Hasso Schützendorf

Hasso Schützendorf (born November 3, 1924 in Düsseldorf ; † February 4, 2003 in Palma ) was a German entrepreneur and since the 1950s employed the German and sometimes European press as the head of a smuggling ring , bon vivant and playboy . The founder of a car rental company was a symbol of the German Mallorca scene and often made headlines in the rainbow press because of his often changing, young girlfriends , which also gave him the title “King of Mallorca”.

Life

Several well-known musicians came from the Schützendorf family. Hasso's father Eugen and four of his brothers were known as a singing group in Germany and one of the brothers, Leo Schützendorf (1886–1931) achieved international renown as a baritone singer . As a young person, Hasso Schützendorf lived in Hamburg and developed a passion for jazz music , which was forbidden during the Third Reich . With several, partly female, acquaintances he maintained a life-affirming, jazz-inspired lifestyle in the context of the commercial film production of Hamburger Film AG, on whose premises in the Blumenstrasse the young people often met for private parties with music, dance and alcohol. The later film actress and wife of Robert Taylor , Ursula Thies , also supposedly belonged to this group .

Hasso was not enthusiastic about taking part in the war as a soldier, which in some cases resulted in painful death. He and his acquaintances expressed this lack of interest, probably youthfully careless, often loudly, and they backed up their statements with plans to emigrate to Sweden in order to take action against National Socialism from there. He had probably not undertaken any actual resistance activities. Denounced by an informant about the jazz parties, Hasso found himself in conflict with the Gestapo from January 1941 at the age of 16 , which interrogated him on vague accusations of “cultural shame” (listening to jazz music) and “preparation for high treason ” . Obviously, the prosecutors took his activities and statements much more seriously than he did and treated them with harshness that was unusual even for the Gestapo, given the young age and "ethnic German origin" of their victim:

In a rapid process by the Gestapo, Schützendorf disappeared into the mills of the National Socialist judiciary and a multi-year odyssey followed that began in the Neuengamme concentration camp , where he marked the black triangle for anti-social and Disabled was marked. From there he was sent to the Eastern Front with a punitive battalion , deserted the area around Odessa and was arrested by the Romanian police , who again handed him over to the German military tribunal . In total, Hasso received four death sentences in this way , some of which he was able to evade by fleeing. The fact that his father, Eugen Schützendorf, to a higher position in the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin had risen, prevented the end of 1944 probably at the last minute the execution of the last death sentence in Vienna , penitentiary Hartmut alley. Hasso was reassigned to a punitive battalion that operated in the West German border area with Holland and Belgium . After fleeing again, his long errant path came to an end in the spring of 1945, where it had started a good four years earlier: in bombed, now British-occupied Hamburg.

With the help of forged papers , Schützendorf initially enrolled there as a medical student. The dizziness was discovered by his mother's instigation. He also gained experience in the black market with alcohol , cigarettes and food and was serving for one and a half year sentence in East Germany. He later began a vocal training, which he completed in 1954 with the title of master singer, but without subsequently exercising the vocal profession.

During his student days he earned his living almost exclusively from black market trafficking and pushing-offs of increasing magnitude: Between 1950 and 1954, a growing group of "employees" moved more than 8,000 office machines from east to west and achieved an astronomical turnover of approx. 5 million deutschmarks .

The case preoccupied the politicians of the two German states, as the shortage of office machines in the east did not subside, despite overachieving the target. The GDR government blamed a gang operating from the Federal Republic of Germany , the head of which urgently needed to be located.

During the smuggling of coffee from Switzerland to the GDR, Hasso's office machine trade was discovered by chance and he was brought before a West German court that sentenced him to twelve months in prison. The case met with a strong response in the East German press, where 18 years' imprisonment was deemed appropriate for the offense - another political explosive. Stricter controls were continuously introduced for domestic German border traffic as well as for trading precision mechanical products in the "HO shops" . Many high-quality items could only be purchased by presenting a GDR passport and signing a declaration.

After his release from prison, Schützendorf settled in Berlin and resumed the smuggling business with old and new employees. A gang that at times numbered up to one hundred people bought cameras, binoculars and other optical devices throughout the GDR from 1957 . The written formalities were done with false passports. Hasso and his confidante bought massive passports from GDR refugees in West Berlin , most of whom gladly parted with the paper, which was now useless for them, for extra income . With the help of prepared vehicles, the smuggled goods first reached West Berlin. Schützendorf and a few confidants brought the goods to Barcelona in Catalonia . From there it was sold to the Spanish Army and various South American countries.

This time the Zeiss works in Jena sounded the alarm. The exports to South America were almost at a standstill, while the domestic market had not developed to satisfying demand one. That could not be done with the right things and when comparing the files there was only one possible responsible person for the People's Police : Hasso Schützendorf. The Ministry of the Interior did its best to make propaganda use of the economic damage, mostly through press articles that certified West German politics disinterested, if not support, of the machinations, but never named so as not to endanger the ongoing manhunt . At the end of 1958, the Ministry of the Interior commissioned director Richard Groschopp to film the material. In 1959, the film Ware for Catalonia , in which the actors Eva-Maria Hagen and Manfred Krug participated, in the cinemas of the GDR.

In contrast to the film, the people's police did not succeed in arresting the wanted gang leader. In a nationwide manhunt in early 1959, the People's Police arrested around 80 suspects, many of whom received long prison terms. Schützendorf had escaped a few days earlier and settled first to Perpignan and then to the Balearic island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean , which he had got to know on his smuggling trips to Barcelona.

The mass tourism here was just trying in volume and Schützendorf first to find a water ski and -School his livelihood. He gave up the business in the same year and expected the next summer season with two Vespa scooters and a red Seat 600 for hire. Effort and profit were in a favorable relationship for his taste and so he opened the company Hasso - Rent a Car in 1961, which will continue to exist after his death.

His fortune and fleet of cars grew steadily, allowing him a dissolute lifestyle. He kept several big cats and other exotic animals on his private property. His public appearances and parties sometimes kept the local police busy and always gossiped and the press, who finally called him the “King of Mallorca” - the German rainbow press was increasingly taking a liking to his lifestyle and dedicated numerous, incidentally highly effective articles to him. There was always a high probability of meeting a "real celebrity" in person in his car rental, a special kind of holiday experience .

Hasso Schützendorf was married six times and had two sons. In the last years of his life he caused a sensation when, at the age of 77, he was looking for a young woman on the German TV station RTL 2 and the BILD newspaper. He selected a 23-year-old from around 3,000 interested parties. However, the relationship with Peggy, who comes from Saxony-Anhalt , soon broke up and became a public display of embarrassment, in which it became apparent that the young woman had not come to Mallorca out of love.

He has also been a target of theft and extortion over the years . On German television and in the press, Schützendorf made very contradictory statements about this on several occasions.

Since November 1998 he has been the patron of the German school "Ca'n Hasso" in Palmanova on Mallorca.

literature

• Martin Cornell: Hasso - The King of Mallorca and his victims. 2003, ISBN 3-8330-0550-5 .
• Wolfgang Fabian: Hasso - King in Mallorca - death row inmate, smuggler boss, multimillionaire. 1999, ISBN 3-9804498-4-X .
• Wolfgang Mittmann : Time of the crime - large cases of the people's police. Volume 2, 1999, ISBN 3360008545 .
• Eugen Schützendorf: artist blood - Leo Schützendorf and his brothers, Berlin 1943.

Web links

• Website of the car rental company "Hasso" on Mallorca with pictures of Hasso Schützendorf
• We have been lied to and betrayed (for the closure of the German International School)
• Classical music samples including: Leo Schützendorf