Emil Tscheulin

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Emil Wilhelm Tscheulin (born December 26, 1884 in Teningen ; † October 17, 1951 there ) was a German industrialist , pioneer in the aluminum industry and National Socialist military leader .

Life

Training and operations manager

Emil Tscheulin was the son of a former in an iron foundry and machine factory . After attending primary school from 1891 to 1899, he was employed as an apprentice in this company. There he received training as a mechanical engineer. After his technical skills had been recognized and promoted, he also received commercial training. After completing his training, Cheulin did military service and then, at the age of 22, became operations manager of the company where he had trained.

After the machine factory had acquired the license to produce sheet aluminum from the Swiss aluminum industrialist Heinrich Alfred Gautschi , it founded an aluminum GmbH in 1910 together with the Ludwigshafen iron wholesaler Wolf Netter & Sohn and entrusted Tscheulin with the technical management. In a start-up phase, the manufacturing process for aluminum foil was technically improved. The first foils could already be delivered in January 1911.

founder

The aluminum GmbH in 1912 with the Dr. Lauber, Neher & Cie. in Emmishofen and the Dr. Lauber, Neher Co. GmbH Singen merged to form Aluminum-Walzwerk AG (AWAG) based in Schaffhausen under the management of the Swiss Robert Victor Neher . Neher had already developed a patent for the production of endless aluminum foil strips in 1910 and has also been producing according to this process at the German site in Singen since 1912 . Its production method was technologically far superior to the book rolling process used by Tscheulin. Since Tscheulin had lost his influence in the newly formed company, he and his brother-in-law Wilhelm Ingold founded their own company in Teningen in 1913 under the name Aluminum-Folien-Fabrik GmbH , in which he continued to produce foil using the book rolling process.

During the First World War , production in this company was severely restricted; at times, zinc was processed into foil instead of aluminum . For a short time Cheulin and Ingold were drafted into the army as soldiers.

In 1919 Emil Tscheulin, Wilhelm Ingold and the owners of the Karlsruhe hardware store LJ Ettlinger , Martin Elsas and Leopold Neumann founded Breisgau-Walzwerk GmbH in Teningen . With this new beginning, there was also a change from the stack or book rolling process to the strip rolling process. In 1926, AWAG in Schaffhausen, which also included the aluminum works in Singen, acquired LJ Ettlinger's shares in the Breisgau rolling mill, and Singener Aluwerke, under the management of Hans Constantin Paulssen, took over the management of the company. Tscheulin and Ingold left the reorganized company after a short period and set up a new plant in Deißlingen , then Württemberg , as they had contractually agreed not to settle in Baden for three years . During this time, Cheulin was also in the USA and Canada, where he not only studied the technological status of the North American aluminum industry, but also made business contacts that were of great importance to his company in the 1930s and during the rebuilding after the Second World War . The time between 1926 and 1929 was used to build a completely new plant in Teningen.

New beginning in 1929

In 1929 the company moved into the new factory halls in Teningen, where a smelter and a strip rolling mill were set up. At the same time, an aluminum powder GmbH was founded to recycle the aluminum waste . The powder factory was sold again in 1934. In 1937 Tscheulin started producing aluminum tubes, and from 1938 pleated bottle caps were made for champagne and wine bottles. The main products, however, were aluminum foil for the manufacture of capacitors and for packaging. In order to refine the latter, the foils were laminated, colored and printed. This also resulted in collective pictures made of colored aluminum foil, which were enclosed with cigarette packs. Cheulin produced the cigarettes in a cigarette factory that he founded especially at the time. The pictures could be glued into a scrapbook with the title “German Fairy Tales in Words and Pictures” , which had been published by Tscheulin. Another curiosity was the production of emergency money during the inflation of 1923 , in which aluminum foil was printed instead of paper. Besides the aluminum rolling mill in Singen, Tscheulin was the only producer of such banknotes.

From 1930 until the start of the war, Tscheulin worked tirelessly towards industrial development in Breisgau . In 1931 he took over half of the capital of the machine factory in which he had learned and thus saved it from bankruptcy. In 1932, through Tscheulin's mediation, a Frankfurt capacitor factory relocated its headquarters to Teningen, because considerable cost advantages could be achieved here for the production of aluminum electrolytic capacitors due to the low transport costs for the aluminum foil and the technological cooperation. In June 1933 Tscheulin submitted an application to the Reich Ministry of Economics to build a raw aluminum plant. As early as 1933, Berlin no longer allowed the settlement of companies that were important for armaments if they were near the border. Cheulin's application, who wanted to invest one million RM, was not approved.

Industrialist from 1939 to 1945

From 1939 to 1945, aluminum foils were only allowed to be produced for military purposes. Emil Tscheulin received a large number of orders and produced 60 percent of the Reich's capacitor foils during the war. This was only possible because his company employed forced laborers from different countries. In addition to 99 French people (including 42 Alsatians), 62 Belarusians and 30 Ukrainians as well as members of other nations worked in the aluminum plant. Cheulin also had a camp that housed the slave laborers. In 1944, 375 of the 800 employees in Tscheulin were forced laborers. If one compares the proportion of forced labor in the aluminum works with that of other companies, for example with the armaments smithy Daimler-Benz in Mannheim, which was 31.2% in 1944, it becomes clear that the aluminum works had requested a considerable amount of forced labor for its operation.

Because there were only protective provisions for German employees, especially women, with regard to weekly working hours and night work, the companies were asked by the employment offices to use Eastern workers for night shifts . Usually the companies were allowed to employ the forced laborers for 62.75 hours a week. Cheulin applied to be allowed to use his Eastern workers in production for 72 hours. The application was approved.

The plant was shut down from 1945 to 1948. The production facilities were dismantled and the company buildings were largely converted into French barracks.

In 1949 Tscheulin was able to deliver the first tubes made of aluminum, and in 1950 the first rolling mills went into operation. In 1951, a few weeks before Emil Tscheulin's death, a new smelter, as well as a block and strip rolling mill, started work.

The plant founded by Tscheulin still produces printed foils today, belonged to the Canadian aluminum manufacturer Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA) until 2010 and has since been taken over by the Australian packaging specialist Amcor Flexibles .

Political activity

Emil Tscheulin was one of the early and most influential supporters of National Socialism in Baden, campaigning for the NSDAP since 1930 , of which he did not join as a member until 1932. He supported the Baden NSDAP with considerable sums of money. In 1932 he also became head of the light metal goods specialist group in the Freiburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK) . In addition to Wilhelm Keppler in Eberbach , Eduard Max Hofweber from Heinrich Lanz AG and Fritz Reuther from Bopp & Reuther, both in Mannheim, he was one of the few industrialists in Baden who publicly professed National Socialism before 1933.

Cheulin's role in building the NSDAP in Teningen

Tscheulin was the driving force behind the establishment of the Teningen NSDAP local group . From 1938 onwards, detailed reports on his promotion of National Socialism in Teningen were published in the municipality's official gazette, which is why Cheulin’s work is particularly well documented. In 1930, for example, he recruited a foreman who was employed in his company for the NSDAP, after he had campaigned for Tscheulin and against the social democratic councilor Fritz Schieler in a regional newspaper a year earlier . Tscheulin proposed his foreman as NSDAP local group leader of the local group to be newly founded. In the same year the foreman also founded the SA Emmendingen, where he made a career as a storm leader of the SA .

An expression of Cheulin's support for the local NSDAP group was the fact that 42 of the first 67 party members in town were employed in the aluminum works. Tscheulin also bore the costs of the party work, granted the local group leader employed by him paid leave for his commitment to the NSDAP and committed himself to the latter in 1932 to cover all costs that were to arise in the battles of the Sturmabteilung, but on the condition that the Teninger SA winners stay.

In the municipality's official gazette it was reported in retrospect that the Tscheulinwerk was already a "National Socialist stronghold" in the spring of 1932 and "in the truest sense of the word a fortress from which the SA made its failures" . In the aluminum plant "the weapons of the SA were stored, the files secured and no police dared to attack the plant" . In addition, tips for the storm flags were made in the aluminum works and killers were cast from aluminum. Emil Tscheulin procured firearms himself, which he passed on to party members, although the SA and the SS were strictly forbidden to possess firearms. He also personally intervened on the part of the SA in their brawls with social democratic activists of the Reich Banner.

NSBO

The establishment of the National Socialist company cell organizations (NSBO) played an important role in the establishment of National Socialist structures in Teningen . This action was particularly successful in Teningen, as evidenced by the fact that by February 1932, one year before Hitler's " seizure of power ", 650 NSBO ​​members had been recruited. At the end of 1931, with a few exceptions, all employees of Emil Tscheulin's company were members of the NSBO.

With the NSBO, the National Socialists tried from 1931 to eliminate the influence of trade unions and social democrats in the factories, a goal that Cheulin successfully achieved in his work. In the official gazette of the municipality in August 1939 it was read retrospectively that in Teningen in 1932 there was the “relatively largest company cell organization in the Baden region”.

NSDAP VIPs visiting

Characteristic of the close and early connection between Tscheulin and the NSDAP is also the NSDAP party celebrities, some of which were received in the canteen of the aluminum works in Teningen before 1933:

President of the IHK Freiburg

After the "seizure of power" by the NSDAP, Tscheulin became President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK) Freiburg, which was no longer independent, but was subject to the leadership principle according to the IHK Baden. He held this office until 1945. From 1940 to 1943 he was also President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Mulhouse and Kolmar , which had been brought into line after the annexation of Alsace. Among the business leaders in Baden, Tscheulin had one of the best contacts to the NSDAP Gauleiter Robert Wagner , who from 1940 was also head of civil administration in occupied Alsace.

As President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Tscheulin also had to maintain contacts between industry and science, particularly with the University of Freiburg . On his initiative, the IHK founded a working group for cellulose research in 1939 to support the chemist and later Nobel Prize winner Hermann Staudinger , which was headed by Staudinger and which gave him the opportunity to establish a research department for macromolecular chemistry at the university . Staudinger, against whom the Gestapo initiated investigative proceedings in 1933, partly because of critical statements in connection with the First World War, with the aim of expelling him from the university, had submitted a similar initiative to Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust , which he rejected in 1938 was.

In other cases, however, Cheulin did not shy away from attacking personalities he did not like and withdrawing his support from them without any financial or professional reasons. Tscheulin had an aversion to the resistance economist Adolf Lampe , who ran the "Oberbadische Wirtschaftsinstitut" together with Walter Eucken , which until then had worked closely with the IHK and was also funded by the Reich Ministry of Economics. Cheulin refused to support the institute and it only survived because it was taken over by the university.

As president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Cheulin played a role that should not be underestimated in the " Aryanization " of Jewish companies. The chambers of industry and commerce had to submit expert opinions on the implementation of the “Aryanization” in the corresponding “procedures” and to approve the purchase contract and the purchase price. Tscheulin apparently had considerable room for maneuver and used it in 1942 in the case of Hans Mez, a Freiburg manufacturer of sewing silk, who was accused of being a “ half-Jew ”. Cheulin campaigned for Mez against various party circles, but was unsuccessful.

In the proceedings against Metallwerk Oscar Weil GmbH in Lahr, however, he came to a different decision, possibly out of private interests. The company, which still exists today, had 150 employees at the time and was the market leader in Europe for steel and aluminum wool and is known, among other things, for the abrazo brand . The company had significant arms and foreign exchange policy importance. Since the Jewish company boss Hugo Weil submitted an exemption application to the Reich Chancellery in 1938 against the threat of "Aryanization" on the grounds that he could not do without his cooperation because of his international contacts, Cheulin had to submit his report. Cheulin spoke out against Weil's request and the Reich Ministry of the Interior rejected his request for exception. The attempt to transfer the management of the company to the future “non-Jewish” son-in-law Weils also failed and the company changed hands on December 1, 1939. The new owner of the company was the director of the Tscheulin aluminum works, Clemens Kentrup , favorite of the district leader Robert Wagner and his district economic adviser from 1933 to 1945. Kentrup was Tscheulin's son-in-law and was probably financially supported by Tscheulin in taking over Weil's company.

Tscheulin was appointed military economic leader as early as 1938, i.e. at a time when exclusively deserving party members received this title, which was also awarded to non-party industrial leaders during the war.

Because of his active work for the Nazi regime, Cheulin was sentenced to 40 months' internment and a fine of 5,000 marks; he served his prison sentence from 1945 to 1947. His brother-in-law Wilhelm Ingold also served a sentence of several years.

Despite being loyal to the line, Cheulin also criticized organizational grievances that arose from rivalries between different party structures: “The juxtaposition, overlap and confusion of the various forms of organization has sometimes caused such confusion that even people with the best will and clear-thinking can no longer find their way around " .

Honors

Memorial plaque on the Protestant church in Koendringen
Road sign in Koendringen
  • Emil Tscheulin was an honorary citizen of the Teningen community. His honorary citizenship was withdrawn after 1945 because of his National Socialist past.
  • In 1951 he was made an honorary citizen by the council of the then independent municipality of Köndringen.
  • A memorial plaque in his honor was attached to the Protestant church in Köndringen in 1954.
  • A street in Teningen is named after Emil Tscheulin. ▼ In other parts of Baden, too, streets bore Cheulin's name. However, these names did not last there, for example in the city of Kenzingen, where Emil-Tscheulin-Strasse was renamed Offenburger Strasse after 1945 .
  • Tscheulin was an honorary senator of the University of Freiburg . In October 2017, the University of Freiburg distanced itself from the appointment of Cheulin as an honorary senator by means of a senate resolution.

Initiative to educate people about Emil Tscheulin

Supplementary plaque to the memorial plaque at the Protestant church in Köndringen

In October 2011, some citizens of Teningen wrote a letter to Mayor Heinz-Rudolf Hagenacker and the Protestant pastor of Köndringen, Andreas Bordne, in which they demanded a thorough explanation of Emil Tscheulin's National Socialist past. The regional radio broadcaster Radio Dreyeckland reported on the reactions of the parish and the political community in an interview with the initiators on November 18, 2011.

In a response from the community, it was assured that historians would be commissioned with the case or that a term paper would be awarded at the university. However, at the end of July 2012, the Teningen council refused to allow the community to participate in the historical review by scientists from the University of Freiburg.

On the other hand, it became known that Hans-Georg Otten-Tscheulin, a grandson of Emil Tscheulin, had commissioned a scientifically precise study in which Cheulin’s work should be examined and documented. Otten-Tscheulin pointed out that this privately financed expertise is not subject to any publication obligation, but has given the prospect that it can be viewed after completion.

In order to deepen the information about the circumstances of the honors for Emil Tscheulin, the initiative DEMON invited "Think without Nazis" in March 2013 to a public event in Teningen. Participants in the panel discussion were the historians Norbert Ohler and Wolfram Wette as well as Günter Stein from the organizer. Radio Dreyeckland and the local press reported on the event.

On February 1, 2015, an addition was added next to the plaque of honor at the Protestant church to provide information about Emil Tscheulin's National Socialist past. The citizens' initiative DEMON continues to demand that a portrait of Tscheulin in the entrance area of ​​the Teningen town hall be removed and that Tscheulinstrasse be renamed in Teningen. The portrait in the town hall entrance was removed in 2017 due to renovation work.

literature

  • Tscheulin-Zigarettenfabrik GmbH (Hrsg.): German fairy tales in words and pictures. Folder with 6 panels; Text on the back and aluminum stickers. Teningen 1934.
  • Otto Ernst Sutter : Twenty-five years of aluminum foil production in Teningen i. Breisgau. Festschrift for Jan. 11, 1936. Teningen i. Br. Aluminumwerk Tscheulin GmbH, Teningen 1936.
  • Aluminum-Walzwerke Singen (Ed.): 25 years of aluminum-Walzwerke Singen. AWS 1912-1937. Sing 1937.
  • Aluminum-Walzwerke Singen (Ed.): 50 years of Singen Aluminum. Singing 1962.
  • Ilse Benig: 50 years of aluminum foils. Publishing house for industry, economy and traffic, Mannheim 1963.
  • Norbert Ohler : The communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. In: Peter Schmidt (ed.): Teningen - A home book. Teningen municipality 1990, ISBN 3-9802631-3-4 , pp. 377-466.
  • Thomas Schnabel (ed.): The seizure of power in southwest Germany. The end of the Weimar Republic in Baden and Württemberg 1928–1933. (Series of publications by the State Agency for Civic Education Baden-Württemberg, Vol. 2.) Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-17-007549-7 .
  • Roland Peter: Arms policy in Baden. War economy and labor in a border region during World War II. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-486-56057-3 .
  • Roland Peter: The chambers under the swastika. In: Bernd Boll , Ursula Huggle (Ed.): The Chamber of Commerce and Industry Southern Upper Rhine. History and field of activity of the Freiburg and Lahr Chambers. ed. on behalf of the Southern Upper Rhine Chamber of Commerce and Industry. IHK Südlicher Oberrhein, Freiburg 1998, ISBN 3-00-002797-1 , pp. 145–174.
  • Ute Deichmann : Escape, join in, forget. - Chemists and biochemists during the Nazi era. 1st edition. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2001, ISBN 3-527-30264-6 .
  • Friedrich Burrer: The Mannheim Chamber of Commerce on the way to the Third Reich. IHK - Wirtschaftsmagazin Rhein-Neckar 10: 8-10. Mannheim 2004.
  • Norbert Ohler: The history of the local branch of the Teninger NSDAP. A remarkable document. In: The gate. 28/29 Kenzingen 2009, pp. 112-136.
  • Gerhard A. Auer: "In our small town" - Emmendingen between 1910 and 1945. In: Hans-Jörg Jenne, Gerhard A. Auer (publisher on behalf of the city of Emmendingen): History of the city of Emmendingen. Vol. 2: From the beginning of the 19th century to 1945. Emmendingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-9811180-1-8 , pp. 189–588.
  • Neisen, Robert & Brieler, Andreas (previous ed.): From the aluminum foil factory to Tscheulin-Rothal GmbH: 100 years of aluminum foils from Teningen . Dori-Verlag Bötzingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-9814362-4-2 .
  • Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators - helpers - free riders. Nazi victims from southern Baden (=  perpetrators - helpers - free riders . Band 6 ). 1st edition. Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2017, ISBN 978-3-945893-06-7 , pp. 355 ff .

Web links

Commons : Emil Tscheulin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Otto Ernst Sutter: Twenty-five years of manufacturing aluminum foils in Teningen i. Breisgau. 1936.
  2. ↑ Ilse Benig: 50 years of aluminum foils. 1963, pp. 10, 84.
  3. ↑ Roland Peter: The chambers under the swastika. 1998, pp. 146, 167.
  4. ↑ Roland Peter: The chambers under the swastika. 1998, p. 172.
  5. ^ Norbert Ohler : The communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. 1990, p. 425 f.
  6. ↑ Roland Peter: The chambers under the swastika. 1998, p. 171.
  7. ↑ Roland Peter: The chambers under the swastika. 1998, p. 146.
  8. ^ Roland Peter: Armaments policy in Baden. 1995, p. 350.
  9. ↑ Thomas Schnabel (ed.): The seizure of power in southwest Germany. 1982, p. 27.
  10. ^ Friedrich Burrer: The Mannheim Chamber of Commerce on the way to the Third Reich. 2004, p. 10.
  11. ↑ Roland Peter: The chambers under the swastika. 1998, p. 145 f.
  12. ↑ Norbert Ohler: The history of the local branch of the Teninger NSDAP. 2009, p. 115 f.
  13. ↑ Gerhard A. Auer: “In our small town” - Emmendingen between 1910 and 1945. 2011, p. 390.
  14. ^ Norbert Ohler: The communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. 1990, p. 396ff; Gerhard A. Auer: "In our small town" - Emmendingen between 1910 and 1945. 2011, p. 391.
  15. ↑ Norbert Ohler: The history of the local branch of the Teninger NSDAP. 2009, p. 124f; Gerhard A. Auer: "In our small town" - Emmendingen between 1910 and 1945. 2011, p. 392.
  16. ↑ Norbert Ohler: The history of the local branch of the Teninger NSDAP. 2009, p. 128; Gerhard A. Auer: "In our small town" - Emmendingen between 1910 and 1945. 2011, p. 400.
  17. ↑ Norbert Ohler: The history of the local branch of the Teninger NSDAP. 2009, p. 127 f.
  18. ↑ Norbert Ohler: The history of the local branch of the Teninger NSDAP. 2009, p. 115 f.
  19. ^ Norbert Ohler: The communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. 1990, p. 403.
  20. ↑ Gerhard A. Auer: “In our small town” - Emmendingen between 1910 and 1945. 2011, p. 388.
  21. ↑ Gerhard A. Auer: "In our small town" - Emmendingen between 1910 and 1945. 2011, p. 412 ff.
  22. ^ Roland Peter: Armaments policy in Baden. 1995, p. 48.
  23. ↑ Ute Deichmann: Escape, participate, forget. - Chemists and biochemists during the Nazi era. 2001, p. 396 f.
  24. ↑ Roland Peter: The chambers under the swastika. 1998, p. 157 f.
  25. ↑ Roland Peter: The chambers under the swastika. 1998, p. 158 f.
  26. ^ Roland Peter: Armaments policy in Baden. 1995, p. 401.
  27. ^ Norbert Ohler: The communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. 1990, p. 445.
  28. ^ Roland Peter: Armaments policy in Baden. 1995, p. 56.
  29. ↑ a b Sunday. Edition Nördlicher Breisgau from January 15, 2012, p. 2.
  30. ↑ a b Radio Dreyeckland: Relating and redeclaring - the Emil Tscheulin case , March 21, 2013.
  31. ^ University of Freiburg distances itself from former honorary senators - press and public relations. Retrieved March 22, 2018 .
  32. ↑ Sunday. Edition Nördlicher Breisgau from October 16, 2011, p. 6.
  33. ↑ Interview in Radio Dreyeckland about Emil Tscheulin.
  34. ^ Report in the Badische Zeitung from July 28, 2012.
  35. ^ Report in the Badische Zeitung from December 31, 2012.
  36. ^ Report in the Badische Zeitung from March 20, 2013.
  37. ^ Report in the Badische Zeitung from February 3, 2015
  38. ↑ Report in the Badische Zeitung from January 28, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Cheulin, Emil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tscheulin, Emil Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist, pioneer of the aluminum industry and Nazi military leader
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Teningen
DATE OF DEATH 17th October 1951
Place of death Teningen