Eberhard Czichon

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Eberhard Czichon (born August 8, 1930 ) is a Marxist German historian. His 1967 published brochure on the role of big business in the rise of the Nazi party is considered to be disproved, a publication for Hermann Josef Abs in the era of National Socialism were from Stuttgart Regional Court banned in 1972 because of false statements of fact.

Youth and Employment

Czichon did an apprenticeship as a wholesale merchant , then passed his Abitur at a workers 'and peasants' faculty and then studied history . He then worked first as a lecturer , then at the Institute for Local Museums at the Ministry of Culture . In 1948 he joined the SED , for a short time he also worked as an unofficial employee of the Ministry for State Security . Due to his solitary nature, he repeatedly came into conflict with state and party offices. A doctoral project on the role of big industry in the rise of the NSDAP failed. At the Academy of Sciences of the GDR he was initially employed in the department for academy history and from 1970 in the scientific information center.

The book Who helped Hitler to power?

In 1966 in Cologne he met Paul Neuhöffer , the head of the West German Pahl-Rugenstein-Verlag , who convinced him to summarize the preparatory work for his dissertation and publish it with him. In 1967 the result was the 105-page English brochure Who helped Hitler to power? In it, Czichon tried to explain the rise of the NSDAP by manipulating large-scale industry. Adolf Hitler was only the "laboriously hyped and dearly paid political candidate" of a "Nazi group" of industrialists, bankers and large landowners. This agent theory has been disproved since the publications of the American historian Henry Ashby Turner . This work was well received in student and trade union circles in the Federal Republic . It appeared in six editions until 1989.

Confrontation with Hermann Josef Abs

Publications

At Neuhöffer's suggestion, Czichon began to research the behavior of Deutsche Bank and its new supervisory board chairman, Hermann Josef Abs , during the Nazi era . In the archives of the German Institute for Economic Research he found extensive files that he began to work through after work. Overwhelmed by the technical language of the financial world, he also wrote to Abs himself asking for help, but he did not reply. The result was a lengthy article for the papers for German and international politics , which were published by Pahl-Rugenstein. For reasons of size, the text has been divided into three parts, the first two of which were published in 1967. At the intervention of Abs with the co-editor Viktor Renner , the third no longer appeared. Renner retired from the editorial board in the dispute over Czichon's essay. The text then appeared in two different book versions. A shorter one was published in 1969 by the Ost-Berliner Union Verlag under the title Hermann Josef Abs. Portrait of a Crusader of Capital . The western version, published by Pahl-Rugenstein the following year, was more detailed and endeavored to provide theoretical support for the material presented. It was titled The Banker and the Power. Hermann Josef Abs in German politics , with a foreword by the American historian George WF Hallgarten . More than a third of the text in both volumes dealt with Abs' post-war career. With this Czichon tried to make plausible the unbroken continuity of the pernicious influence of the economy on politics up to the time of the Federal Republic.

When a Marburg student canceled her account at Deutsche Bank in March 1970, referring to Czichon's book, the branch manager responsible replied that the allegations made were "in all essential points untrue and offensive". This letter was printed in a student magazine, whereupon Czichon threatened the Marburg branch with a defamation suit in which he wanted to fight for DM 5000 from the bank "in favor of the struggle for freedom of the Vietnamese people ".

Processes

Abs, who originally wanted to make the controversy as little public as possible, then sued Czichon and his publisher Manfred Pahl-Rugenstein for defamation and defamation . On August 12, Abs and Deutsche Bank filed an injunction against twenty, later forty, allegations by Czichon with the Stuttgart Regional Court . They also demanded compensation and a court decision that his publications were "political tendencies". Among other things, it was about Czichon's claims that Abs had personally enriched himself in the “ Aryanization ” of Jewish companies, that he was a “staunch supporter of the Hitler regime”, that he was responsible for the forced labor of concentration camp prisoners and even children, and that Abs and the Germans Bank had looted property from the countries occupied by Germany. The plaintiffs' aim was to prevent a second edition of the book. Abs and Deutsche Bank were represented by Martin Löffler ; This was supported, among others, by Josef Augstein , while on the side of the defendant Friedrich Karl Kaul worked as a lawyer, who was supported by the West German lawyer Heinrich Mackenrodt. The district court issued in September 1970, a preliminary injunction against the book, while Kaul appeal lodged. He also filed charges against Abs for perjury because he had made various affidavits about his behavior during the Nazi era. With the negotiation in the main proceedings, the legal dispute developed on three different levels. The process met with great public interest. Czichon and his publisher lost both the appeal against the injunction and the main proceedings. In June 1972 both were sentenced to pay 20,000 DM in damages because Czichon had been convicted of false factual assertions in 32 cases. In addition, the book was not allowed to be further distributed. Abs did not enforce this sum because Augstein and Kaul had agreed out of court that Czichon's books would no longer be published and that further attacks on Abs and Deutsche Bank, namely a publication of the OMGUS reports, which contained incriminating material about Par contained, omitted.

In fact, Czichon had exaggerated his sources, particularly with regard to allegations of personal gain. However, the historian Sebastian Brünger also points out that the court largely followed the traditional, right-wing positivist narrative of the apolitical and thus innocent functionary, as if the Aryanizations had been normal business and Abs had not accused Abs of being involved in the racist politics of the Nazi regime may be.

According to the processes

Czichon submitted his Abs biography under the title The Technician of Economic Aggression as a dissertation , but it was dismissed in 1974 in an expert opinion by the historian Dietrich Eichholtz as an “unscientific work”. Czichon's doctoral project thus failed again, and a further career in the scientific community in the GDR was excluded. Since then he has not published anything until the end of the GDR . This is attributed to the Stuttgart Trial, which caused considerable damage to the reputation of GDR history abroad. After the fall of the Wall, Czichon explained his academic failure with a plot by the new First Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, Erich Honecker , who would have sacrificed the historical truth allegedly represented by Czichon in the hope of Western credits.

In 1995 a revised new edition of his book The Banker and the Power was published. Hermann Josef Abs in German politics in Cologne. According to the historian Lothar Gall, the “incriminated passages have been replaced by new ones and the orthodox-communist analysis of fascism” has been partially eliminated. ”In his opinion, the sources are“ still imprecise and in some cases simply not understandable is particularly noticeable when, after the end of the GDR, large collections are now freely accessible. "

Czichon was expelled from the SED in 1981 "for insubordination". From 1990 to 1994 he was a member of the PDS , and in 1993 he joined the DKP .

Czichon lives in Berlin .

Fonts

  • Who brought Hitler to power? On the share of German industry in the destruction of the Weimar Republic. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1967. In the second edition 1971. ISBN 3-7609-0042-9 .
  • The primacy of industry in the cartel of national-socialist power. In: Das Argument 10 (1968), p. 168 ff.
  • Hermann Josef Abs. Banker and Politician (I). In: Blätter für Deutsche und Internationale Politik, Issue 7 (1967), pp. 687–703.
  • Hermann Josef Abs. Banker and Politician (II). In: Blätter für Deutsche und Internationale Politik, Issue 9 (1967), pp. 908–929.
  • Hermann Josef Abs. Portrait of a Crusader of Capital. Union Verlag, Berlin (East) 1969.
  • The banker and the power. Hermann Josef Abs in German politics . Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, Cologne 1970.
  • The bank and power - Hermann Josef Abs, Deutsche Bank and politics. Papyrossa Verlag, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-89438-082-9 .
  • (together with Heinz Marohn ) The present. The GDR in perestroika sell-out. PapyRossa Verlag, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89438-171-X .
  • Deutsche Bank / Power - Politics. Fascism, War and the Federal Republic. PapyRossa Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 978-3-89438-219-3 .
  • (together with Heinz Marohn) Thälmann. A report , Heinen, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-939828-56-3 . (2 volumes)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Sebastian Brünger: History and profit. How German corporations deal with their Nazi past . Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3010-8 , p. 162 f. ( Limited preview in the Google book search).
  2. ↑ a b Lothar Bisky: Eberhard Czichon - a life against the banking power. Texts in preparation for the conference “Against the Power of Big Money”, Frankfurt / Main, June 17, 2000. In: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Archived from the original on October 28, 2005 ; Retrieved August 1, 2011 .
  3. ↑ Eberhard Kolb : The Weimar Republic . 2nd edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 1988, p. 211 f. Here is the quote from Eberhard Czichon: Who helped Hitler to power? On the share of German industry in the destruction of the Weimar Republic. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1968, p. 32.
  4. ↑ Sebastian Brünger: History and Profit. How German corporations deal with their Nazi past . P. 172.
  5. ↑ a b Processes: Abs. Another jerk . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1970, pp. 128-131 ( Online - Oct. 19, 1970 ).
  6. ↑ Sebastian Brünger: History and Profit. How German corporations deal with their Nazi past , p. 176 f.
  7. ↑ Sebastian Brünger: History and Profit. How German corporations deal with their Nazi past , p. 184.
  8. ↑ Sebastian Brünger: History and Profit. How German corporations deal with their Nazi past , pp. 174–177 and 180.
  9. ↑ a b Banken: Paragraph completely pure . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1970, pp. 119-120 ( Online - Nov. 9, 1970 ).
  10. ↑ a b Abs, Hermann im Munzinger-Archiv , accessed on December 13, 2018 ( beginning of article freely available)
  11. ^ Karl Heinz Roth : OMGUS. Investigations against Deutsche Bank . Translated and edited by the Documentation Center for NS Policy Hamburg. In: Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Ed.): The other library . Eichborn Verlag, Nördlingen 1985, epilogue, p. 529 f .
  12. ↑ Martin Sabrow : Writing contemporary history. From understanding the past in the present . Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, p. 41 f.
  13. ↑ NN: BB and the legend of the bad banker . In: The time . No. 34 , 1973 ( zeit.de [accessed August 2, 2011]).
  14. ↑ Sebastian Brünger: History and Profit. How German corporations deal with their Nazi past , p. 194.
  15. ↑ Sebastian Brünger: History and Profit. How German corporations deal with their Nazi past , p. 192 f.
  16. ↑ Martin Sabrow: Writing contemporary history. Understanding the past in the present , p. 42 f.
  17. ^ Lothar Gall: A man for all seasons - Hermann Josef Abs in the Third Reich. In Wolfram Pyta ; Ludwig Richter: creative power of the political. Festschrift for Eberhard Kolb , Historical Research, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-4280-8761-5 . P. 485.
  18. ↑ Manfred Behrend: Review. Eberhard Czichon: Deutsche Bank - Power - Politics. Fascism, War and the Federal Republic. PapyRossa Verlag, Cologne 2001, 323 S. In: Glasnost Archive. 2001, accessed September 26, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Wiljo Heinen: The insubordinate one. The historian Eberhard Czichon feels committed to the truth. Today he is celebrating his 85th birthday . In: Junge Welt , August 8, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Czichon, Eberhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1930