Karl Kimmich

Karl Kimmich (born September 14, 1880 in Ulm , † September 10, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German banker. He was a board member from 1933 to 1942 and chairman of the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank from 1942 to 1945 .

Childhood and youth

Karl Kimmich grew up as the son of the painter, drawing teacher and author Karl Kimmich senior (* March 23, 1850, † May 2, 1915) and his wife Christine, b. Autenrieth, in Ulm . His brother Max W. Kimmich , thirteen years his junior , later married the youngest sister of Joseph Goebbels .

education

After graduating from high school, Kimmich first completed an apprenticeship in a private bank in Ulm before he began to study political science. He completed this course with a doctorate . From 1906 to 1915 he took up his first position at A. Schaaffhausen'scher Bankverein in Berlin. In 1915 he moved to the headquarters of the bank association in Cologne . In 1919 he became a deputy member of the Supervisory Board and two years later a full member . However, he had to vacate this position when the Schaaffhausen Bank Association merged with Deutsche Bank and Disconto-Bank in 1929.

Deutsche Bank

However, he was taken over by Deutsche Bank and worked in the syndicate business in the following years. Since his work in Cologne made him one of the best experts on the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial landscape, Deutsche Bank entrusted him with the restructuring of the heavily indebted Cologne chocolate manufacturer Stollwerck and the Bochum colliery Lothringen , which from January 1, 1921 as "Bergbau AG Lothringen “Traded. Georg Solmssen , at that time on the board of Deutsche Bank, ruled in November 1932: “ Dr. Kimmich has great constructive skills and the ability to think his way around industrial issues, and has proven himself brilliantly in all the positions he has been asked to so far ”. In May 1933 he was then appointed to the board of directors of Deutsche Bank in Berlin, to which he was a member until 1942. From 1940 to 1942 he was also spokesman for the board of directors and, after he had to give up this post for health reasons, from 1942 to 1945 chairman of the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank. In addition, he was also chairman of the Reichsbank's credit committee and sat on the supervisory boards of numerous heavy industry companies.

Conduct during the time of National Socialism

During the Nazi era, Kimmich played a key role in the " Aryanizations " carried out by Deutsche Bank . In a memo dated July 25, 1938 he wrote that Deutsche Bank had "successfully aryanized" many companies. However, Kimmich added that one should not be too involved in this sector, since otherwise good foreign customers could be lost. At the same time, he complained about the slow approval process in this regard, which often took up to two months. Despite these difficulties, he was able to report in November 1938 - shortly before the Reichspogromnacht - that his company had so far been involved in 330 "Aryanizations", which have now largely been completed. He also had close personal ties to the Nazi government through his younger brother Max Wilhelm Kimmich, who was married to the youngest sister of Joseph Goebbels. He was apparently never punished for his activities in connection with the "Aryanization": After the war, the Americans initially considered bringing all board members of Deutsche Bank in Nuremberg to trial, but then dropped the plan because they had the prospect seemed too low to convict those concerned. They also had to rely on the financial experts there after they began to work in partnership with the defeated Germans.

Fonts

• The causes of the low price of German government bonds: an investigation into English, French and German government loans. - Munich: Cotta, 1906. - XII, 357 pp. - Zugl .: Munich, Univ., Diss., Partial print (Munich economics writings; 77)
• About the financial performance of the European central banks

literature

• Deutsche Bank wants to rob . In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 1985 ( online ).
• Klaus W. Tofahrn: The Third Reich and the Holocaust. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 3-631-57702-8 , p. 219
• Frank Raberg : Biographical Lexicon for Ulm and Neu-Ulm 1802-2009 . Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft im Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, ISBN 978-3-7995-8040-3 , p. 199 .

Films, film contributions

• Gerolf Karwath: Hitler's elites after 1945. Part 3: Entrepreneurs - Profiteers of injustice. Director: Holger Hillesheim. Südwestrundfunk (SWR, 2002).

Web links

• Biography of the Historical Society of Deutsche Bank with photo
• "Thunder from Arosa" article about the renovation of Stollwerck (PDF file; 586 kB)
• "Serious moral guilt" ZEIT article from 1995