Gustav Knepper

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Gustav Knepper (born March 25, 1870 in Westherbede , † October 19, 1951 in Bredeney ) was a German mine director in the Ruhr area .

Life

Family grave in the Bredeney cemetery

Gustav Knepper was born the third of eleven children of a Steiger in Westherbede and attended elementary school there. At the age of 14 he began to work as a miner at the Blankenburg colliery . In 1894 he first attended the mountain pre-school in Sprockhövel and in the same year the mountain school in Bochum . During this time he worked at the United President colliery in Bochum, first as a tuscher , then as an assistant worker. He passed his final exam at the mountain school in 1897 with very good and in 1899 moved to the Carl colliery in Altenessen to work as a district climber. Two years later he was head climber and deputy mine manager at the Steingatt colliery in Burgaltendorf , then moved to the Julius-Philipp colliery in Bochum- Wiemelhausen , where he became operator. From 1928 to 1946 he was chairman of the electricity committee of the later Gesellschaft für Stromwirtschaft . From April 1, 1903, he was employed by the industrialist Hugo Stinnes . In 1905 he led the reorganization of the German-Luxembourgish Mining and Hütten-AG and in 1910 became a member of the board. After the United Stahlwerke AG was founded in 1926, he was initially head of the mining division with 41 conveyor systems and around 80,000 employees. From January 1, 1934, after the United Stahlwerke AG was decentralized, Knepper was Chairman of the Management Board of Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG until he retired in 1942 ; his successor was Otto Springorum . In addition, Knepper was deputy chairman of the supervisory board of the United Steelworks and the Gelsenkirchener Stahlwerke AG as well as a member of the supervisory boards of several mining companies, including the Dortmunder Hoesch AG . He also worked in various community organs of the Ruhr mining industry and held a leading position in the water management of the Ruhr area.

After the end of the Second World War , Knepper was interned by the Allies on September 5, 1945 , but was released again in August 1946.

Gustav Knepper was buried in the Bredeney cemetery in Essen.

politics

Walther Funk testified in the Nuremberg trial against the main war criminals that Knepper was a direct supporter of National Socialism even before 1933 . He took part in the meeting of the Harzburg Front , at which Germany's legal forces marched together.

Honors

literature

  • Evelyn Kroker :  Knepper, Gustav. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 177 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Fritz Pudor : Gustav Knepper ; In: Necrologist from the Rheinisch-Westfälischen industrial area, born 1939/1951, Düsseldorf 1955.
  • Walther Bacmeister : Gustav Knepper . Walter Bacmeister Verlag, Essen-Rüttenscheid 1955.
  • Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads . Ed .: City of Essen - Historical Association for City and Monastery of Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 .
  • Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff, Hermann Strasser : Heads of the Ruhr. 200 years of industrial history and structural change in the light of biographies . Klartext Verlag , Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0036-3 , pp. 172-174.
  • Günter Röhrig: mine director Gustav Knepper (1870–1951). A biographical sketch. In: Yearbook of the association for local and local history in the county of Mark. 92, 1994, pp. 269-272.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nuremberg Document EC-440, Statement Funk dated June 28, 1945. Quoted from: Office of the United States Chief of Counsel For Prosecution of Axis Criminality (Ed.): Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression . Supplement A, Washington 1946. ( online ; PDF; 27.0 MB)
  2. ^ Memo from Otto Steinbrinck for Friedrich Flick , Nuremberg Document NI-3615. Quote n .: Karsten Heinz Schönbach: The German Corporations and National Socialism 1926–1943 . Berlin 2015, p. 219.
personal data
SURNAME Knepper, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mine director
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Westherbede
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1951
Place of death Bredeney