Aid organization Oppau

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The Oppau relief organization was founded by the Bavarian state government after the explosion of the Oppau nitrogen works on September 30, 1921, in order to coordinate aid for the municipality of Oppau in the Bavarian Palatinate. The aid organization was headed by the Bavarian State Commissioner and later Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Karl Stützel , who was made an honorary citizen of the city of Oppau in 1924 for his work .

history

On the morning of September 21, 1921, the worst explosion accident in the history of the German chemical industry occurred in the Oppau plant of the Badische Anilin und Sodafabrik , in which, according to official information, 559 people were killed or permanently missing and 1977 people were injured.

On September 24, 1921, the Reich Ministry of Labor established the Reich Assistance Committee for Ludwigshafen-Oppau , made up of representatives of the Reich government, as well as the Bavarian, Baden, Hessian and Prussian governments, the German Association of Cities, the German Red Cross , industry, salaried employees and Workers' organizations and the press existed. The Reich Aid Committee was responsible in particular for calculating property damage and forwarding the collected aid money to the relief organization.

The Ministerialrat Karl Stützel, who traveled to Oppau at the instigation of the Bavarian State Ministry for Social Welfare, presented a concept for an aid organization to the representatives of state authorities and communities on September 26th. On September 30th, Eduard Nortz was appointed State Commissioner of the Oppau Relief Organization, who was succeeded by Karl Stützel in mid-October 1921. As an organ of the Reich Aid Committee, the State Commissioner of the Oppau Relief Organization received and administered the collected donations and represented the interests of the victims vis-à-vis BASF, as well as vis-à-vis government and government agencies. The main auxiliary committee for Oppau with finance, construction, press and welfare committee (the latter consisting of the departments of nutrition , accommodation and clothing and furnishings ) was subordinate to him . The Housing Committee arranged for homeless people initially admitted to schools to be housed in permanent barracks. The nutrition committee took over the distribution of the incoming food donations. A total of 829 orphans and children of victims of accidents were placed in foster families or sent to recreation centers.

By May 1922, donations totaling more than 38 million Reichsmarks had been collected. At the end of 1921 a further 70 million marks resulted from current insurance contracts.

The damage caused by the explosion was estimated at 321 million marks. Initially, the Mayor of Oppau, Heinrich Suss, and the State Commissioner assumed that BASF would pay an amount of 450 million marks. The first payment by management in December was just 5 million Reichsmarks. By December 1921, BASF was also ready to immediately donate an amount of 200 million marks to the Oppau relief organization on the condition that the plant management and operations management were not held responsible for the accident and the associated claims for damages. Benefits should be paid by the relief organization to those who waived claims against BASF. Karl Stützel, on the other hand, insisted on a legal obligation and payment by December 15, after which BASF withdrew the offer completely. It was only after pressure from Reich Labor Minister Heinrich Brauns that BASF proposed a compromise of 100 million Reichsmarks, which was not legally binding. From the point of view of Stützel and Brauns, the offer was not acceptable and at that time, Stützel still assumed that BASF would have to settle all damages. The Bavarian Prime Minister Hugo Lerchenfeld mediated on January 16, 1922 in a conversation between Stützel and the CEO of BASF Carl Bosch . In a written assurance, in which any responsibility for the explosion and thus any obligation to make amends was denied, BASF declared that it was willing to provide funds to make amends to the Oppau relief organization of its own free will . After the Frankenthal regional court closed the proceedings against the company management of BASF on April 10, 1923 because there was no evidence of guilt or negligent behavior, there was no longer any legal remedy to force the company to make payments.

While BASF paid for its employees and their dependents, the Oppau relief organization was responsible for compensating non-employees and their relatives. At the end of 1921, the relief organization initially paid a one-off severance payment and a pension, which, however, had to be topped up after a few months due to the ongoing hyperinflation . At the end of 1922, pension payments were stopped and severance payments were made, which BASF topped up by the same amount on condition that further claims were waived. After the collapse of the monetary system in 1923 , Karl Stützel negotiated again with BASF in 1924, from which BASF promised in all cases in which the death or injury of non-employees of the aniline factory as a result of the explosion on September 21 put those affected or their surviving dependents in an ongoing emergency are to remedy this by either taking the injured party into permanent pension provision as of October 1, 1924, like their employees or their surviving dependents, or by giving them a cash settlement corresponding to the time. Ultimately, the aid organization paid out around 100 million marks, including around 38 million marks for personal injury, before it was dissolved on November 30, 1924 due to a lack of further payments from BASF.

Karl Stützel was appointed Bavarian Minister of the Interior on July 2, 1924 and left the relief organization. In the same year he was given honorary citizenship and the newly built Ringstrasse in Oppau was named after him. On November 10, 1925, Stützel founded the Oppau Memorial Foundation. The capital of 40,000 marks came from the sale of barracks provided by the Reich property administration.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ City Archives of the City of Ludwigshafen am Rhein (ed.): History of the City of Ludwigshafen am Rhein. Vol. 2. From the end of the First World War to the present. Ludwigshafen am Rhein 2003, ISBN 3-924667-35-7 , p. 982.
  2. ^ Christian Haller: The explosion accident in BASF from September 21, 1921. Disaster perception and processing in the press, politics and experts . In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine . No. 161 , 2013, p. 327-328 .
  3. ↑ Manifold . In: Deutscher Reichsanzeiger and Prussian State Gazette . No. 223 , September 24, 1921, pp. 3 ( uni-mannheim.de [accessed January 20, 2020]).
  4. ↑ a b c Lisa Sanner: "As if the end of the world were here". The catastrophic explosions at BASF in 1921 and 1948 . Ed .: Stadtverwaltung Ludwigshafen am Rhein (=  publications of the Stadtarchiv Ludwigshafen am Rhein . Volume 42 ). Ludwigshafen 2015, ISBN 978-3-924667-47-4 , pp. 84 (Dissertation LMU Munich under the title: The Oppauer Explosion [September 21, 1921] and the Ludwigshafen tank car explosion [July 28, 1948] at BASF - a comparative study of industrial catastrophes in post-war times ).
  5. ↑ a b Lisa Sanner: "As if the end of the world were here". The catastrophic explosions at BASF in 1921 and 1948 . Ed .: Stadtverwaltung Ludwigshafen am Rhein (=  publications of the Stadtarchiv Ludwigshafen am Rhein . Volume 42 ). Ludwigshafen 2015, ISBN 978-3-924667-47-4 , pp. 88-89 (dissertation LMU Munich under the title: The Oppauer Explosion [September 21, 1921] and the Ludwigshafen tank car explosion [July 28, 1948] at BASF - a comparative study of industrial catastrophes in post-war times ).
  6. ↑ Lisa Sanner: "As if the end of the world were here". The catastrophic explosions at BASF in 1921 and 1948 . Ed .: Stadtverwaltung Ludwigshafen am Rhein (=  publications of the Stadtarchiv Ludwigshafen am Rhein . Volume 42 ). Ludwigshafen 2015, ISBN 978-3-924667-47-4 , pp. 91-92 (dissertation LMU Munich under the title: The Oppauer Explosion [September 21, 1921] and the Ludwigshafen tank car explosion [July 28, 1948] at BASF - a comparative study of industrial catastrophes in the post-war period ).
  7. ↑ a b Lisa Sanner: "As if the end of the world were here". The catastrophic explosions at BASF in 1921 and 1948 . Ed .: Stadtverwaltung Ludwigshafen am Rhein (=  publications of the Stadtarchiv Ludwigshafen am Rhein . Volume 42 ). Ludwigshafen 2015, ISBN 978-3-924667-47-4 , pp. 96-97 (dissertation LMU Munich under the title: The Oppauer Explosion [September 21, 1921] and the Ludwigshafen tank car explosion [July 28, 1948] at BASF - a comparative study of industrial catastrophes in post-war times ).
  8. ^ A b Christian Haller: The explosion accident in BASF from September 21, 1921. Disaster perception and processing in the press, politics and experts . In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine . No. 161 , 2013, p. 369-371 .
  9. ^ Christian Haller: The explosion accident in BASF from September 21, 1921. Disaster perception and processing in the press, politics and experts . In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine . No. 161 , 2013, p. 367-369 .
  10. ↑ a b c Lisa Sanner: "As if the end of the world were here". The catastrophic explosions at BASF in 1921 and 1948 . Ed .: Stadtverwaltung Ludwigshafen am Rhein (=  publications of the Stadtarchiv Ludwigshafen am Rhein . Volume 42 ). Ludwigshafen 2015, ISBN 978-3-924667-47-4 , pp. 98-100 (dissertation LMU Munich under the title: The Oppauer Explosion [September 21, 1921] and the Ludwigshafen tank car explosion [July 28, 1948] at BASF - a comparative study of industrial catastrophes in post-war times ).
  11. ^ Karl Stützel at the Bavarian State Library
  12. ↑ Lisa Sanner: "As if the end of the world were here". The catastrophic explosions at BASF in 1921 and 1948 . Ed .: Stadtverwaltung Ludwigshafen am Rhein (=  publications of the Stadtarchiv Ludwigshafen am Rhein . Volume 42 ). Ludwigshafen 2015, ISBN 978-3-924667-47-4 , pp. 101 (Dissertation LMU Munich under the title: The Oppauer Explosion [September 21, 1921] and the Ludwigshafen tank car explosion [July 28, 1948] at BASF - a comparative study of industrial catastrophes in post-war times ).