Nicolae Malaxa

Nicolae Malaxa (born 10 ^jul. / 22. December  1884 ^greg. In Huşi , † 1965 in New Jersey , USA) was a Romanian engineer and industrialist.

Life

Coming from a family of Greek Romanians, Malaxa studied engineering at the University of Iași and the Karlsruhe Polytechnic .

After completing his studies, Malaxa worked for the Romanian State Railways as a civil engineer. At the end of the First World War and the Romanian campaign , he lived in Iaşi and traded in grapes. In 1919 he founded a company that repaired railroad cars . This soon had economic success, as the rail infrastructure fell into disrepair after the war. Malaxa repaired disused rail vehicles and sold them to the State Railways at a large profit.

At the end of the 1930s, Malaxa-Werke was a major producer of steam locomotives , diesel locomotives , railcars , railroad cars and steel pipes. They were one of the largest industrial companies in Southeastern Europe and the main supplier to the Romanian railways at that time. Malaxa owned a large part of the Romanian steel industry through his estate in Reșița , was president of the Romanian Ford works and was considered the richest man in Romania at the time. The malaxa was built in his factory.

Malaxa had a close relationship with King Carol II. Together with Aristide Blank and Max cutout , he was one of the most important entrepreneurs in Romania and therefore belonged to a kind of royal camarilla ( see royal dictatorship in Romania ); which secured its monopoly-like position in Romania.

Unlike other large Romanian companies, the Malaxa works were not tied to British, French or Czechoslovak interests. That is why Nicolae Malaxa had business contacts with the Third Reich from 1935 onwards . When the German Reich gained more influence in Romania after 1938, the shares of the Jewish entrepreneur Max cutout were confiscated. He was arrested, convicted in September 1939 on false accusations, and the entire group of companies was placed in the service of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring during the Second World War .

When King Carol resigned in 1940, Malaxa was briefly arrested on charges of having resorted to extortion in previous years.

Probably sympathizing with National Socialism, Malaxa financed the activities of the Romanian right-wing Iron Guard from the mid-1930s and especially during their rule in 1940/41. During the coup and the Bucharest pogrom in January 1941, the guard used weapons from the Malaxa production as well as its fortress-like property. He was then brought to justice by the Ion Antonescu government .

In February 1945, a few months after the coup d'état of King Michael I and the overthrow of Antonescu, Romania was occupied by Soviet troops. The Malaxa works in Bucharest became the scene of unexplained violent excesses. At that time, the independent Prime Minister Nicolae Rădescu had come into conflict with the emerging Communist Party , so his speeches were regularly interrupted by organized workers. This happened at a Malaxa plant and the incident resulted in gunfire and some deaths. The Communist Party alleged that it was targeted by the army under orders from Rădescu. However, the autopsy showed that the deadly projectiles were not the ones used by the military. Exacerbated by another address by Rădescu, in which he described the communists as "foreigners without god and homeland", the crisis ended with the appointment of a new government led by the chairman of the agricultural workers' front Petru Groza , which was supported by the Romanian Communist Party and the Soviet Union was welcomed.

Malaxa took the opportunity to leave the country when he was sent on a trip on an economic mission by King Michael. He settled in New York City . There he met his family, who were expelled from the Groza government. Malaxa and his son Constantin (1922–1999) were revoked their Romanian citizenship in 1948 by the communist regime . In May of this year he met Nicolae Rădescu and financed the publication of the anti-communist magazine Luceafărul (editor Mircea Eliade ).

In addition to allegations that he supported the Iron Guard, it was also alleged that he collaborated with the Romanian Communist Party in his final years in Romania. In 1955, while Malaxa was in Argentina , the US Immigration and Naturalization Service briefly revoked his re-entry permit. Both charges were politicians of the Democratic Party during Richard Nixon's election campaign in 1962 for governor in California expressed again after the friendship and business relationship between Nixon and Malaxa fell in compliance. A government investigation rejected the allegations, but in 1979 Malaxa's pro-Nazi past was again investigated by the Washington Post , which alleged that senior American officials were involved in a cover-up near Malaxa.

Suspicions of Malaxa's alleged contacts with communism , voiced by Rădescu in the early McCarthy era , were investigated by the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration in 1958 and focused on major gifts Malaxa had sent to leading communists such as Ana Pauker . Malaxa justified himself by saying that this had ensured his family's safe exit to the USA.

Without ever applying for US citizenship , Malaxa died in his New Jersey home in 1965.

See also

• FAUR , today's name of the Romanian company formerly Malaxa

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Nicole Jordan, The Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918-1940 , Cambridge University Press , Cambridge, 1992, p. 127, ISBN 0-521-52242-0 .
2. ^ ^{A b c d} "Malaxa Wins Permanent Home in US," in The Washington Post , September 9, 1958.
3. ^ ^{A b c} "New Order", in Time , February 10, 1940
4. ↑ ^{a b} "God Help Your Majesty", in Time , September 16, 1940.
5. ↑ Petre Pandrea: "Cronică valahă cu inginerul Malaxa" ("Wallachian Chronicle with Engineer Malaxa"), in Istoric magazine , May 2002
6. ↑ Veiga, p. 128.
7. ↑ Veiga, pp. 212-213.
8. ↑ Veiga, pp. 267, 278.
9. ^ "Nazis Get Steel Works," in The New York Times , February 22, 1941.
10. ↑ Veiga, p. 267.
11. ↑ Veiga, p. 222.
12. ↑ Veiga, p. 306.
13. ^ ^{A b} "Rumania Tries Arms Maker in Guard Revolt", in The Washington Post , January 29, 1941.
14. ^ ^{A b c d e} R. J. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century , Routledge, London, 1994, p. 229, ISBN 0-415-05346-3 .
15. ↑ "Rumanians Lose Citizenship", in The New York Times , October 6, 1948th
16. ^ Mircea Eliade , Autobiography , University of Chicago Press , Chicago, 1990, p. 126, ISBN 0-226-20411-1 .
17. ^ "Romania's 'Ford' Wins Conditional Reentry to US," in The Washington Post , December 17, 1955.
18. ↑ "Nixon is charged with helping ex-Nazis", The New York Times , October 7, 1962
19. ^ ^{A b} "Nixon-Malaxa Link Denied by Attorney", in The New York Times , October 10, 1962.
20. ↑ Jack Anderson , "Nixon Helped Rich Nazi Stay in US," in The Washington Post , Nov. 16, 1979.
21. ^ "Malaxa Record Cited," in The New York Times , Nov. 1, 1952.

swell

• Francisco Veiga, Istoria Gărzii de Fier, 1919-1941: Mistica ultranaţionalismului ("History of the Iron Guard, 1919-1941: The Myth of Ultra-Nationalism"), Bucharest, Humanitas , 1993 (Romanian version of the Spanish edition La mística del ultranacionalismo (Historia de la Guardia de Hierro) Rumania, 1919–1941 , Bellaterra, Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona , ISBN 84-7488-497-7 ).