Fritz ter Meer

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Ter Meer during the Nuremberg Trials

Friedrich (Fritz) Hermann ter Meer (born July 4, 1884 in Uerdingen (today in Krefeld), † October 21, 1967 in Leverkusen ) was a German chemist and entrepreneur . From 1925 to 1945 he was a board member of IG Farben . In the IG Farben trial in 1948 he was convicted as a war criminal. From 1956 to 1964 he was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bayer AG .

Familiar

Fritz ter Meer was the son of Hermann Edmund ter Meer (1852–1931), founder of the tar paint factory Dr. E. ter Meer & Cie in Uerdingen . His family can be traced back to the 16th century. Fritz ter Meer was the father-in-law of the former CDU treasurer Walther Leisler Kiep and the great-uncle of the filmmaker Bernhard Sinkel .

Time until 1945

After graduating from high school in Krefeld, ter Meer studied chemistry in France and Germany between 1903 and 1908 and briefly also law . In 1904 he became a member of the Corps Suevia Tübingen . Ter Meer became Dr. phil. doctorate with the dissertation on the knowledge of the ethers of isonitrosoketones . This was followed by in-depth studies on dye chemistry in Krefeld and stays abroad in France and England. Afterwards he worked in the family-owned company Dr. E. ter Meer & Cie , where he held managerial positions and became a member of the board in 1919.

From 1925 to 1945 Fritz ter Meer was a member of the executive board of IG Farben AG. In addition, from 1932 he was a member of the working committee and the technical committee, head of division II in the Reich Ministry of War and military economics leader . After the ban on admission was relaxed , he joined the NSDAP in May 1937 . On September 7, 1939, he and Heinrich Hörlein agreed with the Army Weapons Office to produce the nerve gas tabun . Over 100 prisoners of war were used in the construction of the poison gas factory in Dyhernfurth . In September 1943 he became General Plenipotentiary for Italy of the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production.

During the Second World War he was responsible for setting up the Buna branch of IG-Farben near Auschwitz with the attached Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp , in which tests were carried out on substances and around 25,000 forced laborers were killed under horrific circumstances. In 1943 he received the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross .

post war period

After his arrest in April 1945, he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment as a war criminal in the IG Farben trial on July 30, 1948 for looting and enslavement in connection with the Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp . When asked during the trial whether he considered the experiments on people in Auschwitz to be justified, he replied that this was irrelevant:

"The prisoners did not suffer any particular suffering because they would have been killed anyway."

He was released early from prison in the Landsberg War Crimes Prison in the summer of 1950 for “good conduct” and immediately after the repeal of the war criminals threshold of Allied Law No. 35 in 1956, he was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bayer AG . In the following years he also took on board positions at a number of other companies, including Th. Goldschmidt AG , Commerzbank -Bankverein AG, Duewag , VIAG and Bankverein Westdeutschland AG. His achievements in rebuilding the chemical industry in Germany are considered significant.

In the post-war years, Fritz ter Meer devoted himself to the establishment of foundations that served social goals with private funds.

The Fritz-ter-Meer-Stiftung - now the Bayer Science & Education Foundation  - donated by his employer , which supports chemistry students with scholarships, is dedicated to his memory .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walther Leisler Kiep: Bridges of my life: the memories . ISBN 3-7766-2444-2 , pp. 42 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ Harald Wieser : A beating punctually at six . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1985, pp. 176-184 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 129 , 629.
  4. ↑ a b c biography of Fritz ter Meer. Wollheim Memorial
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Second updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 399.
  6. ↑ The plague is extremely unreliable . In: Der Spiegel . No. 52 , 1969, p. 98–99 ( online - on B + C armaments of the “Third Reich”).
  7. ↑ Information according to Jens Ulrich Heine: Verstand und Schicksal. ...
  8. ^ Anette Wilmes: Feature. In: DeutschlandRadio Berlin, June 30, 1998; Retrieved September 14, 2008.
  9. ↑ Norbert Frei : The managers of the Nazis . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 2001, p. 180 ( online ).
  10. ^ "Fritz ter Meer, co-founder of the" I. G. Auschwitz "and sentenced to seven years in prison in Nuremberg, was elected Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bayer AG in 1956". - Grabbed the spokes of the war wheel . In: Der Spiegel . No. 6 , 1980, pp. 96 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Meer, Fritz ter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meer, Friedrich Hermann ter; ter Meer, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Uerdingen
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1967
Place of death Leverkusen