East fiber company

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The East-fiber-Gesellschaft mbH confiscated and managed from 1941 to 1944 companies in the fiber and textile production in the occupied eastern territories from the Baltic to the Crimea . With 300 production sites and 30,000 employees, it was temporarily the largest textile group in Europe.

founding

The Ost-Fiber-Gesellschaft mbH was founded on August 4, 1941 in Berlin. The stated purpose of the company was officially defined as "Society for the occupied territories of the USSR, according to the decree of the Reichsmarschall des Großdeutschen Reich, commissioner for the four-year plan v. 7/27/41 - VP 12028 ". The shareholders were the Zentralhandelsgesellschaft Ost for agricultural sales and requirements , the textile industry group , the wholesale, retail and export trade group and the paper, cardboard and raw material production group , each of which contributed 250,000 Reichsmarks. The general advisor in the Reich Ministry of Economics and medium-sized textile entrepreneur Hans Kehrl was the chairman of the board of directors of the East Fiber Society from 1941. The company's chairman of the board was the pulp manager Friedrich Dorn . From 1941 Hans Croon was head of the textile industry business group on the company's board of directors.

The company was part of the Eastern Economic Organization and one of many private or semi-state Eastern companies that were appointed as temporary trustees and received monopolies for entire industries in the occupied eastern territories.

Tasks and activities

In the occupied territories of the USSR, society should regulate the production, processing, utilization and distribution of textile raw materials such as cotton , flax , hemp and wool . In addition, it should make all relevant assets and businesses usable, manage them and control sales. Individual businesses should be leased to private entrepreneurs.

The Ost-Fiber-Gesellschaft needed considerable funds for these tasks and acquired a syndicated loan of 100 million Reichsmarks, which the Dresdner Bank , the Deutsche Bank , the Commerzbank , the Berliner Handelsgesellschaft and the Bank der Deutsche Arbeit provided in equal parts.

In fact, the focus was initially on the collection and removal of raw materials with a volume of 350,000 tons. Many cotton and wool spinning mills were shut down, other operations in the occupied area were only half-used in order to supply the profitable German textile industry with the necessary raw materials - probably also to eliminate potential manufacturing competition.

As a result of the unexpectedly longer duration of the war, there was a turnaround in some cases. Now, in addition to the cultivation of raw materials, processing in factories in the occupied area has also started. More than 300 companies with 30,000 employees were active in what was at times "Europe's largest textile group". It was "a medium-sized and privately structured textile empire" and the East Fiber Society itself acted as a pure management company. The German trading companies that had taken over textile companies on a fiduciary basis were less concerned with on-site production than with raw materials.

Most of the production in the occupied area went to the Wehrmacht ; a smaller part is rationed to the local population as "return".

Subsidiaries

Ostland-Faser-GmbH in Riga was founded on September 30, 1941 as a subsidiary of Ost-Faser-Gesellschaft mbH. According to a secret decree of August 1942, "accumulated textile products" from the Riga , Kauen , Wilna and Minsk ghettos were to be offered to the locally responsible headquarters of Ostland-Fiber GmbH.

Other subsidiaries in Ukraine were Spinnfaser-Ukraine-Gesellschaft mbH and Ukraine-Faser-Industrie Gesellschaft.mbH .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Harald Wixforth: The expansion of Dresdner Bank in Europe. Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-57782-2 , p. 635.
  2. ↑ Karsten Linne: Bremen cotton merchants in the occupied Soviet territories 1941-1944. In: Bremisches Jahrbuch 81 (2002), p. 134.
  3. ^ Harald Wixforth: The expansion of Dresdner Bank in Europe. Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-57782-2 , p. 636.
  4. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: The manager of the war economy - Hans Kehrl, an entrepreneur in the politics of the "Third Reich." Essen 1999, ISBN 3-88474-685-5 , p. 82.
  5. ^ Christian Gerlach: German economic and destruction policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-930908-54-9 , p. 398.
  6. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: The manager of the war economy - Hans Kehrl, an entrepreneur in the politics of the "Third Reich." Essen 1999, ISBN 3-88474-685-5 , p. 82.
  7. ^ Christian Gerlach: German economic and destruction policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-930908-54-9 , p. 400.
  8. ^ Christian Gerlach: German economic and destruction policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-930908-54-9 , p. 400.
  9. ^ Johannes Bähr: The expansion of the Dresdner Bank in Europe . Oldenbourg, 2006, ISBN 3-486-57782-4 .
  10. ^ Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders: The German economic and annihilation policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944 . Hamburger Edition HIS, 2013, ISBN 978-3-930908-63-9 , pp. 311 .
  11. ↑ Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 651.