Emil Kirdorf

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Emil Kirdorf (born April 8, 1847 in Mettmann near Düsseldorf , † July 13, 1938 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ) was a German industrialist . Kirdorf was one of the first significant employed Ruhr industrialists who were exclusively managers and not, as for example August Thyssen or Hugo Stinnes , owners of their companies themselves.

Life

Kirdorf was born as the son of the weaving mill owner Martin Kirdorf (1811-1847) and Amalie Dickes (* 1811) in wealthy circumstances. He completed a commercial apprenticeship in the family business , attended the textile school in Mülheim am Rhein and , from 1864 , volunteered for a year in Hamburg in an export company. A year later he took a stake in a Krefeld textile company . The refusal of the management to introduce a mechanical loom led to the bankruptcy of the parents' weaving mill, which ruled out the takeover of this business as a professional perspective for Kirdorf.

Mediated by his older brother Adolph Kirdorf , he switched to mining , where he started as an accountant for the mine management of the Zeche Holland in Wattenscheid . In 1871 Kirdorf became its director.

The entrepreneur Friedrich Grillo became aware of Kirdorf and in 1873 offered him the position of commercial director at the Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG (GBAG) that had just been founded . In 1893, Kirdorf became General Director of GBAG, which at the time was the largest German mining company in terms of output. Kirdorf was instrumental in building GBAG and steered the company through the crisis of the 1870s . He held this position until 1926, when GBAG was finally merged into the newly formed United Steelworks . Under his leadership, GBAG became the largest coal mining company in Europe. He earned the half-critical, half-reverential title of "Bismarck's Ruhr Mining". By taking over the Hansa , Zollern and Germania collieries , Kirdorf expanded GBAG, incorporated the Schalker Mine and Hüttenverein founded by Grillo into it in 1904 , and expanded GBAG into a mixed group by taking over coal trading and shipping companies . The " Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein Rothe Erde ", which his brother Adolph had built up, finally incorporated it into his company in 1907 after an interest group had been established in 1904. Immediately thereafter, the planning began for the 1909 in Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg that the German Zollverein was one, built Adolf Emil hut , which was completed in 1912 and was considered one of the most modern plants of its time.

Due to an acute sales crisis , Kirdorf was one of the initiators of the Rhenish-Westphalian coal syndicate in 1893 , of which he chaired the supervisory board until 1913. In this syndicate, 98 mining companies in the Ruhr area committed to marketing their products exclusively through the syndicate from now on, which was intended to prevent dumping .

He was one of the founding members of the Pan-German Association and the Free Ukraine Association, which was established in 1891, as well as the Colonial Association and the Fleet Association .

Kirdorf was a co-founder of the business association for the promotion of intellectual reconstruction forces , which provided the capital for the press empire of Alfred Hugenberg .

The construction of the Bismarck Tower on the Mechtenberg was also based on his initiative, because he was also chairman of the Bismarck Association of the Gelsenkirchen district, founded in 1896 .

On June 15, 1915, in his war target memorandum, he called for France to be weakened to such an extent that it could never become a great power again and for Russia to be pushed back as far as possible in order to acquire settlement land to increase the rural population. In 1917 Kirdorf joined the German Fatherland Party .

In September 1918 he demanded the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II.

After the First World War , GBAG lost its importance as a mixed group and converted back to a pure coal company. At GBAG, Kirdorf lost his leading position in favor of Hugo Stinnes , with whom he had violent differences of opinion about company policy. Stinnes intended to make GBAG the foundation of a German coal trust , which Kirdorf resisted. Since he was unable to assert himself even after Stinnes' death in 1924, Kirdorf gave up his position at GBAG in 1926 and resigned from the board.

From 1924 to 1928 he was President of the Düsseldorf Industry Club .

In 1926 he was involved in the establishment of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG , into which the Siemens-Rhein-Elbe-Schuckert-Union, which Kirdorf co-founded in 1920, was integrated.

Kirdorf was a member of the Provincial Parliament , until September 8, 1989 an honorary citizen of the city of Gelsenkirchen and an honorary citizen of the city of Mülheim an der Ruhr until 1995 .

Relationship to National Socialism

Kirdorf was known throughout his life as a reactionary for his authoritarian views. He rejected the Weimar Republic , which he called "rabble rule", and stood against the labor movement and the trade unions . According to his conviction, the state and the entrepreneur should determine the social order. He fought the democratic state.

On April 27, 1927, Hitler gave a lecture entitled “Fuhrer and Mass” to business leaders in Essen . Kirdorf was also present.

So Kirdorf became an active promoter of the rise of Adolf Hitler . He met Hitler for the first time on July 4, 1927 and soon after became a member of the NSDAP . Because the anti-capitalism of the Nazis around Gregor Strasser seemed too strong to him, Kirdorf left the party in 1928 and turned back to the DNVP . However, he maintained contact with Hitler, so that he was the guest of honor at the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg from August 1st to 4th, 1929.

At Kirdorf's instigation, Hitler wrote a brochure entitled The Path to Resurgence , which Kirdorf distributed to other entrepreneurs. As a result, on October 26, 1927, 14 “business leaders” listened to a lecture by Hitler in the house of Kirdorf. He promoted Hitler's ties to industry, for example, in August 1931, he organized an exchange of views between Hitler and 30 to 40 representatives of the coal and steel industry. Kirdorf himself tried to open the door to Hitler in the Ruhr industry and thus to tap new sources of money for the NSDAP, albeit with little success. He himself supported Hitler financially, but at most with a small amount of money. The reason for this was that he was always stingy in money matters and, as a pensioner, he lacked direct access to the money of the companies he had previously run or the funds of the central coffers of the Ruhr industry. In his diary, Joseph Goebbels made the entry on November 15, 1936:

“How poor we were then. Fuehrer tells how he once wanted to shoot himself because the bill debts were growing over his head. Kirdorf helped him with 100,000 marks. "

In 1934 Kirdorf rejoined the NSDAP. In 1937 he wrote about Hitler:

“Above all, he freed us from the murderous class struggle . The big gain inside is to be seen in the resurrection and re-strengthening of the national community . "

Hitler flattered Kirdorf as a " national legend ". He celebrated his birthdays with torchlight procession. Kirdorf was a holder of the golden party badge . On April 10, 1937, Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary:

“The Führer is very kind to Kirdorf. He owes him the salvation of his party and his person from the fighting time. "

On his 90th birthday, Hitler bestowed the eagle shield on Kirdorf, the highest civilian honor of the National Socialist German Reich . The Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung reported on April 15, 1937 in a photo report entitled "Klein Dietmar speaks with the Führer" about the celebrations in the Streithof house near Mülheim an der Ruhr. After Kirdorf's death on July 13, 1938, Hitler had him buried with a state funeral. The funeral ceremonies took place in Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf on the grounds of the Rheinelbe colliery in the presence of Hitler. The funeral speeches were given by Water Funk and Albert Vögler .

In 1939 the former Hohenzollernplatz in Berlin-Köpenick was renamed Kirdorfplatz and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse was renamed Kirdorfstrasse . The Berlin address book stated the namesake: “Privy Councilor, Dr. Ing. E. h, longtime leader of the West German mining industry ”. After the end of the war they were renamed after victims of National Socialism; the square was named Mandrellaplatz , the street was renamed Seelenbinderstraße .

The Kirdorf colony still exists in Dortmund-Eving today . In order to point out the industrialist's past, the VVN-BdA applied for a warning board in the Eving district council in July 2011. Although there is a decision by the Eving district council, the board has not been set up until today (2020).

literature

Other sources

  • City archive Mülheim an der Ruhr, holdings 1550 (Mülheim personalities)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helmut Böhme:  Kirdorf, Emil. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , pp. 666-668 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Reinhard Opitz (ed.): European strategies of German capital 1900–1945 . Cologne 1977, p. 333 ff.
  3. ^ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: German history of society . CH Beck, 2003, ISBN 3-406-32264-6 ( google.de [accessed June 30, 2017]).
  4. ↑ Wolf Heß (Ed.): Rudolf Heß, Briefe 1908–1933 . Munich 1987, p. 380.
  5. ^ Hans Mommsen : Rise and Fall of the Republic of Weimar 1918–1933. Berlin 1998, p. 412.
  6. ^ Thomas Trumpp: To the financing of the NSDAP by the German big industry. Attempt to take stock. In: Karl Dietrich Bracher u. a. (Ed.): National Socialist Dictatorship. A balance sheet. Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-921352-95-9 , p. 138 f.
  7. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels. All fragments . Munich 1987, Volume 2, p. 727.
  8. ↑ Dieter Halfmann: The share of industry and banks in fascist domestic politics. Cologne 1974, p. 18.
  9. ↑ Fröhlich, Volume 3, p. 105.
  10. ↑ http://www.gelsenzentrum.de/totenfeier_kirdorf_gelsenkirchen.htm
  11. ^ Foundation German Historical Museum: Just seen on LeMO: LeMO biography. Retrieved April 19, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Kirdorfplatz . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1943, part 4, Köpenick, p. 2154.
  13. ↑ Kirdorfplatz . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  14. ^ The brown past of Emil Kirdorf: Confusion about the missing panel , VVN-BdA NRW
personal data
SURNAME Kirdorf, Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist and supporter of Adolf Hitler
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH Mettmann
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1938
Place of death Mülheim an der Ruhr