He was chairman of the supervisory boards of AEG and the German-South American Bank . At the beginning of National Socialist rule, some NSDAP members below the management level of the bank and from outside Otto Wagner, for example, put pressure on restructuring the management board. This was primarily directed against the traditionally numerous board members of Jewish origin. Goetz, too, who had no Jewish roots, came under pressure from time to time because of his work as a Freemason . Even if the management of the bank resisted the frontal attacks by making use of other National Socialist people, this lowered the distance to the regime and increased the possibilities of party officials to exert influence on personnel matters. Ultimately, the bank had to give way to the pressure. Most of the Jewish board members and other leadership members had to give up their posts and with Erich Meyer and Karl Rasche , designated followers of the National Socialists joined the board.

The bank benefited from the rearmament plans. So from 1934 the bank became important for the financing of the lignite gasoline AG. Goetz himself thought about how the bank could benefit from the Aryanization and in vain offered the other big banks a common approach.

In 1936 he moved to the head of the supervisory board after the last remaining Jewish leaders had to vacate their posts there. With the backing of the Reich Ministry of Economics, Goetz was able to secure such extensive competencies that he was in fact chairing both the executive board and the supervisory board. He exercised the supervisory board mandate full-time, had the right to participate in board meetings and to issue instructions to the management. Later, in a separate representative body, he was given the authority to maintain relationships with the bank's major customers and with the political leadership. It was not until 1942 that he was pushed back to purely on the supervisory board. Up until then, Goetz was clearly the leading figure in the bank and was responsible for all important decisions, about which he was at least usually informed. If it was his intention to take the wind out of the sails of the members of the board close to the SS , as he later explained, he has not succeeded. In fact, it appears to have not hindered their work. Ultimately, Goetz was responsible for making the SS wing ever stronger and the bank ever closer to the regime.

Goetz followed a consolidation course from the start, which led the company back into profitability as early as 1935. This was a prerequisite for the return transfer of the bank from the state to private ownership, which he was instrumental in in 1937.

The bank played a central role in building the self-sufficiency economy of the Third Reich. During the war it traded in looted gold and in gold left behind by the victims of the concentration camps. It is unclear whether the bank knew the origin of the money. In addition, it became the main lender of the SS and maintained close relationships with the forced enterprises of the SS.

He was temporarily arrested in connection with the Hitler assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 . He did not have to answer for his role as a supervisory board member of forced operations, such as the Adlerwerke in Frankfurt am Main, which was at times a particularly nasty satellite camp of the Natzweiler-Stutthof concentration camp.

post war period

From April 1946 to December 1947 he was interned by the Americans. After the war, Dresdner Bank was split up into various companies. Goetz took considerable influence on the reorganization of the banking system in the Federal Republic and was in favor of overcoming the splitting of the big banks. Between 1952 and 1957 he was chairman of the supervisory board of Rhein-Ruhr Bank AG as one of the successor institutions to Dresdner Bank. After the new merger, he was again Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Dresdner Bank from 1957 to 1965. After that he was honorary chairman. During his tenure at the head of the bank, it rose to become the second largest behind Deutsche Bank.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich, p. 40
  2. ↑ Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich, pp. 41–44.
  3. ^ Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich, p. 59
  4. ^ Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich, p. 66
  5. ^ Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich, p. 74
  6. ^ Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich, pp. 75f.
  7. ↑ Abstract to Johannes Baehr: The Dresdner Bank in the Economy of the Third Reich Digitized (PDF; 29 kB)
  8. ↑ http://kz-adlerwerke.de/de/menschen/verektiven/einleitung.html

literature

personal data
SURNAME Goetz, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goetz, Carl Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German bank manager
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1965
Place of death eat