Fritz Ries

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Fritz Ries (born February 4, 1907 in Saarbrücken , † July 20, 1977 in Frankenthal (Palatinate) ) was a German industrialist .

Life

education

Fritz Karl Ries was the son of the owner of a furniture shop. After graduating from high school, he studied law , first at the University of Cologne , then at the University of Heidelberg , where he received his doctorate in 1930. There he later learned a. a. Hanns Martin Schleyer in the Corps Suevia Heidelberg student union .

National Socialism

From 1933 Ries was a member of the NSDAP . In 1942 Ries received the War Merit Cross .

Ries was personally liable partner of the Flügel & Polter KG , Leipzig , since 1934 . Through aryanizations and takeovers, he expanded this 120-man company into a group with over 10,000 employees and became its main shareholder.

According to a followers survey dated June 30, 1942, he employed a total of 2,653 Jewish slave laborers , 2,160 of whom were women and girls, at the Oberschlesische Gummiwerke in Trzebinia (Western Galicia) that he had taken over . With their exploitation, sales in Trzebinia rose twelve-fold. In the Polish city of Łódź , Ries took over a large " Aryanized " plant with 15 rolling mills. According to his own statements, he later foresaw the invasion of the Red Army and shifted “machines for about RM 1.5 million” and “a few hundred thousand meters of fabric” to the west in good time. While on the run, he moved to West Germany with a large part of his liquid capital. He later denied having saved anything from the chaos of war.

Ries Group

Shortly after the end of the war, Ries bought “Köhlers Strandhotel” on Borkum and reopened it with 280 beds. Later he bought another hotel in Frankenthal (Palatinate) and the Schloß-Hotel Rahe near Aachen.

In the early 1950s, Ries registered claims as a displaced person amounting to four million Deutschmarks. On the basis of the Burden Equalization Act, he applied for and received (partial) compensation for his production facilities in the Soviet Zone . With the money he founded the Palatinate Rubber Works in the Palatinate and the Badische Plastic Works (today: Samvardhana Motherson Peguform ) in Baden.

Pegulan-Werke AG in Frankenthal (Palatinate) emerged from the Pfälzische Gummiwerke (today: Tarkett ). Ries was their majority shareholder and chairman of the board. The Palatinate Rubber Works were particularly successful in the condoms market. He was Honorary Chairman of the Association of the German Floor Covering, Plastic Foil and Coating Industry, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Badische Plastic-Werke in Bötzingen and a member of the Advisory Board of Commerzbank AG. His corps brother Hanns Martin Schleyer was the deputy chairman of the supervisory board of Pegulan-Werke AG.

In the early 1970s, Fritz Ries set up a carpet factory for Pegulan-Werke (Durmont from 1977) in the Austrian town of Hartberg . The then Styrian governor tried to strengthen Styria, which was economically weak at the time, and wooed Ries, who subsequently acquired the Pichlarn Castle nearby. He converted it into a luxury hotel with a golf course. The Spiegel article “Corruption. A visit to the castle ”in October 1972 suggested that the CDU was planning to take over power there, in the course of which, allegedly, FDP and SPD politicians were supposed to be bribed to defeat. Despite the efforts of Günther Metzger and Hans Bardens, the affair with controversial personalities such as Siegfried Zoglmann , friends with CSU leader Franz Josef Strauss (who in turn was friends with Ries), was never completely cleared up, not least because of the reluctance of the CDU Bundestag President at the time Kai-Uwe von Hassel .

Political commitment

In the decades after the war, Ries systematically promoted politicians from the Union parties. In addition to his future son-in-law Kurt Biedenkopf, this also included the future Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU Chairman Franz Josef Strauss , whose wife Marianne Strauss held a ten percent stake in the Pegulan subsidiary Dyna-Plastik-Werke in the 1970s . In recognition of his “entrepreneurial achievement and his commitment to society”, Ries was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit in 1967.

Ries was the royal Moroccan honorary consul for the states of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate.

Others

Ries was a member of the board of the "Association of the German Floor Covering, Plastic Foil and Coating Industry e. V. ".

death

After economic losses, Ries gave up his position on the board of Pegulan in September 1976. On July 20, 1977, he shot himself in his home in Frankenthal.

The restructuring and successful continuation of the Pegulan group of companies took place under Dieter H. Vogel (later Thyssen and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bertelsmann AG) and Thomas Ries, the founder's son.

family

His daughter Ingrid has been married to Kurt Biedenkopf since 1979 .

Critical processing

Bernt Engelmann first made the career of Fritz Ries under National Socialism and in the post-war period public in his documentary novel Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1974 . Ries sued Engelmann, but he did not have to revoke any of the statements in the novel. In return, Engelmann brought an action against Ries, namely to determine the correctness of all those points that mattered to him. Of the factual allegations in dispute at the end of 42, the judges considered forty to have been fully proven, while the truth of two could not be proven. At the beginning of the trial, the presiding judge indicated that Ries would have to accept the accusation that he was the entrepreneur who Aryanized Jewish companies in the Nazi Reich, who had succeeded in bringing assets to the West and who had succeeded was to become a successful entrepreneur again in post-war Germany. The statement by Ries that he did not consider his behavior at the time to be morally reprehensible also attracted attention.

The following important information is missing from this article or section:
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Almost simultaneously before the 10th civil chamber of the Frankenthal regional court , a justification procedure had to be examined to determine whether Ries's injunction against the Socialist German Workers' Youth was right. A poster of the SDAJ had claimed that Ries had said about Helmut Kohl: "Even if I call him at three in the morning, he has to jump." According to Ries 'son-in-law Herbert Krall, who was ready with his wife, Ries' daughter Monika To take the stand against Ries, Ries had rated the CDU boss quite differently: as a “house politician” of his own company, as a “proletarian who is of course needed”.

Awards

In 1972, Ries received the Great Federal Cross of Merit with a Star.

In Kirchberg there was a "Dr.-Fritz-Ries-Straße", which however, after a decision of the local council in December 2011, bears the name of Otto Hahn . The "Dr.-Fritz-Ries-Straße" in Bötzingen , the seat of one of Ries' companies, was also renamed. Engelmann's novel Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz , for whose achievement Richard Schmid, the former president of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court, suggested the author himself for the Federal Cross of Merit, still appears unchanged. He inspired Nico Hofmann to write his multi-award-winning film Land der Fathers, Land der Söhne (1988).

literature

  • Armin Danco: The Yellow Book of the Corps Suevia zu Heidelberg, 3rd edition (members 1810–1985), Heidelberg 1985, No. 1035
  • Bernt Engelmann: Great Federal Cross of Merit. Authors Edition , Darmstadt 1974, ISBN 3-570-02259-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Ries: The Prussian Council of State.
  2. ↑ a b c d e millions abroad . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1976, p. 99-104 ( online - April 5, 1976 ).
  3. ↑ Heinz-Klaus Mertes: The bond for life. In: Manager magazine. No. 6, 1975, pp. 74-77.
  4. ↑ Visit to the castle . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1972 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Advertising / carpets: Help from the judge . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1970, pp. 68 ( online - February 23, 1970 ).
  6. ↑ a b Friedrich Georg Jünger . In: Der Spiegel . No. 31 , 1977, pp. 152 ( online ).
  7. ^ Lutz Hachmeister: Schleyer: a German story . CH Beck, 2004, p. 108
  8. ↑ Always something new . In: Der Spiegel . No. 2 , 1982, p. 43 f . ( online ).
  9. ↑ cf. z. B. Personal details: Kurt Biedenkopf . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1980, pp. 282 ( online - 29 September 1980 ).
  10. ^ Bernt Engelmann : Great Federal Cross of Merit. Steidl, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-88243-314-0 .
  11. ^ Rudolf Gerhardt: The Engelmann process. Dispute over a factual novel. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 23rd January 1975.
  12. ↑ Hans-Joachim Noack: The silent witnesses lay in a chapel near Auschwitz. The influence of the entrepreneur Fritz Ries and a lawsuit over his past. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , May 21, 1975. (digitized version) (PDF; 192 kB)
  13. ↑ Google Maps
  14. ^ Nazi past: new street name for Kirchberg . Rhein-Zeitung , December 29, 2011. Retrieved on the same day.
  15. ↑ Richard Schmid: Medium lightning. In: Die Zeit , No. 39/1974.
  16. ↑ Interview with Nico Hofmann in the Berliner Morgenpost , November 7, 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Ries, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist and royal Moroccan honorary consul
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Saarbrücken
DATE OF DEATH 20th July 1977
Place of death Frankenthal (Palatinate)