Hermann Terberger

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Hermann Terberger with members of the board of directors and the supervisory board of Maxhütte (1937): Top row from left: Hans Krugmann, Karl Raabe , Hermann Terberger ; lower row from left: Consul Heinrich von Stein, Eugen Böhringer, Friedrich Flick , Carl Schneider (cut off); sitting: Robert Röchling.

Hermann Terberger (born June 5, 1892 in Schwerte ; † December 13, 1975 ) was a lawyer with a doctorate degree , member of the board of directors of the iron and steel works Maxhütte of the Flick Group , military manager and defendant in the Flick trial of the Nuremberg Tribunal .

biography

Little is known about Terberger's life, except that he is doing his doctorate in law and with Else, geb. Sartorius, was married. His brother Hans was married to the daughter of the general director of the Maxhütte Friedrich Möller.

Terberger was an authorized signatory at Linke-Hofmann-Lauchhammer AG from 1925 and an authorized signatory at Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke AG from 1927 to 1937 . In 1930 he moved up to the second row of the Flick Group's top management because Otto Steinbrinck , Konrad Kaletsch and Dr. Natz († 1933). Terberger was a member of the board of directors of Maxhütte from 1937 to 1945. During the same period he was on the advisory board of the Iron and Steel Industry Association and held positions in the Bayreuth Chamber of Commerce .

In 1939 he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and Sturmabteilung (SA); In 1941 he was appointed military manager.

Flick Group

When the four-year plan , which was announced as the National Socialist rearmament program at the 1936 Reich Party Congress and was subsequently implemented, Göring appointed Hermann von Hanneken as general representative for the German iron industry. Hanneken set quotas for the raw materials for iron production and this meant that Maxhütte would have a reduced volume of raw materials for steel and iron production. Terberger then protested vigorously as board member of the Maxhütte and Flick as owner and they achieved a higher quantitative allocation. The increased incoming orders due to the start of armaments production before the war increased Maxhütte's profits and liquid funds, and the same applied to the allocation of raw materials to Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerk AG, as well as a Flick company. Furthermore, the preferential allocation also meant that medium-sized companies in the iron industry had to get by with fewer raw material allocations and were therefore able to produce less. As a result, the Flick group had a significant competitive advantage, while other companies got into financial difficulties and failed to compete with Flick. This went so far that Dr. Kalesch, the chief financial officer of the Flick concern, pointed out to Terberger in 1942 that Maxhütte had made such high profits and built up reserves that the group was looking for “ financial burdens ” in order to reduce profit transfers.

For Flick, Terberger was the one in the Maxhütte who represented “ his position ” and interests. This representation of interests went so far that Terberger not only continuously delivered weekly and monthly reports to the headquarters in Berlin until the end of the war, but only addressed them to Friedrich Flick personally. Since, in addition to the statements in terms of payment, these reports also had to include all the details that could be of interest to Flick, Terberger asked Flick, for example, how he should decide on matters relating to the iron and steel industry. Furthermore, he meticulously coordinated with Flick on upcoming Supervisory Board meetings of the Maxhütte. With this, Flick was able to “control [his group] autocratically inwards, independently of committees, statutes and company law ”. Family ties were also used by Flick for his interests, for example Terberger was the son-in-law of the former head of the Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke.

accusation

Terberger was arrested on February 3, 1947, shortly before the start of the Nuremberg Trial. He suffered from a stomach ulcer and stayed away from the hearing from the beginning of September until the sentence was announced on December 22, 1947.

Terberger was charged with using prisoners of war and foreign forced laborers because he was the only one of the five defendants in the Flick Group to work in a local company and not at the headquarters in Berlin, where he was responsible as a board member in a sole proprietorship Flicks . Due to the strict hierarchical structure, the prosecution was able to prove Terberger's responsibility for the use of forced labor. However, the court acknowledged "that the cruel and gruesome methods known to characterize the slave labor program in many places have not been used in the establishments and facilities under the control of the accused". The defense was also able to provide evidence that Terberger had taken measures to improve workers' working conditions. As a result, Terberger was acquitted of the charges in the trial, despite the use of slave labor.

literature

  • Johannes Bähr et al .: The Flick Group in the Third Reich. Edited by Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin on behalf of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Oldenbourger Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2008.
  • Susanne Jung: The legal problems of the Nuremberg trials. Depicted in the trial against Friedrich Flick . Tübingen 1992. Partly available online: Rechtsprobleme
  • Kim Christian Priemel: Flick - A corporate history from the German Empire to the Federal Republic. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0219-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Association of German Ironworkers (ed.): Steel and iron. Journal for the German Ironworks, Volume 96, 1976, p. 96.
  2. ^ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history , p. 256.
  3. ↑ Susanne Jung: Rechtsprobleme , p. 30.
  4. ↑ Susanne Jung: Rechtsprobleme , p. 30.
  5. ^ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history , p. 367.
  6. ^ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history , p. 535.
  7. ^ Bähr: The Flick Group in the Third Reich , p. 208.
  8. ^ Bähr: The Flick Group in the Third Reich , p. 213.
  9. ↑ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history , p. 216.
  10. ^ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history , p. 220.
  11. ^ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history , p. 221.
  12. ↑ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history , p. 223.
  13. ^ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history , p. 632.
  14. ^ Bähr: The Flick Group in the Third Reich , p. 543 and p. 544.
  15. ↑ Susanne Jung: Rechtsprobleme , pp. 199–200.
personal data
SURNAME Terberger, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German armaments industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Swords
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1975