Elmar Michel

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Elmar Michel as a witness during the Nuremberg Trials (around 1947).

Elmar Michel (born June 16, 1897 in Waiblingen , † June 24, 1977 in Stuttgart ) was a German civil servant. As head of the economic department of the German military administration, he played a key role in the “ de-Jewification ” of the French economy during World War II.

Life

After attending the humanistic Karlsgymnasium in Stuttgart and participating in the First World War , Michel studied law and economics at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin. In 1921 he received his doctorate in Tübingen with a doctoral thesis supervised by Johann Heinrich Pohl . He passed his second state examination in law in 1923.

In 1925, Michel joined the Reich Ministry of Economics and for the next twenty years worked in this or its successor authority, the combined Reich and Prussian Ministry of Economics, as a consultant and department head. Michel was able to continue his career after 1933 without difficulty and was promoted to Ministerial Director in the 1930s. He was a commentator and co-initiator of the Reich Discount Act (RabG) of November 25, 1933, which, according to him, together with the law for the protection of national retail trade of May 12, 1933, should "purify competition" and combat "degenerations" in trade. From 1933 Michel became a member of National Socialist associations ( NS-Rechtsswahrerbund and Reichsbund der Deutschen Officials ) and the Reichs Luftschutzbund . Michel joined the NSDAP in 1940.

From July 13, 1940 to August 1944, Michel was the head of the economic department of the German military administration for occupied France in Paris. In this capacity he was responsible, among other things, for the “de-Jewification” of the French economy. In this function, Kurt Blanke was responsible for enforcement in the economic department as head of the "De-Judgment" department. After the departure of Werner Best , whose anti-Semitic measures to disenfranchise the Jews Michel had willingly supported, Michel also took over the management of the administrative department and thus the overall civil administration of the German military commander France .

After the end of the war, Michel was interned by the Allies and testified as a witness at the Nuremberg trials . In the trial against the main war criminals in 1946/47, various documents signed by him and newspaper articles written by him, etc. a. in connection with the recruitment of foreign workers , cited. He was released in 1948 and then denazified as "exonerated" , but was arrested again by the US CIC in 1949 and extradited to France under the London Statute , where he was to be tried for the economic pillage of France. Ambassador Otto Abetz was convicted there in 1949, but the preparation of the indictment in France dragged on, so that Michel was temporarily allowed to travel back to the Federal Republic. When the trial was set to begin in March 1954, Michels' former subordinates intervened in France, who now occupied positions in the Bonn ministerial bureaucracy, including Walter Bargatzky , Justice Minister Thomas Dehler , Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his State Secretary Hans Globke , because other crimes were now committed threatened to be rolled up during the occupation. Like Hans Globcke, Michel is regarded as the prototype of the continuity of civil servants in politics and economics in the post-war period. The French former bureaucrats of the Vichy government were also not interested in exposing their collaboration with National Socialist Germany. When the trial nevertheless took place at the instigation of the French interior minister Jules Moch (1893–1985), the French military prosecutor was instructed by the French defense ministry to drop the charges and the German embassy was informed that Michel's appearance at the trial was not required. The process in absentia consequently ended on November 10, 1954 with an acquittal.

Immediately thereafter, Michel received the previously announced post of Ministerial Director in the Federal Ministry of Economics from the Adenauer government , in which he headed Department II (economic development, craft, trade, technology) until 1955. On February 1, 1956, he became chairman of the board and later chairman of the supervisory board of Salamanderwerke in Stuttgart , which was then the largest shoe factory in Western Europe. According to Hermann Reiff, he was then "one of the most important personalities in the German economy". In addition, Michel was a member of the board of the Federal Working Group of Medium-sized and Large Retail Enterprises, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Sartorius Works in Göttingen and Chairman of the Working Group for Defense-Related Issues of the German Industry and Trade Conference . He was also chairman of the brand association, whose honorary chairman he became in 1972, and honorary member of the Institute of Auditors and the Association of Auditors and the Foreign Trade Association of German Retailers.

In 1967 Michel stepped forward once more as head of a "Commission to investigate the equality of competition between the press, radio / television and film" appointed by the Bundestag and named after him. This dealt with the question of the development of broadcasting policy in the Federal Republic and examined in particular the question of opening the broadcasting market for private broadcasters.

Michel had been married to Wanda Fitzner since 1946, with whom he had a daughter. From his first marriage he already had a daughter and a son.

Fonts

  • The official review of the legality and binding nature of laws and regulations. In the light of the new state law of the Reich , 1921.
  • The Catering Act of April 28, 1930 in the version of the laws of July 3, 1934, October 9, 1934 and September 27, 1938 and the most important imperial and state implementing and secondary provisions , Berlin 1938. (first 1930; as Michel-Kienzle 2003 in the 14th edition)
  • Retail trade and retail protection, including the catering trade , Hamburg 1937.
  • The Discount Act [law on price reductions] of November 25, 1933 together with the implementing ordinance of February 21, 1934 and subsidiary laws , Munich 1934.
  • General principles of cost accounting according to the decree of the Reich Ministry of Economics and the Prime Minister General Field Marshal Göring of January 16, 1939 , Berlin 1939.
  • Report of the commission investigating the development of broadcasting policy in south-west Germany (Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland) , Kornwestheim 1970.

literature

  • Who is who? , Vol. 17, 1971, p. 723.
  • Götz Aly : race and class. Research on the German essence , S. Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 2003. ISBN 978-3-10-000419-2
  • Éric Alary, Nouvelle histoire de l'Occupation, Paris, 2019.
  • Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-693-8 .
  • Ahlrich Meyer, perpetrator under interrogation: The "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" in France 1940–1944, Darmstadt 2005.
  • Manfred Grieger: Sartorius under National Socialism: A family business between the global economic crisis and denazification . Wallstein, Göttingen, 2019, ISBN 978-3-8353-3587-5 .
  • The Greifeld case , Karlsruhe - science management and the Nazi past (= publications from the archive of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. 5). KIT Scientific Publishing, Karlsruhe 2019, ISBN 978-3-7315-0844-1 .
  • Peter Poguntke, Dr. Elmar Michel: Economic leader in occupied France in: Dr. Wolfgang Proske (HG), perpetrators, helpers, free riders: victims of National Socialism from the Stuttgart region, Gerstetten, 2019 pp. 286–296.
  • Wolfgang Seibel, Power and Morals, the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in France, 1940–1944, Koblenz 2010.
  • Michael Meyer: "The French government tackles the Jewish question without hesitation: Vichy France, German occupying power and the beginning of" Jewish policy "in summer / autumn 1940 in: IfZ Munich. 2010, accessed on May 21, 2020.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Kopp: Resistance and Renewal. , Seewald Verlag Stuttgart 1966, p. 199
  2. ↑ Götz Aly : The Discount Act, an obituary . Berliner Zeitung of July 25, 2011. Under the title Tangible usefulness. The discount law or the freedom of bargaining also in Götz Aly (2003): Rasse und Klasse. Inquiries about the German essence , pp. 61–69
  3. ↑ Bernd-A. Rusinek: The Greifeld case. 2019, accessed September 6, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Ulrich Herbert : Best. Biographical studies on radicalism, worldview and reason. 1903-1989. Dietz, Bonn 1996, p. 264
  5. ↑ Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex: The National Socialist Crimes in France . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 110 .
  6. ↑ Martin Jungius, Wolfgang Seibel: The citizen as a desk perpetrator: The Kurt Blanke case. In: Ifz-Munich. 2008, accessed September 17, 2019 .
  7. ^ Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. , Pp. 111-114
  8. ↑ Hermann Reiff: Erlebtes Baden-Württemberg: Memories of a Ministerialbeamten , 1985, p. 165.
personal data
SURNAME Michel, Elmar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil servant
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Waiblingen
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 1977
Place of death Stuttgart