Emil Helfferich
Emil Helfferich (born January 17, 1878 in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse (then Neustadt an der Haardt ); † May 22, 1972 ibid) was a Southeast Asian merchant who was active in trade in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia ) from 1899 to 1927 . From 1927 to 1972 he worked in Hamburg as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of HAPAG , as Chairman of the East Asian Association (OAV) and as a Councilor of State. He spent the last years of his life in Neustadt.
childhood
Emil Helfferich was born as the fourth of seven children into a merchant family based in Neustadt in what was then the Rhine Palatinate . His father had founded a jersey factory in Neustadt in the so-called founding years and was successful. Looking back on his youth, Emil could later say: "We have never lacked anything."
The best-known of his five brothers was Karl Helfferich , Vice Chancellor of the German Empire in World War I and financial expert during the Weimar Republic. The Rentenmark introduced in 1923 goes back to him .
Until the end of the First World War, the Palatinate belonged to the Kingdom of Bavaria and from there some of the teachers at Helfferich's school also came:
"Our teacher! That was a chapter in itself. The majority were " Zwockel ", ie they came from the other side of Bavaria. They drank the same amount of wine in the Palatinate as the beer over there and then got stomach ailments. "
As a boy, Emil Helfferich dreamed of distant lands and a career in the navy of the newly established German Empire. However, since his career as a naval officer was closed to him due to a slight visual impairment, he chose to become an overseas merchant, much to his father's delight.
Professional background
In his autobiography Ein Leben , Helfferich describes how he came to be a businessman. His interest was not in business, but in adventure and visiting distant countries:
“It is strange that some people choose the profession for which they are not suitable. And then they become something. Become something because they expend a lot more energy than if they were fit for it. In this way forces come to life that otherwise sleep, the will is steeled by the resistance, man gets command of himself and, although he continues to often become aware of his inadequacy in very small things, he achieves on a large scale achievements that make him over the that which is naturally suitable. Conversely, I have seen that people who have very good talents for their profession, only achieved mediocrity, acted recklessly or even failed completely.
I missed everything to be a merchant. But for me the job was only a means to an end. I wanted to go out into the big wide world and there I would make my way. Life seemed very straightforward to me. "
Apprenticeship and military service
After several months in Montreux , where he learned English, French, Italian and Russian, the 17-year-old Helfferich started an apprenticeship in Hamburg. The great upswing of this port city had already begun at that time, but the budding businessman Helfferich saw himself in a world of tranquility in the "Jürgen Peters Company, Import and Export of Spirits and Wines":
After the language courses in Switzerland, Emil Helfferich was supposed to start an apprenticeship in Hamburg, but he was confronted with greater difficulties:
“It wasn't easy to find an apprenticeship for me. The October deadline had already passed. A recruiter I went to found angry about my bad handwriting and my volatility. It was the first cold breath. Finally, through a friend of my cousin's, we heard about the possibility of arriving at the Jürgen Peters company, import and export of spirits and wines. That wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I had a big house like Woermann in mind with overseas branches, preferably in Africa, my childhood dream country. But that just wasn't possible. That's why Jürgen Peters. "
Emil Helfferich took up his position in Hamburg with trepidation. To make matters worse, Jürgen Peters preferred to have “a real Hamburg boy” as an apprentice. So they agreed on a fourteen-day trial period. These two weeks were not at all easy for the young man from the Palatinate in exile in Hamburg. He later describes this time as follows:
“These 14 days were the worst time I had on Catharinenstrasse. At the beginning, as the Dutchman says, my hands were wrong. First there was my writing. Mr. Peters attached great importance to calligraphy and growled at my "pig paw". I started learning to write again. Yes, the beginnings of my handwriting, which is still good today, lie with a few thick tears on the apprentice's desk in Catharinenstrasse. Then there was the language. I spoke at a slow pace with a strong Palatinate appeal. In Hamburg, however, it was like hell over the "sspitzen SStein". In addition, there was sometimes Messingsch [ Missingsch ] and Platt. This was worst of all on the telephone, which was one of my duties to operate. We didn't understand each other at both ends, and the old man made a rumble. After a fortnight I was ready to finish my apprenticeship with Jürgen Peters, and I was encouraged in my decision by the company's junior partner, Mr. Behrens. He advised me to run away in my interest. When I stood across from old Mr. Peters in his private office and told him that I didn't think I was fit for the post or that I had not earned his satisfaction, it happened that the apparently tough businessman suddenly became very mild and fatherly. “No, my dear Helfferich,” he replied, “I really like to like you. With a little you will learn all of this. You stay calm here. We'll get along. ”He put his hand on my shoulder soothingly and for a moment I felt as if his eyes were damp. I stayed."
After a year of military service, the privilege of the "educated classes" of Germany at that time, a new phase of life began for Emil Helfferich, which spanned his entire professional life and which he was to spend almost entirely overseas: He went to Penang in what was then the British colony of Straits Settlements , where he continued his training with a Hamburg merchant with whom he became friends.
Experience in Southeast Asia
The clocks didn't go faster in Penang either, except that here, in the tropical colony, a large part of the life of the white-clad gentlemen took place between the stately bungalow and the club. Helfferich got to know this luxurious lifestyle, but was soon looking for adventure. After only 16 months in Penang, he took the risk of breaking his four-year contract and going into business for himself.
He said about this life as follows:
“The merchants in the Straits were doing well at the time. Money was made without too much effort or fuss. The Chinese middleman was strong and reliable. Tin and silver dollars provided the gamble needed. The serenity in business life was also shared in private life. The slackening climate without cars and electric fans and the great thirst did their part to put the Europeans in a mild mood. In this atmosphere a west-east worldview emerged, which crystallized in sayings of wisdom, e.g. For example: 'Those who have slept well at night must also have some rest during the day', 'Those who eat and drink well shouldn't work too much' or 'Life is beautiful, but expensive, you can have it cheaper, but then it's not so beautiful for a long time. "
But this life did not satisfy him in the long run, so he made the decision to try something new:
“[…] On the office chair in Penang in my life under the soporific train of the Punkah I couldn't stand it any longer. [...] Sumatra appeared to us young business people as the land of great opportunities, as the land of the future. "
In 1901 Helfferich went to Telok Betong in South Sumatra, where he tried, completely on his own, in importing and exporting, the "product business" - after a while also in the highly speculative business with pepper .
In 1907 Emil Helfferich got into the pepper business, because of all products, pepper was best suited for speculation, for the following reasons:
"
- Pepper has an unlimited shelf life. Pepper can be stored for centuries without losing quality or weight.
- The consumption of pepper is a constant. Nobody uses pepper anymore when it gets cheaper or less when it gets more expensive.
- The pepper harvests, on the other hand, fluctuate extraordinarily and
- The relatively small total volume of the annual pepper harvests in comparison with other staple products makes speculative influence from one side possible.
In addition, the harvests are almost exclusively concentrated in Southeast Asia - mainly in the Netherlands. "
Helfferich observed that there were companies and private individuals “who became filthy rich through a lucky pepper speculation. One does not speak of those who, conversely, became beggarly poor. The profit is loud, the loss is quiet. ”And so he failed with his large-scale pepper speculation.
His life was very different now than before in Batavia:
“I lived between the beach and the swamp, my food was meager, I only had one Chinese boy who was also Koki - cook. Soon the malaria seized me, which badly affected the poorly nourished body. She only released me 16 years later. "
Already rich in experience, but still short of funds, Helfferich used a home leave - the first in four years - to look for donors who could give his business ventures greater freedom of movement. With a cash credit of 50,000 gold marks from the Hamburg-based private bank Berenberg, Gossler & Co. , he settled in Batavia , the capital of Dutch India, and founded the Helfferich company with his friend Rademacher, whom he knew from their joint military service & Rademacher. Here, in Batavia, Helfferich was to spend the next quarter of a century of his life.
Emil Helfferich was never married and had no children. But he lived for more than thirty years with the painter Dina Uhlenbeck-Ermeling, who had a Dutch father and a Javanese mother. Emil Helfferich met Dina, whom he always referred to in his memoirs as “the life companion” during the voyage to Batavia, today's Jakarta. Dina's father, General a. D., lived in Buitenzorg, the summer resort of Batavia, and belonged to the upper class of colonial society. Although the two never married - unusual for the time, but accepted - they had a long and happy, if childless, partnership that did not end until Dina's death in 1939. Helfferich describes their first encounter as follows:
“In the evening on board the“ Australien ”, a lady sat to my right while eating. Southern, exotic appearance, not a beautiful face, but an extremely expressive one. The lush black hair combed back, the forehead slightly bulged, the black eyebrows like two dots over the dark, sparkling eyes, the nose straight but broad at the root, narrow lips and a sharp chin, a flaming red blouse that unites the dark complexion Firelight, slim arms and classically beautiful hands. Later, when she got up, I saw her wonderfully even figure and noticed her floating gait. She was very spirited, had a pleasant, easily understandable voice and soon drew the conversation at the table. We spoke French to each other. I thought she was a French woman traveling to Indochina. On the second day it turned out that she was Dutch and was going to Batavia. Her name was Dina Uhlenbeck-Ermeling. Do I know your father, old General Ermeling? No, I didn't know him. I hardly knew anyone in Java at all. My Dutch was also very poor at the time. We therefore stayed with French, only from time to time we “babbled” in Dutch or also spoke German, especially when our German travel companion, a Mr. Muhle from Siemssen & Co. in Hong Kong, was there. "
Helfferich in Hamburg
After moving to Hamburg and after the global economic crisis , Helfferich was elected as one of the leading representatives of the German overseas economy in 1933 as chairman of the joint supervisory board of HAPAG and Norddeutscher Lloyd . In 1934 he was also elected chairman of the East Asian Association after the previous chairman March had been forced to resign because of his Jewish wife, and he strengthened the association's relations with fascist Japan. In 1936 he founded the German-Dutch Society and received an order for it from the Queen of the Netherlands , which was not withdrawn from him after the Nazi era. Despite these honorary posts, Helfferich did not get a position in the NSDAP . In 1938, Helfferich, as chairman of the OAV, traveled with the Trans-Siberian Railway for talks to Manchukuo and Japan , but German East Asian trade was declining and could no longer be revived.
Helfferich during the Weimar Republic
At various receptions, Helfferich met the greats of the Weimar Republic, who were already familiar with his family name, because they all knew his brother Karl Helfferich, one of the leading financial experts of the time.
Gustav Stresemann was upset with Helfferich because he had published an article in Deutsche Wacht in which he dealt with Stresemann's dissertation entitled The Development of the Berlin Bottled Beer Business.
Friedrich Ebert described Helfferich as a pleasant man who looked to him like the “Lord Mayor of Germany”.
Hindenburg was described by Helfferich as a very fat, somewhat clumsy, old soldier whom he could experience up close at a ship christening and a banquet.
Helfferich and the National Socialists
The Kepplerkreis
In March 1932, i.e. before the National Socialists came to power, Wilhelm Keppler came to Hamburg on Hitler's behalf to get in touch with Hanseatic business circles and to arrange a meeting with Adolf Hitler . This meeting took place on April 30th of the same year in Berlin. Rudolf Hess also took part in this meeting . During the conversation, Hitler showed little interest in economic questions and went straight to politics in his answer. This meeting was considered to be the hour of birth of the "Kepplerkreis", which was later renamed the Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS . After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Helfferich also became a member of the National Socialist Academy for German Law .
Helfferich's impression of Hitler
Helfferich was impressed by Hitler and the National Socialist movement. In a lecture given to the “Japan Economic Federation” in the industrial club in Tokyo on March 12, 1940, Helfferich raved about the “tough men” who preceded “the old sun sign of the swastika” and who finally, “according to ancient Germanic custom, put the best on the shield [ lifted], the Führer Adolf Hitler ”. He understood how “to lead his people out of the lowlands, out of the swamp of existence, to the height of humanity. [...] He was able to do what neither Bismarck nor Frederick the Great would have been able to do, he raised a poor, trampled, disintegrated, demoralized, self-desperate people again ”. After the lost war, Helfferich saw his former leader in a different light. In his autobiography A Life , he described him as follows:
- “My impression of Hitler? Disappointing. A man of medium stature, ordinary type. Only the eyes and the voice are striking. The clear eyes with the hard, penetrating look; the voice hoarse with the hulking diction. One should recognize the character of a person by the eyes and the voice: a fanatic and a rascal. "
Helfferich and the Goerdeler Circle
Helfferich was involved in the organization of July 20, 1944 . It can be proven that Helfferich was intended by the opposition ( Schwerin , Schulenburg , Goerdeler ) as a candidate for the final occupation of a ministerial post. (Source: Hans-Adolf Jacobsen )
After the Second World War
In 1946, Helfferich was imprisoned for six months by the British occupying forces , but released without trial. In 1951 he went on a goodwill mission to Indonesia and visited his old place of work.
Helfferich in Neustadt
In 1970, at the age of 92, Helfferich moved back to his hometown Neustadt an der Weinstrasse and handed over his collection and library as the Emil Helfferich Collection. He died in 1972 at the age of 94. His remarkable collection of East Asian objects has been in the East Asia Institute of the Ludwigshafen University of Applied Sciences since 1997 .
The Helfferich Collection
The Hellferich collection comes from the Helfferich estate. From Neustadt native, he left it before his death as "Helfferich foundation" of his native city, from the East Asia Institute as a permanent loan received. This collection includes over 300 objects from Indonesia, China and Japan including old ceramics and porcelain, metalwork, scroll paintings, textiles, weapons and furniture. There is also a library that contains, among other things, old Dutch travel books.
The holdings of the extensive library are made up of publications that appeared before the 1950s. So as far as the books concern Asia, they are primarily of interest to the historian. Other books have their bibliophile value. In 1970 Helfferich said in an interview that his collection consists of objects that happened to him by chance and friends. In addition to metalwork, ceramics, furniture and textiles, the collection contains various objects that are closely linked to Helfferich's purely personal preferences, culturally of rather marginal interest.
The Buddha head
The Helfferich collection also contains an old Buddha head from Borobodur. Helfferich himself tells how it came into his possession:
“Before I left Batavia, something special happened. The owner of the 'Hotel der Nederlanden' where we stayed, Mr Mertens, a born Berliner, had sold the hotel for a high price and wanted to return to Europe with his family 'for good'. He had been in the Netherlands for many years and had acquired a large collection of native weapons, handkerchiefs, batiks, carvings, antlers, Chinese porcelain , earthenware and bronze and other curiosities. He exhibited the collection in the hotel. One afternoon he came to us and said to me: 'In 1904 you helped me in a dire emergency. You still remember, those were bad times. The hotel was in debt and one day I was unable to meet my obligations. You jumped at me then. Shortly afterwards the change for the better came, and then things went up. But thank you for making it happen. Pick the most beautiful from the collection as a souvenir. '"
However, Helfferich found nothing among the exhibited items that would have appealed to him. Only a stone Buddha head appealed to him, but that was not one of the objects on offer. So he said to Mertens, who and his wife were not exactly known for their freedom of movement:
“'You have a piece that I would like to own, the Buddha head in your office.' 'Yes,' he replied, 'I have to ask my wife first, because that's our talisman.' Then he came back, but informed Helfferich that his superstitious wife made a condition. She wanted to get the same amount for the stone head that it had cost them. That was six hundred and twenty-five guilders and fifty cents. Helfferich immediately agrees and learns how Mertens came into possession of this Buddha head: 'Decades ago there was a Hungarian painter in Batavia, a kind of Laszlo, who portrayed the ladies and gentlemen of society. He was patronized by the rich Dutch art master Kinsbergen, who also lent him the Buddha head for study purposes. The painter lived in the hotel and one day he disappeared. Only an old suitcase was found. The Buddha head was inside. Mertens took the head in payment for the unpaid bill. The bill was six hundred and twenty-five guilders and fifty cents. '"
Helfferich took this head with him on the voyage by ship to Germany and gave it to his father. After his death it came back into his possession.
The piece was brought to Batavia by a Dutchman, where it changed hands for the first time in the late 19th century. It is said to come from Borobudur (9th century). However, one of the other Buddhist shrines in central Java need not be excluded.
Other objects
Artistically, Helfferich was also interested in painting. This interest may have been influenced by the fact that his partner worked as a painter. Helfferich collected or received pictures from various contemporary painters. The Indonesian pioneer of painting in the European way was the aristocrat Raden Saleh .
The meditative silence and serene calm that emanates from Buddhist images seems to have particularly attracted Helfferich. A notable figure is a standing bronze Buddha from Thailand. Incense burners are represented as Buddhist cult objects in the collection.
The residents of Irian Jaya brought the bird of paradise bellows without feet on the market. Since until the 19th century no European ever saw a living bird of paradise, a curious misunderstanding arose: It was believed that the bird of paradise had no feet, and in 1760 Linnaeus classified a species as " Paradisea apoda " ("footless bird of paradise"). One imagined that the bird of paradise would fly in the sky all its life. Contributed to this misunderstanding maybe also has the old Malay name for the bird, " Manuk Dewata ", " bird of the gods " - that is a bird that is constantly heaven, the gods and the paradise close. Natural history was able to dispel this misunderstanding around the middle of the 19th century.
Bibliophile rarities
Helfferich's library also includes an original edition of Joan Nieuhof's description of China from 1665. The title of this book has the lengthy length customary in the Baroque period:
"Het Gezandtschap of the Neêrlandtsche Oost-Indische Compagnie, aan the great Tartarian Cham, the independent Keizer of China ..."
"The embassy of the Dutch East India Company to the great Tartar Khan, the current Emperor of China"
This book gave the most comprehensive presentation of China to date, based on Nieuhof's own observations as well as the most important and concise Jesuit sources of the time. In addition, the 150 copperplate engravings conveyed the most realistic visual image of China to date to the European reader.
biography
Helfferich was born in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse in 1878 as the fourth son of the factory owner Friedrich Helfferich. He attended secondary school in Neustadt and completed a one-year language course in Switzerland. He then began a three-year commercial apprenticeship in Hamburg, which was followed by a one-year military service. In 1894 he worked in Hamburg.
In 1899, at the age of 21, Helfferich went to Southeast Asia and Sumatra , then to Batavia and started his own business. Ten years later, in 1909, he became general director of the Straits and Sunda Syndicate founded by German banks and overseas companies . In 1914 he published The Culture Banks in the Dutch East Indies , a year later he founded the colonial magazine Deutsche Wacht . At the age of 51, Helfferich returned to Hamburg in 1928 and in 1931 became a member of the 1919 National Club in the Naumburg local group.
On November 19, 1932, Emil Helfferich was one of the co-signers of the petition from industrialists to Paul von Hindenburg calling for Adolf Hitler to be appointed Reich Chancellor . He was also a founding member of the Keppler Circle (later the Heinrich Himmler Circle of Friends). The following year he became chairman of the supervisory board of the Hamburg-America line . He joined the NSDAP on May 1st (membership number 2727313). In 1933 and 1934 he was State Councilor and member of the Hamburg Senate and in 1934 became head of the Foreign Trade Department within the Reichsgruppe Handel. In 1935 he became a member of the presidium of the Hamburg-Bremen Investigation Committee, to which the Reich Propaganda Ministry had assigned the task of camouflaged Nazi press propaganda abroad. Helfferich was appointed director of the foreign trade office for Nordmark in 1936. In 1939 he was chairman of the supervisory board of the German-American Petroleum Company (ESSO) in Hamburg, 94% of which belonged to Standard Oil of New Jersey . In 1940 he traveled overland to Tokyo as chairman of the East Asian Association . Three years later he received an honorary doctorate in economics from Hamburg University.
In 1951 Helfferich traveled to Indonesia at the head of a goodwill mission on behalf of the East Asian Association and the federal government . In 1970, at the age of 92, he moved from Hamburg to Neustadt an der Weinstrasse and one year later built up the Helfferich Foundation. He died in 1972 at the age of 94 in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse.
Publications
Emil Helfferich was active as a child as a writer and later published a whole volume of poems. In his autobiography, too, he repeatedly inserts self-composed poems. He himself writes about his first literary works:
“The greatest opus I brought out when I was fifteen was“ Mohammed, Drama in 5 Acts ”. Originally there were 6 acts, but since this was too much in the judgment of my brother Karl, who was responsible for me, the 1st act was deleted, and now it was even nicer. "
Poetry
In his autobiography, Helfferich describes himself as a “man of the soul” . He liked to write poetry and was evidently able to express his state of mind better in this way than in sober prose. In 1928 his partner put together a small volume of poetry, probably as a farewell greeting to her friends on their final return to Germany. As an example, a small ode to his homeland:
Forster monster
Do you feel good once in your life?
And is nothing too expensive for you
Then, dear friend, with joyful courage,
Drink "Forster monster"!
But you are miserably bad
In this world walls
Then, dear friend, and then all the more
Drink "Forster monster"!
(Quoted from Emil Helfferich: A Life. Volume III)
The "Forster Ungeheuer" was Otto von Bismarck's favorite wine.
monograph
Helfferich's only monograph appeared in 1914 in the series of publications of the predecessor of today's Institute for World Economy in Kiel . Helfferich recalls:
“I owed the connection with the Kiel Institute to its director, Professor Bernhard Harms, who had once visited us outside and to whom I tried to demonstrate at the time that you can't crush a raw hen's egg with your hands. The demonstration failed, and we were all splashed with the splashing egg yolk in our white suits. From then on, we were both close friends. "
The Dutch cultural banks
In 1914 Helfferich published his book about The Dutch Cultural Banks, which financed the large plantations in the Dutch East Indies. This book will subsequently become a textbook at the Rotterdam Commercial College . He also founded the "German Association" and published the magazine Deutsche Wacht . The German Confederation was a collecting basin for the 3,000 Germans in the region and supported compatriots who were in need. Helfferich's main activity was in the Straits and Sunda Syndicat's Administratie Kantoor .
Helfferich writes about the data processing for his book:
“My partner provided me with valuable services with her mathematical talent and her clear writing. Sometimes we would sit together on the floor with the reports spread out and make long tables. "
The study, which deals with the financial basis of large plantation operations, arose in connection with Helfferich's preparations for the establishment of the “Straits and Sunda Syndicate”. On the occasion of his retirement in 1941, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg .
- Helfferich, Emil: “Service to the Fatherland. Patriotic Essays, Speeches and Poems ”. Compiled from publications in the magazine Deutsche Wacht , Batavia, 1915–1928. Hamburg (Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt), 1938
- Helfferich, Emil: Lectures in Japan March – April 1940: “Steering and performance of the German economy” Lecture to the “Japan Economic Federation” at the Industrial Club in Tokyo on March 12, 1940 and “Economic Problems of the Future”. Lecture on the occasion of the farewell reception, o.
Other publications
- Emil Helfferich: A Life - Volume I-V . Dulk, Hamburg 1948.
- Emil Helfferich: A Life - Volume V . Mettcker and Sons, Jever 1965.
- Emil Helfferich: Southeast Asian Stories . Mettcker and Sons, Jever 1966.
literature
- Geoffrey Bennett: The Pepper Trader: True Tales of the German East Asia Squadron and the Man Who Cast Them in Stone . Equinox Publishing, 2006. ISBN 979-3780-26-6 (novel about the life of Helfferich).
Web links
- Literature by and about Emil Helfferich in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Emil Helfferich in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ^ Gustav Stresemann: The development of the Berlin bottled beer business. RF FUNCKE, BERLIN, 1900. ( online )
- ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd updated edition, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 242.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Helfferich, Emil |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German Southeast Asia merchant |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 17, 1878 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Neustadt an der Weinstrasse |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 22, 1972 |
| Place of death | Neustadt an der Weinstrasse |