Max Schlenker

Max Martin Schlenker (born September 8, 1883 in Schwenningen , † February 14, 1967 in Königsfeld in the Black Forest ) was a German lawyer who worked as a syndic in the heavy industry of the Ruhr area .

Life

Schlenker was the son of a master glazier and watch manufacturer and attended secondary school in Rottweil . After a year of training at a bank, he studied at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen and at the Friedrichs University in Halle . He became a member of the Landsmannschaft Ghibellinia Tübingen and the Landsmannschaft Pomerania Halle . With his dissertation The Black Forest clock industry and in particular the watch industry in the Württemberg Black Forest was he in 1904 Gustav Schoenberg as a doctor of political science doctorate . Between 1905 and 1907 he worked at the Chamber of Commerce to Osnabrück . After that he was in-house counsel at the Arnsberg Chamber of Commerce until 1909 . In the same position he moved to Chemnitz and in 1913 to Saarbrücken . There he was also general secretary of the economic associations of the Saar region until 1925. His professional activity was interrupted by his participation in the First World War .

From April 1, 1925, he was the first managing director of the association for the protection of common economic interests in Rhineland and Westphalia , the so-called Langnam Association , as well as the employers' organization of the Northwestern Group of the Association of German Iron and Steel Industries based in Düsseldorf . He also belonged to other cultural and economic organizations. Since 1929 he was an honorary citizen of the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster . He campaigned for a Central European economic community and a European customs union under German leadership. In connection with the rubber iron dispute , he spoke out in favor of tough action by the companies. He had contact with the National Socialist Economic Commissioner Wilhelm Keppler at an early age . In 1930 he advocated a corporative of organization of the economy. He was not concerned with giving up positions of power in industry, but rather with replacing parliamentary institutions by representing the interests of associations. He spoke out in favor of an orientation towards fascist Italy . In the years of the global economic crisis he advocated authoritarian emergency dictatorships. On October 11, 1931, he took part in the Harzburg conference of the “national opposition” against the Weimar Republic . Despite his proximity to authoritarian positions, the regional Gauleitung declared him politically unacceptable after the Nazis came to power in 1933, and he and Fritz Springorum had to resign from his association offices. He then was a member of the board of directors of Deutsche Verkehrs-Kredit-Bank AG and managing director of the Düsseldorf Economic Association. From 1939 he took part in the Second World War. Around 1941 he was chairman of the supervisory board of Maschinenfabrik Weingarten AG .

literature

• Daniela Kahn: The control of the economy by law in National Socialist Germany. The example of the Reichsgruppe Industrie . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2006.
• Max Mechow: Well-known CCers . In: Historia Academica , Volume 8/9, p. 234 f.
• Gertrud Milkereit: Max Martin Schlenker (1883–1967). In: Wolfhard Weber (Hrsg.) Rheinische und Westfälische Handelskammersekretär and -syndici from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. (= Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiographien , Volume 15.) Aschendorff, Münster 1994, pp. 207-230.
• International Biographical Archive , 00/1938 of January 1, 1938

Web links

• Literature by and about Max Schlenker in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography in the files of the Reich Chancellery