Kurt Poensgen

Kurt Poensgen

Kurt Poensgen (born November 24, 1885 in Düsseldorf ; † March 8, 1944 in the same place) was a German lawyer and private banker and a member of several important supervisory boards .

Live and act

Kurt Poensgen came from the well-known Düsseldorf industrialist family Poensgen , which originated in the Schleiden area in the Eifel region . He was the son of Carl Poensgen and Clara Poensgen, geb. Poensgen (1846–1910) and brother of the Finance Court President Albert Poensgen and the industrialist Ernst Poensgen .

After attending the municipal high school in Düsseldorf, the Protestant pedagogy in Godesberg and the royal high school in Arnsberg / Westphalia, he began studying law at Oxford University in 1905 . In the same year he moved to the University of Heidelberg and in 1907 to the University of Bonn . From 1909 to 1911 Poensgen finally studied again in Heidelberg, where he was also awarded a Dr. jur. PhD. This was followed by commercial training in Hamburg and Berlin as well as study trips to East Asia , Australia and Africa . In the First World War he took part as a lieutenant in the reserve and was awarded EK I and II .

In 1921 Kurt Poensgen was appointed successor to Moritz Leiffmann, a partner in the Jewish bank B. Simons & Co in Düsseldorf. Three years later he assumed sole responsibility for this bank, which in 1942 was renamed "Poensgen, Marx and Co.". Despite its Jewish roots, the bank did not encounter any difficulties during the National Socialist era due to a 1941 decree by the Reich Ministry of Justice to Aryanise commercial enterprises, as it has been proven that it had been run by non-Jews for more than 20 years.

In addition, Poensgen was chairman of the Association of Private Bankers of Rhineland and Westphalia and a member of several supervisory boards, including Deutsche Erdöl-AG in Hamburg, Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG in Essen , Kali Chemie AG in Berlin and the family business Gebr. Poensgen AG in Düsseldorf .

In his free time, Poensgen and his brother Ernst were involved in the Düsseldorf HC , which he headed from 1937 to 1944 as president. He was also one of the founding members of the Düsseldorf Rotary Club in 1930 .

Kurt Poensgen was married to Elisabeth ("Lilli") Gelpcke (1892–1980), daughter of the banker Karl Gelpcke (1863–1939), member of the board of the Hamburger Hypothekenbank, president of the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce and member of the central committee of the Reichsbank . The Poensgen couple had two children.

publication

• The direct security means of the BGB in their qualitative difference and relationship to one another ; Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 1910, 52 pp.

literature

• Edmund Strutz (Hrsg.): German gender book . Volume 123 (= Eifeler Gender Book . Volume 2). CA Starke, Limburg ad Lahn 1958, p. 283 ff.
• Max Kruk: Bankers in their time. The men of B. Simons & Co (= series of publications by the Institute for Bank History Research, Vol. 13). F. Knapp, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-781-90417-2 .
• Ingo Köhler: The Aryanization of the private banks in the Third Reich (= series of publications for the journal for corporate history . Vol. 14). CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-53200-9 , p. 78, 259-260 ( digital copy ).
• Fritz Pudor : Poensgen, Kurt . In: Necrologist from the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area born 1939–1951 . Düsseldorf 1955, p. 96f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the history of the Simons banking house in Düsseldorf ( memento of the original from August 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.