MICUM agreement

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The MICUM Agreement is an agreement consisting of six individual contracts concluded between the Franco - Belgian Control Commission for factories and mines in the occupied Ruhr area , the so-called Mission interalliée de Contrôle des Usines et des Mines (MICUM) and the Ruhr industry. The contracts date between November 23, 1923 and September 3, 1924.

The MICUM agreement made it possible to resume work in heavy industry in the Ruhr area, which came to a standstill after its occupation by Franco-Belgian troops on January 11, 1923 due to the passive resistance of the population. The contracts, largely negotiated by the industrialist Hugo Stinnes as a member of the Commission of Six, determined the amount of reparation coal to be delivered to France free of charge , the coal tax to be transferred since the beginning of the occupation and the compensation payments for French revenue losses during the passive resistance. Otto Wolff , whose company was primarily a trading company, was not involved . This was reason enough not to support the Commission of Six, but to accelerate the resumption of business relations with France through a “separate peace”. In addition, the Krupp Group in particular did not want to be represented by Hugo Stinnes.

The six commission of the mining association consisted of: Albert Janus (chairman of the Rheinisch-Westfälischen coal syndicate ), Peter Klöckner ( Klöckner-Werke ), Georg Lübsen ( Gutehoffnungshütte ), Otto von Velsen ( Hibernia AG ), Hugo Stinnes (including Stinnes Mines in Essen, Dortmunder Union and German-Luxembourgish Mining and Huts AG ), Albert Vögler (German-Luxemburgish Mining and Huts AG).

In political terms, the treaties meant an upgrading of the role of the Rhenish-Westphalian heavy industry, which negotiated with representatives of France on a quasi-interstate level in an extremely difficult situation for the Reich. All the decisions of the Commission of Six were very precisely coordinated with the German Reich Government, not least with the hope of later reimbursement of the French claims in kind and money from Berlin. Behaviors like Otto Wolff's, on the other hand, easily came under the scrutiny of promoting the Rhenish idea of ​​separation , but in his case it was primarily a matter of stabilizing the economic and political situation, and here, too, nothing happened without the involvement of people from the Reich government.

In 1925, the Reich government reimbursed the Ruhr industry for coal deliveries and tax payments to France and Belgium during the occupation of the Ruhr in the amount of 700 million Reichsmarks .

literature

  • Hans Spethmann: Twelve years of mining in the Ruhr. From its history from the beginning of the war to the French march 1914-1925 , Vol. 3: The Ruhrkampf 1923 to 1925 in its guidelines . Reimar Hobbing Verlag, Berlin 1929, especially pp. 151–172, pp. 224ff. and p. 379f.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Boris Gehlen: Paul Silverberg (1876-1959). An entrepreneur , in: Quarterly for social and economic history. Supplement No. 194, Stuttgart 2007, p. 256
  2. ^ Peter Wulf: Hugo Stinnes. Economy and politics 1918-1924 , Verlag Klett-Kotta, Stuttgart 1979, p. 397
  3. ↑ Gerald D. Feldman : Hugo Stinnes. Biography of an industrialist 1870-1924 , Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 894
  4. ^ Dittmar Dahlmann : The Otto Wolff company: from scrap iron trade to global corporation (1904 - 1929) . In: Peter Danylow / Ulrich S. Soénius (ed.): Otto Wolff. A company between business and politics , Siedler Verlag, Munich 2005, p. 59 u. 63

Web links

Files of the Reich Chancellery: Discussion of the Six Commission with General Degoutte in Düsseldorf on October 5, 1923