Karl Diehl (entrepreneur)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The grave of Karl Diehl in the Diehl family grave in the Westfriedhof (Nuremberg) .

Ferdinand Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Diehl (born May 4, 1907 in Nuremberg ; † January 19, 2008 there ) was a German entrepreneur , senior boss and honorary chairman of the Diehl Supervisory Board .

Life

Karl Diehl was born in 1907 as the only son of Margarete and Heinrich Diehl (1878–1938), a ciseleur , in the Nuremberg district of Schoppershof . After attending primary school, he attended the Gombrich Institute for a few years, which was the only all-day school in Nuremberg at the time, until his father returned from military service during the First World War . Then he switched to the upper secondary school . After graduating from high school in 1926, he studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich and in 1930 joined his parents' company "Metall-Guss und Presswerk Heinrich Diehl". At the beginning of his studies he joined the Corps Cisaria , a student association at the Weinheim Senior Citizens' Convention . In 1933 he became a member of the NSDAP . After the death of his father, shortly before the start of the Second World War , he took over the metal processing company. Around this time the company was classified as important to the war effort. Diehl ran the business together with his mother, who mainly took care of the administration. He and his company profited from the massive armaments programs of the Nazi regime . In 1943 Diehl's company received the "War Model Company" award. Like many German companies, Karl Diehl employed forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners in his factories, including the French writer Claude Ollier .

After the Second World War, Diehl rebuilt and expanded his company. Although arms production was always only part of the company, it was the main focus of public discussion, especially during the Cold War , when the company made a name for itself as a (land) mine, guided missile and tank chain manufacturer. In the mid-1990s he converted the company into a family foundation, the “Diehl Foundation”; in 2002 he handed over the chairmanship of the supervisory board to his son Werner . The other two sons, Peter and Thomas, became the company's chairman and deputy chairman of the supervisory board. His residence had been in the 1970s from Diehl tax reasons in the Switzerland laid.

In the last few decades Diehl showed himself to be a patron of the city of Nuremberg with social commitment, the restoration of many Nuremberg architectural works found his support. In 1952 he founded the "Heinrich Diehl Memorial Fund" for the social security of employees and in 1987 the "Karl Diehl Foundation" to support people in need in Nuremberg and the surrounding area.

On September 27, 2007, the town hall in Röthenbach an der Pegnitz , where the Diehl company has had a large part of its production facilities since the mid-1950s, was renamed “Karl-Diehl-Halle” in honor of Karl Diehl .

Karl Diehl died in 2008 at the age of 100.

Controversy about honorary citizenship versus NSDAP past

The numerous honors, especially the award of honorary citizenship of the city of Nuremberg in 1997, were discussed controversially in the population and in the media. Because the merits of Karl Diehl contrasts with his past in the time of National Socialism . Diehl even had its own satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp during the Second World War . Contemporary witnesses accuse him of not only employing forced labor in his armaments factories during this period , but of keeping them “like slaves ”. Anyone who failed to meet their target was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp "for extermination" . In this way Diehl was able to increase its profit significantly. Therefore, he should return the honorary citizenship that was granted. On the other hand, there are extensive donations with which, above all, the bombed historical old town of Nuremberg could be perfectly renovated. The awarding of honorary citizenship to a person who, as an armaments entrepreneur and NSDAP party member (joined in 1933; membership number 2714742), has benefited from the suffering of millions of people is, according to the critics, particularly delicate in a city like Nuremberg. Because Nuremberg still suffers from the Nazi image as a former city of the NSDAP party rallies . In this respect, the awarding of honorary citizenship to a person like Karl Diehl , of all people, is a completely wrong signal for Nuremberg.

Tax affair

Karl Diehl was a close friend of the former Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss . In May 1987, Strauss gave the speech at Diehl's 80th birthday party.

In the autumn of 1995, the tax office's auditor , Ingrid Meier , found that the Diehl armaments company had not correctly taxed capital gains. As a result, she was severely hindered in her work, withdrawn from the exam and rated poorly by superiors, although she was previously considered an excellent civil servant. According to the audit results of the tax officer Ingrid Meier , the company would have had to pay 60 million marks in taxes, which did not happen. When the tax auditor persisted with this finding, she was instructed by the Oberfinanzdirektion (OFD) to complete the tax audit and to recognize the Krauss-Maffei and Rheinmetall holdings (which was the subject of tax evasion ) as private assets and profits as not to be considered taxable. The tax officer resisted this instruction at the next higher level, with the result that the case was withdrawn from her.

A report prepared by an expert from the public prosecutor's office came to the same conclusion as the tax auditor. However, this report was kept secret by the authorities. Despite the clear evidence, the investigation failed. In April 2004 the proceedings against Diehl and the OFD were dropped. What is particularly piquant is that the proceedings were led and finally stopped by a public prosecutor, of all people , whose sister-in-law took up a position at Diehl a few months later . Two years later, the then 35-year-old business economist became an authorized signatory there and rose to the board of the Diehl Verwaltungs-Stiftung .

In addition, the investigating public prosecutor Erich Günther was repeatedly hindered in his work. In addition, the execution of a search warrant in the Diehl case had already been announced to the banks concerned (whose business premises were to be searched) months in advance, which is absolutely unusual, since searches, according to the relevant conviction of the investigating authorities, should always exploit the surprise effect .

The media repeatedly accused Karl Diehl of exerting political influence . Due to his good relations with the CSU and his close friendship with Franz Josef Strauss, Diehl enjoys a special status, as a result of which he is protected from criminal prosecution. The Bavarian state government had put pressure on the tax authorities so that the clear indications of massive tax evasion were no longer pursued. In 2008, criminal charges for breach of trust against officials of the Oberfinanzdirektion Nürnberg ( regarding their behavior in the investigation against Diehl ) no longer even led to an investigation.

honors and awards

literature

  • Gregor Schöllgen : Diehl - A family company in Germany, 1902–2002 . Propylaen, Berlin / Munich 2002, ISBN 3-549-07170-1 , 336 pp.
  • Peter Zinke: "The services predominate". A national community from IG Metall to the republicans ensured that the arms manufacturer and concentration camp profiteer Karl Diehl became an honorary citizen of Nuremberg . In: Jungle World No. 4, 1997 nadir.org ( Memento from March 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Sources for the article: nn-online.de and diehl.de

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Former war profiteer, today honorary citizen - The career of a Nuremberg armaments manufacturer ( Memento of December 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ); in: ARD-Magazin Panorama from July 17, 1997
  2. ↑ The divided city . In: Der Spiegel . No. 52 , 1997 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Honorary citizen by battle tank . In: Die Zeit , No. 30/1997
  4. ↑ The Patriarch ( Memento of December 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ); in: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online, May 19, 2010
  5. ↑ Stoiber has to fear Schreiber's statements ; in: taz.de from August 4, 2009
  6. ^ Defense company Diehl: Trouble with Bavarian tax gift . ( Memento from December 3, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Spiegel Online , November 20, 2011
  7. ↑ a b Secret report: Deal with Diehl? ( Memento from December 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) nordbayern.de, May 1, 2009
  8. ↑ Diehl tax affair: Police register . ( Memento from December 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) nordbayern.de, May 1, 2009
  9. ^ Announcement of awards of the Saarland Order of Merit . In: Head of the State Chancellery (Ed.): Official Gazette of the Saarland . No. 33 . Saarbrücker Zeitung Verlag und Druckerei GmbH, Saarbrücken August 4, 1978, p. 697 ( uni-saarland.de [PDF; 225 kB ; accessed on May 28, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Diehl, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diehl, Ferdinand Friedrich Wilhelm Karl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 2008
Place of death Nuremberg