Max Brose

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Max Brose (born January 4, 1884 in Osnabrück ; † April 11, 1968 in Coburg ) was a German businessman and industrialist who founded Brose Fahrzeugteile GmbH and ran it for 60 years. From 1933 to 1945 he was a member of the NSDAP and from 1938 to 1945 military economic leader .

Life

Max Brose's parents were Karl Brose, a wagon builder, and Maria Brose, née Bußmann. He grew up in Wuppertal and attended the upper secondary school in Elberfeld , which he left after successfully passing the Untersekunda exams in 1900. This was followed by commercial training , including in his parents' company, before he completed his military service from 1906. Then Max Brose opened a trading house for automotive fittings in Berlin on March 4, 1908 .

In 1911 the Catholic Brose married the Protestant pastor's daughter Elfriede Lehmann (* February 12, 1885, † January 16, 1965). The first daughter Gisela was born in 1912, followed by Christa in 1918. During the First World War , Brose was deployed as a reserve officer in the motor vehicle troops on the Eastern and Western Fronts and was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class , among other things .

Brose was elected to the Coburg City Council as a member of the DVP on November 13, 1921 , but resigned his mandate in June 1924. In the arbitration chamber proceedings, he stated that he was also a member of the DNVP during the Weimar Republic . In December 1926 he was elected to the Coburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the first time . At the beginning of 1935 the Reich Ministry of Economics appointed him President of the Chamber of Commerce in Coburg, after he was last elected to the Chamber of Commerce on May 20, 1933. He held the office of President until the Coburg Chamber of Commerce was dissolved in April 1943. Based on his application of June 8, 1933, Brose became a member of the NSDAP retrospectively from May 1, and he joined the NSKK in autumn 1933. On April 20, 1938, the Defense Economics and Armaments Office appointed him military economics leader .

In the denazification proceedings after 1945, after the indictment, the Coburg-Stadt Brose ranks Brose as a suspect on March 22, 1948 in the group of minor charges . After the appeal, the final classification as follower by the main chamber of Nuremberg, branch in Ansbach, took place on July 23, 1949. However, after the Second World War, efforts were made to involve the old elites in the reconstruction of Germany. In this context, statements from exonerating witnesses with dubious truth content were repeatedly accepted. As a result, historians often view denazification procedures as questionable.

Ernst Jühling died on September 3, 1956, his heirs were paid off by Max Brose. From 1951 Max Brose had a portable typewriter built, but left this business area again in 1959. By 1968, the year Brose died, his company grew to around 1000 employees with a turnover of 50 million DM through the market launch of the electric window  regulator. Alongside the Waldrich Coburg company, it was the most important industrial employer in Coburg and, in the decades that followed, developed as Brose Fahrzeugteile GmbH into an important supplier to the automotive industry.

Brose company

The trading house for vehicle parts, founded in 1904 in what would later become the Berlin district of Moabit , grew steadily and became the world's largest automotive supplier by the end of the 20th century. The management knew how to adapt to the latest technical developments again and again.

On June 14, 1919, Max Brose and the chemist Ernst Jühling, whom he had met by chance towards the end of the war, founded the company Metallwerk Max Brose & Co. in Coburg by taking over the company Haußknecht . In 1928 he began the development and production of window regulators for automobiles, from 1936 the production of the 20-liter was Wehrmacht unit canister and the Second World War on impact detonator and explosive grenades changed. During this time Brose had up to 900 employees, including 200 Soviet prisoners of war towards the end of the war , for whom the Wehrmacht maintained a camp right next to the plant .

After the end of the war, when Berlin became a four-sector city , Brose relocated the trading company's headquarters to Coburg, where the Max Brose & Co metalworks was already located. The branch remained in Berlin until 1956.

Honors are viewed critically

Between 2004 and 2015, the possibility of naming the street after Max Brose caused controversial discussions. With reference to "the unclear role of Max Brose in National Socialism", he was a member of the NSDAP, military economic leader and employed forced laborer, the Coburg city council did not follow the initiative of its CSU faction to rededicate Von-Schultes-Straße , which is at the company headquarters of Brose Fahrzeugteile GmbH in Coburg. Brose's grandson Michael Stoschek took this as an insult, whereupon the company cut its donations to local associations and social institutions. After this issue was taken up in a comment in the Süddeutsche Zeitung ( The offended global corporation ) at the beginning of 2015, the matter moved again. In the following discussion, which was also conducted in national media, Stoschek relied on the company chronicle written by Gregor Schöllgen and the files of the arbitration chamber proceedings against Max Brose from 1948 in order to prove that his grandfather was a role model. Criticism was voiced, for example, from the Central Council of Jews or the Evangelical Educational Organization. They saw Broses past as not yet adequately dealt with. In its meeting on May 21, 2015, the Coburg city council voted again on a rededication at the request of Mayor Tessmer and confirmed this with 26:11 votes.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Brose, Max> Automobile fittings, Berlin SW68, Charlottenstrasse 87 . In: Berlin address book , 1910, I.
  2. ^ Coburg State Archives Spruchkammer Coburg-Stadt B 312, Bl. 12 and 703v
  3. ^ Gregor Schöllgen: brose - A German family company 1908–2008 . P. 140
  4. ↑ welt.de: Central Council of Jews criticizes the renaming of the street in Coburg , accessed on May 8, 2015.
  5. ^ Central Council of Jews criticizes the renaming of the street in Coburg , Focus from March 13, 2015; accessed on May 8, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Brose, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Merchant and industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Osnabrück
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1968
Place of death Coburg