Hermann Koehler

This article describes the banker. For other people see Hermann Koehler .

Hermann Koehler (actually Köhler , born October 8, 1876 in Schwäbisch Gmünd , † November 8, 1943 in the Brandenburg prison ) was a German banker .

Life

Hermann Köhler was the second child of the Gmünd factory owner Adolph Köhler (1844–1895) and his wife Marie Huck (1850–1935). In 1879 Köhler's family emigrated to Vienna , where his father founded the company Adolph Köhler & Companie in collaboration with WMF . Hermann Köhler attended the Esterhazy-Gymnasium, where he graduated from high school in 1895 as Primus Omnium . Because of his achievements, he was recommended to study old and new languages. However, Köhler decided on commercial training, as his brother Erwin was already studying chemistry and after the death of his father he did not want to burden his mother and the five remaining siblings financially.

After finishing school, Köhler returned to Gmünd to do his military service as a one-year volunteer with the Gmünder Battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 122 . Under the command of Major Otto von Hügel , Koehler was the first one-year-old volunteer to be appointed non-commissioned officer and later a reserve officer aspirant.

Koehler gained his first commercial experience in Paris in the trading company of his uncle Eduard Huck , where he dealt with products from the Gablonz industry . He later went to the USA via London and Moscow . Since his time in France he wrote his family name internationally as Koehler .

His uncle Constantin Köhler accepted him into his company in 1901 and in 1902 granted the power of attorney to Constantin Köhler, banking and exchange business, Gekrätze, gold and silver separating institute Schwäbisch Gmünd . However, Koehler refused to buy it, so that his uncle sold the banking business to the Württembergische Vereinsbank in 1909 . Koehler became director of his uncle's bank, which had now become a branch of his uncle.

In 1903 Koehler married Maria Insam from Nuremberg, and in 1908 his son Herbert was born.

The Württembergische Vereinsbank transferred him to Stuttgart in 1912 and from January 1914 promoted Koehler to the bank's board of directors as deputy director. In August 1914 he was called up to the infantry at the beginning of the First World War . Koehler served on the Eastern Front and was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class and the Württemberg Order of Frederick with Swords in the course of the war .

After the end of the war, Koehler returned to his position at Württembergische Vereinsbank, which listed him as a full member of the board in its 1922 annual report. After the bank was taken over by Deutsche Bank , Hermann Koehler was director of the Stuttgart branch and thus temporarily president of the Stuttgart stock exchange and a member of the supervisory board of Daimler-Benz Aktiengesellschaft and the Wieland works in Ulm . He is considered to be the only non-system-loyal supervisory board at Daimler-Benz during the National Socialist era .

Since October 18, 1956, the Hermann Köhler plant in downtown Schwäbisch Gmünd has been commemorating the banker. A memorial stone was erected there. The city of Schwäbisch Gmünd commemorated the 75th anniversary of his death with, among other things, a memorial event in the Johanniskirche .

Arrest, conviction and death

Monument in the Hermann-Koehler-Anlage Schwäbisch Gmünd

Koehler was known for his distance from the National Socialists . On August 18, 1943, on a train ride from Munich to Stuttgart, he expressed himself critical of the regime to colleagues and predicted an imminent end. Imprisoned in the Gestapo prison in Stuttgart in August , he was tried under Roland Freisler at the People's Court in Berlin . On his birthday in 1943, Deutsche Bank was sentenced, despite efforts by the Human Resources Director Karl Ritter von Halt , to death , and on 8 November of that year he was in the penitentiary Brandenburg executed .

literature

• [Albert Deibele]: He died for the truth. A memorial sheet for Hermann Köhler . In: Gmünder Heimatblätter 19 (1958), pp. 81-82 ( online ).
• Heinz Hübner: The beginnings of Deutsche Bank in Schwäbisch Gmünd , in Gmünder Heimatforum No. 75, February 1984.
• Peter Spranger : Resistance to Hitler . In: Witnesses of their time. Edited by Peter Spranger and Gerhard Kolb. Schwäbisch Gmünd 1987, pp. 205-207 ( online ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Heino Schütte: Hermann Koehler: Dignity and Truth to the Last Moment , Rems-Zeitung, number 259, Friday, November 8, 2013 p. 25.
2. ↑ Supervisory Board 1943 Wieland-Werke on albert-gieseler.de (as of November 8, 2013).
3. ^ History of the Stuttgart Stock Exchange on boerse-stuttgart.de ( Memento from November 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
4. ↑ Hans Mommsen : Alliance between Trident and Swastika , Spiegel 20/1987, May 11, 1987.
5. ↑ Heino Schütte: The memorial is being prepared. 70 years ago today, Hermann Koehler was murdered. , Rems-Zeitung, number 259, Friday, November 8, 2013 p. 17.
6. ↑ Gerold Bauer: Hermann Koehler - a victim of National Socialism , article on remszeitung.de from November 8, 2018.
7. ↑ Harold James : Kriegswirtschaft , Die Zeit 9/1995 of February 24, 1995.
8. ^ Gall et al .: Deutsche Bank 1870-1995: Deutsche Bank 1870-1995. 125 years of German economic and financial history . CH Beck, Munich 1995. ISBN 978-3406389450 , p. 401.