Karl Raabe

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Karl Raabe as a student in the Corps Saxonia-Berlin

Karl Franz Raabe (born November 9, 1879 in Saarbrücken , † January 30, 1953 in Starnberg ) was a graduate mechanical engineer , an important manager of the German steel industry , the armaments industry of National Socialist Germany and chairman of the board of directors of Maxhütte , which is owned by Flick- Group found.

biography

Karl Raabe's father was Max Raabe. Karl had a brother Paul (1883-1967) who was a member of the board of the Hermann Göring Works .

After graduating, Karl Raabe enrolled in mechanical engineering at the TH Berlin-Charlottenburg in the winter semester of 1898/99 and graduated as a qualified engineer in the summer semester of 1903 . During his studies he joined the Corps Saxonia-Berlin. He was married and his daughter Barbara married Otto-Ernst Flick , a son of Friedrich Flick .

After graduating, he worked in various metalworks, first as a rolling mill assistant at the Burbacher Hütte and then as a rolling mill engineer at the August-Thyssen-Hütte in Hamborn. He became chief engineer and rolling mill manager of the Rombacher Hütte and worked as a rolling mill chief engineer of the Differdingen steelworks in Lorraine, which belonged to the German-Luxembourgish Mining and Huts AG. In 1917 he held the post of director of the Lothringer Hüttenverein in Kneuttingen . After his expulsion from France in 1919, he was appointed head of the Association of the Iron and Wire Industry in Düsseldorf , and in 1924 he was responsible for the iron and steel works in Haspe and Georgsmarienhütte as technical director and member of the board of the Klöckner Group . In 1922 he was elected chairman of the rolling mill committee of the Association of German Ironworkers, today's steel institute VDEh , and in 1924 he was elected to the board of the Association of German Ironworkers; In 1928 he became a delegate of the board of directors of the Düsseldorf employers' association . In 1934 he joined the management team at Demag and became a member of the board at Ilseder Hütte . In 1937 he held the post of CEO of Maxhütte and became a member of the board of directors at Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke . In 1945 he retired . Karl Raabe was represented on numerous supervisory boards of the Flick Group: Demag , Duisburg ; Boswau & Knauer , Berlin; Brennabor AG, Brandenburg ; Continental Society for Trade and Industry , Krakow and Schiess-Defries AG , Duisburg.

In Sulzbach-Rosenberg , the headquarters of Maxhütte AG, there is a so-called Villa-Max, popularly Raabe-Villa , in Flick-Park , the name of which goes back to the general director Karl Raabe.

Patch company

Maxhütte

Karl Raabe with members of the management board 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.

Dipl.-Ing. Karl Raabe became general director of Maxhütte in 1937 and took over the chairmanship of the board as well as the entire technical management of this company. Karl Raabe played a special role in pursuing Friedrich Flick's plans for economic expansion in iron and steel production when Germany had triumphed in the French campaign in 1940. On behalf of Flick, Raabe was supposed to investigate the technical status of the smelting works there in order to acquire one. He was particularly suitable for this because he had worked in Lorraine until 1919 .

Since his brother Paul Raabe had been on the board of the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" since 1940 and at the same time from July 1940 he was general commissioner for the distribution of Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine to the military commanders in Brussels and Paris, it stands to reason that Karl Raabe also made these contacts knew how to use. The Reichswerke were also interested in acquiring French metallurgical plants and rolling mills.

In 1940 Raabe wrote to Flick that he should opt for the iron and steel works in Rombas (Rombach), as this plant had made the best impression. On March 28, 1941, the trusteeship for this hut was transferred to Friedrich Flick and he appointed Karl Raabe as managing director , who ensured that other positions in the company were filled by employees of the Maxhütte. Flick took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board himself. Since the Rombacher Hütte could initially only be leased due to legal regulations, Raabe and Flick complained. Otto-Ernst Flick, who, at the age of 25, had meanwhile become the manager of the French company, refused to sign the contract. In September 1943, a consortium was formed to purchase Rombacher Hüttenwerke from Flick KG, Maxhütte and Harpener Bergbau AG , all of which were owned by Friedrich Flick, in order to be able to submit an offer in the upcoming purchase negotiations. Since it was uncertain whether other bidders would win the bid in the purchase negotiations, the state assured after this protest that, if there was no transfer of ownership, the operation of the Rombacher Hütte can be treated by Flick for tax purposes from 1941 as the factory would have been owned by the Flick Group.

The productivity of the Rombacher Hütte was lower than expected. Nevertheless, Karl Raabe managed to increase productive output in 1942. This could only be achieved with the increased use of forced labor . Raabe had experience in planning the use of forced labor. The board of directors of Maxhütte, with Karl Raabe as chairman and Hermann Terberger as his deputy, as well as Hans Krugmann and Fritz Wesemann , had gained experience with forced labor since 1939. The work in the Maxhütte in Sulzbach-Rosenberg was organized by Laermann and Werner von Hoven , but the board kept in contact with high-ranking decision-makers who were responsible for the allocation, in particular Terberger and Wesemann. It can be assumed that Raabe used these contacts to recruit this workforce. After the war, Karl Raabe asserted as a witness in the Flick trial on oath that the operation of the Rombacher Hütte was "the economic opposite of exploitation ".

The Rombach plant received the evacuation order on May 31, 1944, five days after the Allies had liberated Paris . The work was not destroyed, but remained in a "terrible condition".

Karl Raabe resigned in January 1945 due to serious illness; his successor as CEO of Maxhütte was Otto-Ernst Flick. After the end of the war, Karl Raabe was banned from employment.

Röchlingwerke and Petschek Group

In addition to their work at Maxhütte, Karl Raabe and Wesemann were members of the advisory board of the Röchling Group , in which Friedrich Flick sat on both the presidium and the administrative board from July 1942.

During the Aryanization of the property of the Ignaz Petschek heirs , which was one of the largest anti-Jewish expropriation measures in National Socialist Germany, violent disputes broke out between the Hermann Göring works and the Maxhütte, in which Karl Raabe was the director of the Göring works, Franz Beckenbauer, described as "particularly inconsiderate". In this dispute, Friedrich Flick was concerned with gaining access to the lignite deposits of the Petschek Group.

obituary

On the occasion of his death, Karl Raabe was described in an obituary in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit on February 5, 1953 as "personality paired with a rare kindness of heart and high human qualities". This may be more than doubtful in view of the approximately 10,000 forced laborers employed by the Flick concern annually in the 1940s.

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, ISBN 978-3-486-58683-1 .
  • 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 . ( Moderne Zeit. 17), (Simultaneously: Freiburg i. Br., Univ., Diss., 2007).
  • Raabe, Karl, Franz. In: Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 2: L-Z. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1931, DNB 453960294 , p. 1461.
  • Raabe, Karl Franz. In: Georg Wenzel: German business leader . Life courses of German business personalities. A reference book on 13,000 business figures of our time. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg / Berlin / Leipzig 1929, DNB 948663294 , Sp. 1751.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carl Weigandt: History of the Corps Saxonia-Berlin zu Aachen , 1867-1967 , Aachen 1968, p. 290
  2. Page no longer available , search in web archives: The time of February 5, 1953@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.zeit.de
  3. ^ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history, p. 370.
  4. ^ Carl Weigandt: History of the Corps Saxonia-Berlin zu Aachen, 1867-1967 , Aachen 1968, p. 290
  5. ^ Bähr: Flick Group , p. 129
  6. Flickpark with Villa-Max, p. 11. ( Memento from July 29, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.4 MB)
  7. ^ Bähr: Flick Group , p. 826.
  8. ^ Bähr: Flick Group , p. 452f.
  9. ^ Bähr: Flick Group , p. 457
  10. ^ Bähr: Flick Group , p. 460.
  11. ^ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history, p. 606.
  12. ^ Bähr: Flick Group , p. 238.
  13. ^ Priemel: Flick - A corporate history, p. 422.