Georg Karg (entrepreneur)

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Georg Karg (born August 2, 1888 in Friedeberg in der Neumark , † November 27, 1972 in Bad Homburg in front of the height ) was a German retail salesman in the department store industry. Karg worked his way up to 1927 as the "most influential" department head of the department store company Hermann Tietz OHG . During the enforcement of a step -by- step expulsion of the Tietz owners by the creditor banks and the Nazi government , Karg was appointed managing director for the economically troubled group of companies and continued it under the business name Hertie .

Life

Karg was the seventh child of ten siblings of the small cloth manufacturer and later textile retailer Karl Karg and his wife Luise. After an apprenticeship in the FR Knothe textile department store in the neighboring district town of Meseritz , Karg began in 1908 as a simple textile salesman in a department store belonging to Adolf Jandorf's Berlin department store chain . Thanks to his hard work and his almost photographic memory, Jandorf promoted him to a textile buyer after just one year. In 1913 Jandorf appointed him managing director of the second largest Jandorf department store in Wilmersdorfer Strasse with 600 employees.

After the Jandorf chain was sold to the Hermann Tietz Group at the end of 1926, Karg became head of the central textile purchasing department at Hermann Tietz OHG . This made him “one of the best-paid department store managers in Germany” and in 1931 he was able to afford to turn down a lucrative offer from the Karstadt group of 500,000 Reichsmarks per year.

Nazi era

 → cf. Main article: Kaufhaus des Westens # Nazi era: expropriation of Tietz

Due to the global economic crisis and internal factors ("extensive property purchases", confusing accounting), the Tietz group became increasingly indebted. “From 1930 to 1933, sales in the Tietz branches fell by 46 percent.” A loan of 14.5 million Reichsmarks that had already been promised by the semi-state acceptance and guarantee bank in   early 1933 was refused again after Hitler came to power in February 1933. Dresdner Bank , nationalized in 1932 , Deutsche Bank u. a. took advantage of the company's liquidity crisis to gradually disempower and expropriate the shareholders of Hermann Tietz OHG (" Aryanization ").

Together with the Reich Ministry of Economics of the Hitler government and the NSDAP leadership, they pushed through the continuous dismissal of all Jews from the management, the employees and all owners. After Hitler was convinced by Economics Minister Kurt Schmitt not to nationalize or dissolve the department stores anymore, shortly afterwards the creditor banks founded the Hertie Kaufhaus-Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mbH ( Hertie GmbH for short ) in July 1933 .

On 29 July 1933, the consortium of banks forced with a formal succession union dispute contract   the immediate resignation of Hugo Zwillenberg from the Executive. Instead, the banks used Karg as a representative of Hertie GmbH with a 50,000  Reichsmark deposit as a shareholder, who also acted as managing director alongside the lawyer Trabart von und zu der Tann and Wilhelm Hermsdorf. By means of a second dispute agreement on August 18, 1934, Georg and Martin Tietz were finally released from the management and ownership of the company. The Jewish shareholders had to surrender their shares to Hertie GmbH and were reimbursed 1.5 million Reichsmarks for their severely undervalued company assets of 21.5 million Reichsmarks. The "compensation of twelve million marks" rumored by Eglau, Neumann and the Munzinger archive cannot be substantiated.

In addition to the introduction of a completely new accounting system, “he lowered the salaries of his employees by up to 50 percent in some cases .” Karg later bought the banking group's shares in Hertie GmbH in two installments, in 1936 against payment of 2.5 million Reichsmarks, partly on credit and another 50 percent in June 1940; at the same time Karg took over the debts of the Tietz group in the amount of 129 million Reichsmarks. Despite this level of liabilities Ladwig-Winters estimates the Tietz Group at that time not as a " bankrupt companies", but as a "economically extremely strong".

In 1939, Josef Neckermann and Georg Karg founded the Central Warehouse Association for Clothing GmbH (ZLG), which initially produced and supplied textiles and clothing for German construction workers and slave laborers , and later also for the Wehrmacht .

Reconstruction after 1945

After the end of the war, most of the Hertie Group's branches were located in the Soviet occupation zone and most of the west had been destroyed. Karg nevertheless decided to continue the business.

In 1949 he compensated the Tietz heirs in a settlement with the branches in Munich, Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, which they continued to submit to the Hertie Group in return for payment of a turnover rent. They later sold these houses back to Karg.

In 1953 he founded the Hertie Foundation with total department store assets of more than DM 1 billion as a deposit. After the fall of the Berlin Wall , the foundation took part in the then current trend of setting up private universities with the Hertie School of Governance .

In addition to his phenomenal memory , Karg was also credited with a quick determination and great tactical ability , which helped him in his successful expansion from Hertie. Harry Jandorf, the only son of Adolf Jandorf , maintained a friendly relationship with Karg and his family in the post-war period, with frequent visits. Jandorf junior considered Karg “a business genius”. At his death in 1972 the department store group consisted of 72 Hertie department stores and 29 branches of Bilka department stores with a turnover of 5.1 billion DM and around 60,000 employees. His son Hans-Georg Karg took over the management of the company in 1972. Karg junior could no longer build on the success of his father and, after a continuous economic decline, sold Hertie to Karstadt in 1994 , which resulted in many layoffs.

literature

  • Hans Otto Eglau : Georg Karg. The Herr von Hertie. In: Ders .: The cash register has to be right. So they succeeded in trading. Econ, Düsseldorf 1972, pp. 33-49.
  • Friedrich W. Köhler: On the history of department stores. Distress and sinking of the Hertie group. Haag + Herchen, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-86137-544-3 .
  • Simone Ladwig-Winters: Wertheim - a department store company and its owners. An example of the development of Berlin department stores up to "Aryanization" . Lit-Verlag , Münster 1997, ISBN 3-8258-3062-4 , on Tietz see pp. 149–158 and 176–189, table of contents.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Ina Neumann:  Karg, Georg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 152 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ↑ a b H.O. Eglau: Georg Karg. The Lord of Hertie , p. 39.
  3. ↑ Ladwig-Winters, 1997, pp. 149–158.
  4. ↑ a b c d e H.O. Eglau : The gentleman from Hertie. In: Die Zeit , No. 48, November 27, 1970.
  5. ^ HO Eglau: Georg Karg. Der Herr von Hertie , pp. 39–40.
  6. ^ HO Eglau: Georg Karg. Der Herr von Hertie , p. 40.
  7. ↑ Ladwig-Winters, 1997, p. 151.
  8. ↑ The predecessor of the “Bad Bank”: The “Acceptance and Guarantee Bank”. In: Scientific Services of the German Bundestag , No. 46/09, May 28, 2009, (PDF; 90.3 kB).
  9. ↑ Inheritance dispute - who gets which part of the inheritance? In: anwalt.org , accessed on November 17, 2017.
  10. ↑ Tann-Rathsamhausen, Trabart Freiherr von und zu der. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin.
  11. ↑ Inge Braun, Helmut Huber: Seduction on seven floors - The department store of the West and its history. In: RBB , DLF , Radio-Feature , August 2007, ( manuscript , PDF; 27 p., 101 kB).
  12. ↑ Ladwig-Winters, 1997, p. 181.
  13. ↑ Karg, Georg. In: Munzinger Archive , March 19, 1973, accessed on November 17, 2017, only the beginning of the article free.
  14. ↑ Ladwig-Winters, 1997, p. 183.
  15. ^ HO Eglau: Georg Karg. Der Herr von Hertie , p. 43.
  16. ↑ Ladwig-Winters, 1997, p. 182.
  17. ↑ Josef Neckermann. Cooperation with the Nazis. In: Bayerischer Rundfunk , June 4, 2012.
  18. ↑ sales rent. ( Memento from March 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: handelswissen.de
  19. ^ HO Eglau: Georg Karg. Der Herr von Hertie , p. 45.
  20. ↑ Heike Schmoll : Praise of the elite: why we need them. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57028-5 , excerpts in: Google books .
  21. ↑ Harry Jandorf: Memories of my father Adolf Jandorf. In: Leo Baeck Institute , 1967, (typescript, PDF; 7 p., 4.7 MB), temporary session link is under Find out more , p. 3: “... my wife and I have often visited her. "
  22. ↑ Harry Jandorf, 1967, p. 6.
personal data
SURNAME Karg, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder of the Hertie department store company
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Friedeberg in the Neumark
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1972
Place of death Bad Homburg vor der Höhe