Otto Merker (General Director)

Otto Merker (born June 1, 1899 in Michelfeld ; † 1986 ) was a German mechanical engineer. During the Second World War he was military leader , general director of Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz AG and chairman of the main committee for marine construction in the Reich Ministry for Armaments and War Production (RMfRuK). After the war, he acted as CEO of Rheinstahl-Hanomag and as a member of the supervisory board of the Rheinstahl group .

Life

Merker grew up in Stuttgart . After finishing school, he volunteered for the air force in 1917 . There he was deployed on the western front in the Somme area until the end of the war. He was awarded the Iron Cross II. Class and the Württemberg Military Merit Medal.

After the First World War, Merker studied at the higher mechanical engineering school in Esslingen until 1921 . He then worked as a vehicle designer. In 1923 Merker moved to his father's agricultural machinery factory in Böblingen .

In 1927 a 15 HP caterpillar tractor designed by Merker aroused the interest of the military at the DLG exhibition in Dortmund . The later Lieutenant General Ludwig Ritter von Radlmaier asked whether the caterpillar constructed by Merker could be used as a wheeled caterpillar vehicle for military use. The prototype was built in the Esslingen machine factory, which NSDAP member Merker had hired as chief engineer in 1927; the management of the machine factory in Esslingen supported Adolf Hitler early on and therefore hired numerous members of the NSDAP in leading positions in the second half of the 1920s.

The practical testing of the caterpillar tractor was carried out by circumventing the provisions of the Versailles Treaty on the premises of the Kama tank school near Kazan in the Soviet Union , which was carried by the Reichswehr and Red Army . From 1929 to 1936 Merker worked for the Swedish company Landsverk , where he headed the development department, in which street tanks and artillery tractors were designed under his direction. Like the Maschinenfabrik Esslingen, Landsverk was a subsidiary of Gutehoffnungshütte and was also used to circumvent the provisions of the Versailles Treaty.

In 1936 Merker returned to Germany, where he became technical director of the Magirus plant in Ulm , which produced fire engines. In 1937, Merker moved to the parent company Deutz AG, where he became a full member of the board in 1938. In this function, he was awarded the National Socialist title of Wehrwirtschaftsführer and, after the outbreak of war, the War Merit Cross, First Class .

In 1942 Merker moved to the Reich Ministry for Armaments and War Production (RMfRuK), where Albert Speer made him head of the main committee for shipbuilding . He became Rudolf Blohm's successor . Merker's main task was to organize the production of new submarines of the U-Boot-Klasse XXI type for the Navy . A final production facility for the submarines that was no longer completed was supposed to be the Valentin submarine bunker . Under Merker's leadership, the construction time for these submarines could be reduced from the original 11.5 months to 2 months through the introduction of the sectional construction. On April 28, 1944, Merker was awarded the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords for this “war-decisive achievement”. The Alter Banter Weg subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp with around 1,200 prisoners was set up in Wilhelmshaven in September 1944 for submarine construction . “The concentration camp prisoners were supposed to replace 600 workers who had left for Hamburg in the summer of 1944. It is not clear whether the initiative to deploy the prisoners came from the shipyard management or the head of the main shipbuilding committee, Otto Merker "

At the end of the war, Merker became a prisoner of war in the United States , from which he was released in 1946. He then worked for two years as a freelance engineer and finally in 1950 became a member of the board of the Hanoverian mechanical engineering company Hanomag (later Rheinstahl-Hanomag). After it was taken over by the Rheinstahl group in 1952, Merker was also a member of the supervisory board of the new Rheinstahl-Hanomag AG . This worked for the Bundeswehr as a general contractor for the construction of the HS 30 armored personnel carrier and was involved in the development and construction of the Marder .

In 1953 Merker was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class . In 1956 he was appointed honorary doctor of the TH Hannover . Merker was also a member of the supervisory boards of Rheinstahl-Nordseewerke in Emden , Rheinstahl Eisenwerke Mülheim-Meiderich and Vidal & Sohn until his retirement on January 1, 1964 .

literature

• Klaus D. Patzwall : The knight's cross bearers of the War Merit Cross 1942–1945 . Verlag Militaria-Archiv Klaus D. Patzwall, Hamburg 1984. P. 124 f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eberhard Rössler : U-boat type XXIII . Bernard and Graefe, Bonn 2002. p. 44. ISBN 3-7637-6236-1 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Christine Arbogast : Rulers of the Württemberg NSDAP . Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-486-56316-5 , p. 25th f .
3. ↑ www.denkort-bunker-valentin.de  ( 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. accessed on March 14, 2012  
4. ↑ Quoted from: Wilhelmshaven (Banter Weg) . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , p. 534.