Claus von Bohlen and Halbach

Portrait of the Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Family by Nicola Perscheid (1928). Claus front right.

Grave slab at the Krupp family cemetery in Essen-Bredeney

Claus Arthur Arnold von Bohlen and Halbach (born September 18, 1910 at Villa Hügel zu Essen ; † January 10, 1940 in Metterich in the Eifel ) was one of the eight children of the German industrial family Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach .

Life

Claus was the third child of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach and his wife Bertha (née Krupp). He spent most of his youth at the Villa Hügel in Essen, built by his great-grandfather, the steel industrialist Alfred Krupp .

Claus was considered Gustav's most talented son throughout his life. At times, his parents even considered using him as the sole heir instead of his older brother Alfried , as they did not agree with Alfried's marriage to the divorced Anneliese Bahr (quote from Bertha Krupp: "Ba (h) rdame") and Arndt , who came from this connection were.

The Anglophile Krupps had Claus von Bohlen and Halbach study together with his cousin Kurt, the second son of Barbara Krupp and Tilo von Wilmowsky at Balliol College in Oxford . He then gained experience in managerial positions in the Gruson factory in Magdeburg, which is part of the Krupp concern . His father put him in charge of the Berndorfer Metallwarenfabrik in Austria, a company that Alfred Krupp had left to his brother Hermann . His son Arthur Krupp (1856–1938) remained childless and bequeathed the work to Claus in a will in the 1920s. After economic difficulties, the works first came into the possession of Austrian shareholders. After Austria's annexation to Hitler's Germany, the factory was integrated into the Krupp concern and Claus took over management.

On September 22, 1938, Claus von Bohlen and Halbach married Sita Edle von Medinger (August 3, 1912 to August 11, 1997), daughter of the Austrian-Bohemian politician Wilhelm von Medinger (1878-1934), with whom he had a son, Arnold ( * October 2, 1939).

As a first lieutenant in the Air Force of the Wehrmacht , he was a member of Group II of Jagdgeschwader 54 . On January 10, 1940, he tested a new respirator in the Eifel. Their failure led to a swoon. He and his copilot were killed in the crash.

Along with his brother Eckbert , who died near Parma in Italy in the last days of the war in 1945 , and Arnold , who died as an infant in 1909 , he was one of the three children of Gustav and Bertha Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach who died prematurely.

His body was first buried in the Krupp cemetery, which was attached to the cemetery at Kettwiger Tor . When a parking garage was built on parts of the cemetery in 1955, the Krupp graves and slabs were moved to the Bredeney municipal cemetery on Westerwaldstrasse in the Krupp section. He is buried here next to his wife Sita, his siblings, parents, grandparents ( Friedrich Alfred Krupp and Margarethe Krupp ) and Alfred Krupp.

reception

Gut Clausheide

The family owned an extensive estate near Nordhorn , which the parents and estate founders Bertha and Gustav named after Claus " Gut Clausheide ". When the political community was founded, the Prussian state government renamed it Klausheide .

Klausstraße in Essen is named after him, which is not far from Villa Hügel at the entrance to Hügelpark in the Brandenbusch settlement (built for employees of Villa Hügel at the time). The other adjacent streets are named after his siblings Alfried (1906–1967), Arnold (1908–1909), Berthold (1913–1987), Irmgard (1912–1998), Harald (1916–1983), Waldtraut (1920–2005) and Eckbert (1922–1945) named.

In Magdeburg, too, there was a Clausstrasse named after him until 1945 (today Rotdornweg). The Gruson works belonging to Krupp were located in Magdeburg.

Until 1960 a glider from the glider club Steeler Spatzen from Essen bore its name. The two-seater was destroyed in a crash in the Teutoburg Forest .

literature

• Thomas Rother: The Krupps. Through five generations of steel . Campus Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 978-3-404-61516-2 (since July 1, 2007), ISBN 3-404-61516-6 .
• William Manchester : Krupp - Chronicle of a family . Kindler Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-453-55045-5 .
• Bernt Engelmann : Krupp. The story of a house - legends and reality . Goldmann Verlag, Munich 10/1986. ISBN 3-442-08532-2 .
• Norbert Mühlen : The Krupps . Heinrich Scheffler Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1965, rororo paperback edition.
• Gert von Klass : From rubble and ashes - croup after 5 generations . Reiner Wunderlich Verlag, Tübingen 1960.
• Wilhelm Berdrow: 125 years of Krupp . Edition V. November 20, 1811/1936.
• Tilo von Wilmowsky : Looking back, I would like to say . Gerhard Stalling Verlag, Oldenburg / Hanover 1961.
• Renate Köhne-Lindenlaub: The Villa Hügel. Corporate residence through the ages . Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation (ed.), Munich / Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-02134-1 .
• Ralf Stremmel: 100 years of the Krupp Historical Archive - developments, tasks, inventories . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation (ed.), Munich / Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-422-06568-7 .
• Klaus Tenfelde : "Krupp remains Krupp" - A celebration of the century . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2005, ISBN 3-89861-364-X .
• Ernst Schröder: Krupp - history of an entrepreneurial family . Muster-Schmidt Verlag, Zurich / Göttingen 1968/1991 (4th edition), ISBN 3-7881-0005-2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ in particular Engelmann, Mühlen and Manchester (see literature )
2. ↑ Henry L. deZeng IV, Douglas G. Stankey: Air Force Officer Career Summaries, Section A-F. (PDF) 2017, pp. 433–434 , accessed on August 2, 2020 (English). 
3. ^ Manchester and the exhibition Villa Hügel Small House
4. ↑ from the files of the Essen cemetery administration
5. ↑ State Archives Osnabrück, Rep 450 Bentheim I, No. 110a
6. ↑ Essen city map
7. ↑ Contemporary newspaper article: " Harald von Bohlen baptizes sailor in the name of his fallen brother " , no information on the place of publication or author