Konrad end

Konrad end

Konrad Ende (born July 1, 1895 in Groß Bislaw , Tuchel district , West Prussia ; † September 24, 1976 in Salzgitter ) was a German politician and member of the German National People's Party .

Live and act

Empire and Weimar Republic

Konrad Ende attended the secondary school in Riesenburg and passed the Abitur exam at the secondary school St. Peter and Paul in Danzig . After the outbreak of World War I in autumn 1914, he volunteered and moved to the front with Field Artillery Regiment No. 35 from Deutsch Eylau . In July 1915 he was seriously wounded in a lung shot. After recovery, he was assigned to the newly established field artillery regiment No. 250 and returned to the front. In March 1917 he was made lieutenant in the reserve.

After the end of the war he studied mining and engineering in Leipzig and at Clausthal University of Technology . In 1919 he joined the Germania gymnastics club .

In the summer of 1923 he passed the main examination to become a qualified mining engineer . During a duel, the end of this time saw noticeable facial scars. From 1925, Ende worked as a technical assistant at the United Stahlwerke AG colliery in Holland . At that time he joined the German National People's Party (DNVP). In 1929 he became city councilor and parliamentary group leader of the DNVP in Wattenscheid . In October 1931 he was elected chairman of the DNVP regional association in Arnsberg . After several years of work, he was in 1933 at the Mining Department of the Technical University of Wroclaw to Dr. Ing .

Period of National Socialism (1933 to 1945)

In the Reichstag elections of March 1933 , Ende was elected to the Reichstag as a candidate of the DNVP for constituency 18 (Westphalia-South), to which he subsequently belonged until November of the same year. In March 1933, Ende, together with the other members of the DNVP, voted for the Enabling Act with which the Reichstag de facto disempowered itself by transferring legislative power to the Hitler government, which could thus combine legislative and judicial power.

In 1941 Ende was employed as an engineer at the Reichswerke Hermann Göring in Salzgitter, and in 1943 he took over management activities there. During the Second World War, Ende was in charge of mining at the plants in Germany and the German-occupied territories.

Federal Republic (1949 to 1977)

After the end of the Second World War, Konrad Ende participated in the reorganization of the Ruhr mining industry. Parts of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring were converted into a federally owned stock corporation for mining and smelting operations (later Salzgitter AG ). Ende, who in addition to his regular doctorate also holds that of a Dr. Ing. Hc led, was named in 1950 by the Bonn government, in the newly created giant companies - the Time Magazine , according to the latest early 1960s the "largest fully exploiting Dende state-owned company in the free world" - to take over the post of Director General and CEO. In doing so, he assumed a key position in the German economy, which is already reflected in the sales volume of Salzgitter AG: In 1961, according to Time Magazine, it generated revenues of 789 million US dollars through the sale of ore, coal, steel, oil and Book heavy machinery. In the period from Ende's taking over as General Director until 1962, the annual profits of the plants also grew by a stately 475%, which is all the more remarkable because at the end of the 1950s, the industrial center in Salzgitter, which was considered to be unrenovable, had to be dismantled. Even competitors were impressed by Ende's drive and what he had achieved “with this lousy ore”.

In order to strengthen Berlin's economy, Salzgitter AG took over, on behalf of the Bonn government, two companies in West Berlin that manufactured electrical machines and railway equipment. In the early 1960s, Salzgitter Erzbergbau built a new iron ore mine in northern Salzgitter for 75 million DM . Since this turned out to be unprofitable in the long term, as iron ore was significantly more expensive than foreign ore, Salzgitter AG switched to foreign ore production in the mid-1970s and stopped iron ore mining in the Salzgitter area. In 1962, Salzgitter acquired the Braunschweig truck and bus company Büssing AG and built a new plant in Salzgitter (now MAN Salzgitter). The Büssing company ultimately also proved to be uneconomical due to the difficult situation on the West German truck market: by autumn 1967 it had made a loss of 240 million DM.

When, at the end of the age of 72, resigned from his position as Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Salzgitterwerke, he was succeeded by State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Treasury Wolfram Langer .

From 1957 to 1968, Ende was also a member of the Supervisory Board and the Credit Committee of Norddeutsche Bank . Previously, he was a member and chairman of the Braunschweig Advisory Board of this bank. He was also a member of the supervisory board of Howaldtswerke AG in Kiel .

honors and awards

Shaft IV "Konrad Ende" of the Recklinghausen II colliery

At the end of 1963, Salzgitter became the first honorary citizen. The certificate of honor is “... the purposeful head of Salzgitter's heavy industry in the period of reconstruction after dismantling, the superior and energetic advocate of Salzgitter steel, who brought the Salzgitter iron and steel industry back to world renown from the hopeless situation of the first post-war years dedicated to helping tens of thousands of displaced persons and refugees find a new home ”.

Other honors followed, such as the title “Consul of Peru” as well as the Order of Merit of the State of Lower Saxony and the large Federal Cross of Merit with a star. Today, among other things, the two shafts named after him, Konrad 1 and Konrad 2 of the former Konrad iron ore mine in Salzgitter, remind of him. Shaft IV of the Recklinghausen coal mine in Recklinghausen- Hochlarmark bears the name Konrad Ende .

literature

• Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Günter Scheel (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon. 19th and 20th centuries , Hannover 1996, p. 163.

Web links

• Konrad Ende in the database of the members of the Reichstag
• Text with photograph ending from the 1960s

Individual evidence

1. ^ Europe's Businessmen Bureaucrats. In: Time Magazine. November 30, 1962.
2. ^ Europe's Businessmen Bureaucrats. In: Time Magazine. November 30, 1962. Originally: “the biggest wholly state-owned industrial company in the free world”.
3. ↑ Salzgitter AG (Ed.): Konrad-Erz for our blast furnaces (=  Die Brücke - Salzgitter AG works magazine ). Salzgitter 1963.
4. ↑ The mirror. 43/1968, p. 50 f.
5. ↑ Time. No. 41, published October 1, 1976.