Ottmar Edwin Strauss

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Ottmar Edwin Strauss (born May 19, 1878 in Mulhouse , according to other sources in Ludwigshafen , † August 25, 1941 in Zurich ) was a German-Jewish industrialist .

Life

Strauss was born as the youngest of eight children from the first marriage of his father Emanuel, a Ludwigshafen hardware dealer and building contractor. He had three half-siblings from his father's second marriage. After being kicked out of “educational institutions” three times, he finally completed his schooling with the one-year-old in Frankfurt am Main in 1893 . He then began training in his father's branch. At the turn of the century he moved to Cologne and worked as a clerk in the iron goods wholesaler Nathan Pelzer Wwe. In Rodenkirchen near Cologne, where Otto Wolff was also employed. Both decided to become independent and for this purpose founded the Otto Wolff hardware wholesaler in Cologne on June 25, 1904, the nucleus of the later Otto Wolff group in Cologne . Strauss held a 42.5% stake in the company until he left the company. After the company had grown considerably in the following years, Strauss was entrusted with the supply of ammunition to the allied Ottoman Empire as a secret councilor during the First World War . When the group continued to grow after the end of the war, especially in the steel industry and steel trade, Strauss was one of the leading industrialists of the Weimar Republic . He founded the Strauss Foundation and supported people in need after the First World War. During the Nazi era , " Aryanization " forced him to leave the company management and sell his stake in the company to Otto Wolff by selling it well below its value .

Ottmar Strauss also owned the Fronhof in Heisterbacherrott from 1924 , from 1919 Haus Heisterberg am Petersberg and the former Villa Stollwerck in Cologne .

Together with his wife Emma, ​​Strauss had three children, their daughters Lotte and Erika, who married the painter Fritz Kronenberg , and their son Ulrich. After emigrating to Switzerland on December 29, 1936, he managed to organize the emigration of his son Ulrich Strauss to the United States.

literature

  • Dieter Mechlinski: The Secret Government Councilor Ottmar Edwin Strauss - Biography of a forgotten fellow citizen of Königswinter. 6th edition. Ed. Heimatverein Oberdollendorf and Römlinghoven. Koenigswinter 2010.
  • Elfi Pracht : Ottmar Strauss: industrialist, civil servant, art collector. In: Julius H. Schoeps , Karl E. Grözinger , Ludger Heid , Gert Mattenklott (eds.): Menora. Yearbook for German-Jewish History. 1994. Munich 1994, ISBN 3-492-11917-4 , pp. 39-70.
  • Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . ed. from the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Mechlinski: The Secret Government Councilor Ottmar Edwin Strauss - Biography of a forgotten fellow citizen of Königswinter. 6th edition. Ed. Heimatverein Oberdollendorf and Römlinghoven. Königswinter 2010, p. 5.
  2. ↑ Elfi Pracht: Ottmar Strauss: industrialist, civil servant, art collector. In: Julius H. Schoeps, Karl E. Grözinger, Ludger Heid, Gert Mattenklott (eds.): Menora. Yearbook for German-Jewish History. 1994. Munich 1994, p. 39.
  3. ↑ Elfi Pracht: Ottmar Strauss: industrialist, civil servant, art collector. In: Julius H. Schoeps , Karl E. Grözinger , Ludger Heid , Gert Mattenklott (eds.): Menora. Yearbook for German-Jewish History. 1994. Munich 1994, p. 61.
  4. ↑ Elfi Pracht: Ottmar Strauss: industrialist, civil servant, art collector. In: Julius H. Schoeps, Karl E. Grözinger, Ludger Heid, Gert Mattenklott (eds.): Menora. Yearbook for German-Jewish History. 1994. Munich 1994, p. 39.
  5. ↑ Biography  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 495 kB).@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.brueckenhofmuseum.de  
  6. ↑ Elfi Pracht: Ottmar Strauss: industrialist, civil servant, art collector. In: Julius H. Schoeps, Karl E. Grözinger, Ludger Heid, Gert Mattenklott (eds.): Menora. Yearbook for German-Jewish History. 1994. Munich 1994, p. 59.
  7. ↑ The legacy of the fathers - How the Otto Wolff Group became Aryan. ( Memento from April 11, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Film by Gert Monheim and Jürgen Naumann, Westdeutscher Rundfunk 2005.
personal data
SURNAME Strauss, Ottmar Edwin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strauss, Ottmar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Mulhouse
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1941
Place of death Zurich