Max Wittwer

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Max Wittwer (* August 1896 in Regensburg ; † 1977 ) was a German chemist and works manager of an armaments factory of the IG-Farben subsidiary Anorgana in Gendorf.

Life

Training and Inorgana plant manager

Wittwer made it in the First World War in the artillery and later in the air corps to lieutenant , then studied chemistry in Freiburg im Breisgau and received his doctorate in 1923. He got his first job at the IG-Farben location in Ludwigshafen , where he worked on the development of the chlorohydrin process Production of ethylene oxide was involved. In December 1940 he became the first plant manager of the newly established Anorgana branch in Gendorf in Upper Bavaria (Altötting district). In nearby Trostberg his brother Dr. Wilhelm Wittwer Wehrwirtschaftsführer and head of the vital Bavarian nitrogen works AG . The Inorgana armaments factory, disguised as a "detergent factory", owned by the Wehrmacht, was supposed to produce poison gas and other war-relevant materials under the (veiled) direction of the IG-Farben industry and, in addition to local workers, employed numerous foreigners, prisoners of war and forced laborers , as well as concentration camp workers . Prisoners from Dachau . Wittwer's superior, who had been a member of the NSDAP since August 1, 1941 , was Inorgana's managing director Otto Ambros , also from Upper Palatinate, who was also responsible for the IG Farben factory in Auschwitz .

Dealing with workers

As plant manager, Wittwer had to deal with serious technical problems, but above all with the increasing labor shortage and lack of accommodation. In 1942, for example, he complained that some of the Soviet workers who the employment office had sent to Gendorf were minors and only had experience in agriculture. Wittwer described the confusing recruitment policy to the US investigating authorities as follows: “The Russians came through the employment office. The Italian military internees and the prisoners of war came from penal camps; we paid about the same amount for them as we paid for the prisoners from Dachau. Italian civil workers were employed by the camp office after the relevant authorities approved our needs. We got some of the French workers through employment agencies in France. We got the Greeks and the other nationalities, like the civilian Italians, through the employment office. ”Numerous workers died in accidents, adulterated alcohol , malnutrition and violence. A maternity hospital for "Eastern workers" was built near the factory premises , in which around 150 newborns died of cold and malnutrition.

Nazi propagandist

In contrast to his brother, Wittwer, who was promoted to "Deputy Managing Director" of Anorgana on April 3, 1942, was not a fanatical National Socialist, but he was absolutely true to the line and tried to increase work motivation in his speeches to the workforce: "So fight You here with your work for this victory as well as German soldiers with their Italian brothers in arms in Africa, and the Italian divisions in the USSR with German troops! Do not forget that your achievements and your hardships and inconveniences that you here at work are small compared to the immense efforts of our soldiers, who have to give their lives and health for our victory. "

End of war and arrest

In the last days of the war, Wittwer, together with his brother and Otto Ambros, prevented the Alz Bridge, which is important for traffic, from being blown up. On June 10, 1945 he was arrested by the US military police and taken to the internment camp and interrogation center "Dustbin" at Kransberg Castle in the Taunus near Frankfurt am Main . Among the prisoners were the prominent biologist and pharmacologist Gerhard Böttger, Dr. Otto Ambros, Dr. Walter Reppe and Dr. Jürgen von Klenck. The ruling chamber initially classified Wittwer as a “fellow traveler”, but in a second case he was designated as “exonerated”. Wittwer then went to an IG Farbenwerk near Gersthofen , which was under US administration from 1945 to 1952 ("Lech-Chemie") and was then taken over by the Hoechst company.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Incomplete date of birth according to the NSDAP personnel file. Wittwer had membership number 9 012 961
  2. ↑ Peter Jungblut: Purely strategic viewpoints. Gendorf 1939-1945 , Berlin 2001, p. 18
  3. ↑ a b Michael Kamp / Florian Neumann: Living Responsibility. From the Gendorfer factory to the industrial park , Burgkirchen 2014, p. 85
  4. ^ A b Peter Jungblut: Purely strategic viewpoints. Gendorf 1939 - 1945 , Berlin 2001, p. 22
personal data
SURNAME Wittwer, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist, plant manager, member of the NSDAP
DATE OF BIRTH August 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH regensburg
DATE OF DEATH 1977