Karl Lindemann

This article deals with the businessman Karl Lindemann. For the landscape painter see Karl Lindemann-Frommel . For the Russian zoologist and entomologist, see Karl Lindemann (zoologist) .

Karl Wilhelm Ove Theodor Lindemann (born April 17, 1881 in Goldberg ; † July 4, 1965 in Bremen ) was a German businessman, chairman of the supervisory board of North German Lloyd , from 1936 a member of the presidium of the German group of the International Chamber of Commerce and last president of the Reich Chamber of Commerce .

Education and work in China

As the son of a secret consortium councilor and his wife Minna Becker, he attended the Friderico-Francisceum high school in Doberan . From 1896 to 1900 he completed a commercial apprenticeship in Hamburg. He then did the one year old in voluntary military service from 1900 to 1901 . He then went to China in 1902 . There he worked for the Fuhrmeister & Co. company. In 1908 he went to Hankow and worked for the Bremen company Melchers & Co. as the manager of the branch and authorized signatory . In Hankow he took over duties as Royal Consul for Norway from 1908 to 1914 . In 1913 he acquired a share in the Melchers company.

Return to Bremen and partner of Melchers

In 1919 he left China and returned to Bremen, where the company had its headquarters since 1806. In 1920 he became a partner in the company. In September 1933 he was appointed to the State Council in Bremen. Since the company also acted as the general agency for North German Lloyd for East Asia, Lindemann was also able to take over the chairmanship of the North German Lloyd's supervisory board.

In 1933 he also became a member of the supervisory board of the German-American Petroleum Company (ESSO AG) and the Atlas-Werke , Bremen. Between 1933 and 1945, Lindemann took on board positions in 18 banking and industrial companies. In 1932 he also became a member of the Haus Seefahrt Foundation , in which Bremen's leading economic bourgeoisie is organized and whose “ Schaffermessen” to establish important economic and political contacts in the German Reich took place again from 1936 to 1939.

Support of the NSDAP and SS

From 1932 he belonged to the economic group of the NSDAP around Wilhelm Keppler , and then from 1935 to the successor organization Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS . He justified his membership in the Freundeskreis of the SS by saying “that there was also a lack of enthusiasm and ambition that made me stay loyal to the Freundeskreis.” Later, Lindemann tried to explain that his membership in the NSDAP since 1938 had little significance. From 1933 to 1945 he succeeded Philipp Heineken as chairman of the supervisory board of Norddeutscher Lloyd.

During these years he paid into a fund that was first used by Adolf Hitler and later by Heinrich Himmler . As a representative of HAPAG , Lindemann also supervised the German-American Petroleum Company. This company was almost entirely owned by the Standard Oil Company .

Arms trade and management of captured companies in the Netherlands

After the beginning of the Second World War , Lindemann established close contact with the German ambassador Fritz Grobba in Baghdad and organized an arms trade through the company's branch in Baghdad. After the occupation of the Netherlands by German troops in 1940, German authorities initiated measures that led to the Unilever group coming into German possession. Lindemann, Karl Blessing and Heinrichschicht were appointed as protection administrators for the subsidiaries of Unilever Marga , Saponia and Wemado . In 1943 he belonged to a delegation that negotiated the German-Swiss trade agreement, with which the Nazi regime managed to import important raw materials for the war economy via Switzerland. The Reich Minister Schwerin von Krosigk personally appointed Lindemann to the supervisory board of VIAG , a company that manufactures armaments .

In September 1944 he was appointed President of the Reich Chamber of Commerce by Minister of Economic Affairs Walther Funk . At the end of the Nazi regime in 1945 he stated his assets as 800,000 Reichsmarks (RM), of which the RM 500,000 share was the participation in the Melchers & Co. company.

post war period

After the end of the war, Lindemann was interned with other members of the Dresdner Bank in the internment camp USFET G-2 (USFET stands for US Forces European Theater ) in Butzbach . He gave his address as Bremen, Wachmann Str. 76. In 1952 he was again a member of the Dresdner Bank Supervisory Board. The German group of the International Chamber of Commerce appointed him honorary president after 1945 in recognition of his services. In the summer of 1959 he took over the post of chairman of the supervisory board of Norddeutsche Kreditbank AG . He had been in close contact with this bank since 1931, when it was reorganized. In 1961 he ended his work as a senior partner at C. Melchers & Co.

Fonts

• German shipping through the post-war years up to 1936 . In: German Institute for Bank Science and Banking: Problems of German Economic Life, Striving for and Achievement : A Collection of Treatises . Berlin 1937, p. 405.

Offices and memberships

• 1934–1945: Supervisory Board of Dresdner Bank - after 1945–1965: Central Advisory Board of Dresdner Bank
• 1931–1945 and after 1959: Supervisory Board of Norddeutsche Kreditbank AG, Bremen
• 1933–1945: Supervisory Board of North German Lloyd
• 1942–1945: Supervisory Board of the Hamburg-Bremer Feuerversicherungs-Gesellschaft, Hamburg
• 1939–1945: Supervisory Board of Hamburg-Bremer Rückversicherungs-AG, Hamburg
• 1938–1945: Supervisory Board of Deutsche Revisions- und Treuhand AG, Berlin
• 1937–1945: Supervisory Board Assecuranz Compagnie Mercur, Bremen
• 1940–1942: Member of the Unilever Group
• 1942–1945: Board member of Deutsche Bank for East Asia
• Supervisory Board of the Deutsche Orientbank
• 1933–1945: Supervisory Board of Atlas Werke AG in Bremen
• 1942–1945: Supervisory Board of the Hamburg-America Line
• 1942–1945: Supervisory Board of the German America Line
• 1936–1945: Member of the board of directors of the Mülheim Mining Association
• 1939–1945: Supervisory Board of the Norddeutsche Cementfabrik
• 1931–1945: Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Norddeutsche Woll- und Kammgarnindustrie AG Delmenhorst
• 1937–1945: Supervisory Board of the United Industry Enterprises AG, VIAG (parent company)
• 1931–1945: Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the wool yarn factory Tittel & Krüger and Sternwollspinnerei AG Leipzig
• Bremen Chamber of Commerce
• Seafaring House Bremen (from 1932)
• Kaiser Wilhelm Society Berlin
• President of the Board of Directors of the Institute for World Economy at Kiel University
• 1934–1942: Supervisory Board of the German-American Petroleum AG (ESSO)
• Board member of the East Asian Association Hamburg-Bremen
• Committee for the Exchange of Young Businesspeople Berlin
• 1936–1945: Advisory Board of the Deutsche Reichsbank

See also

• List of Bremen State Councilors and Deputies of Senators

Web links

• Newspaper article about Karl Lindemann in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Reinhold Thiel: The history of North German Lloyd 1857-1970. (Volume V, 1945-1970), Bremen 2006, p. 123.
2. ^ Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 2: L-Z. German business publisher, Berlin 1931, DNB 453960294 .
3. ↑ Herrmann AL Degener : Who is it? Berlin 1935.
4. ↑ Hartmut Rübner: Concentration and Crisis of German Shipping. Maritime economy and politics in the German Empire, in the Weimar Republic and in National Socialism. (German Maritime Studies, Volume 1 .; Zugl .: Bremen, Univ., Diss., 2003), published in cooperation with the German Maritime Museum Bremerhaven, Hauschild , Bremen 2005, ISBN 3-89757-238-9 , p. 415.
5. ^ Karl H. Schwebel : "Haus Seefahrt", Bremen, his merchants and captains. Four hundred years of service to the German seaman, 1545–1945 . Verlag H. Krohn, Bremen 1947, p. 76.
6. ^ Karl H. Schwebel: "Seafaring House" Bremen. His merchants and captains . Bremen 1947, p. 18.
7. ^ Wolfgang G. Schwanitz : Gold, bankers and diplomats. On the history of the Deutsche Orientbank 1906–1946. Berlin 2002, p. 22
8. ↑ Loyalty in the choir . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1965 ( online - Oct. 13, 1965 ).
9. ↑ OMGUS : Investigations against the Dresdner Bank - 1946. Nördlingen 1986, p. 232.
10. ↑ Peter Ferdinand Koch (Ed.): The Dresdner Bank and the Reichsführer SS. Hamburg 1987, p. 19
11. ^ Declaration by Lindemann on oath instead of February 28, 1947 in Document NI 5514. In: Eberhard Czichon: Who helped Hitler to power? On the share of German industry in the destruction of the Weimar Republic. Cologne 1972, p. 29, FN 71.
12. ↑ John Loftus ; Mark Aarons: The Secret War against the Jews. How Western Espionage betrayed the Jewish People. New York, 1994, p. 532, FN 25.
13. ↑ Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, ibid, p. 28.
14. ↑ Ben Wubs: International Business and War Interests. Unilever Between Reich and Empire. 2008, Florence (Kentucky), p. 106.
15. ↑ OMGUS, ibid, p. 233 and p. 234.
16. ↑ Personal estimate and information from Lindemann, in: OMGUS, ibid, p. 235.
17. ↑ Ralf Ahrens, Ingo Köhler et al .: The Dresdner Bank 1945–1957. Consequences and continuities after the end of the Nazi regime. Munich 2007, p. 242 FN 4.
18. ^ Obituary in the Bremer Nachrichten of July 6, 1965 under the title Karl Lindemann died at the age of 85.
19. ↑ Hermann Teschemacher (Ed.): Handbook of the structure of the commercial economy. (Volume III, Reich Chamber of Commerce / Economic Chambers, Chambers of Industry and Commerce), Lübeck 1937, p. 439.
20. ↑ In the organization of the Advisory Council, there were three committees from 1939: 1. the Monetary Policy Committee, 2. the Foreign Trade Committee and 3. the Exchange Committee. Karl Lindemann chaired the Foreign Trade Committee. Compare: Eberhard Czichon: The banker and power. Hermann Josef Abs in German politics. Cologne 1970, p. 108.