Reich Association of German Industry

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The Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie (RDI) was the leading association of industrial employers' associations in the Weimar Republic .

history

The Reich Association was created on February 4, 1919 from the merger of the Federation of Industrialists , the Central Association of German Industrialists and the Association for the Protection of the Interests of the German Chemical Industry. It was officially founded in Berlin on April 12, 1919 .

In collaboration with the Heereswaffenamt the secret Armaments Organization in 1926 Stega founded.

During the world economic crisis , the Reichsverband was very divided: the right wing, where many heavy industrialists and small businessmen found themselves, opted against any further participation by the SPD in government and against any further cooperation with the trade unions. They wanted to transform the Weimar Republic into an authority state, as Chancellor Franz von Papen tried in 1932 with his idea of ​​a “new state”. This did not rule out cooperation with the NSDAP , but Adolf Hitler's supporters such as the heavy industrialist Fritz Thyssen said there were few in this group. In October 1930, on the initiative of the mining association, the "Economic Propagandist Department" was set up in the RDI, which among other things had the work areas "Economic program of the political parties, especially the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany" and "The economic system of fascism". The dominant part of the RDI, however, was the more moderate wing, which advocated continuing cooperation with the left and supporting the Brüning government. Many entrepreneurs from the chemical, electrical and finished goods industries met here. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach , who headed the association from October 1931 to 1934 , also belonged to this majority wing of the RDI . After the seizure of power by the National Socialists ThyssenKrupp and the Association leadership accused of having been "always and at any time, train-bearer 'of the current system" so far and to have the Nazi Party always opposed to standing. This must now change. After Thyssen had already requested the connection of the RDI on March 23, 1933, the RDI finally merged with the Association of German Employers' Associations on June 19, 1933 to form the Reichsstand der Deutschen Industrie .

organization

The RDI formed the umbrella organization for around 1,000 professional associations, which were organized in 27 professional groups. In addition to the general assembly, the main committee and the executive committee were the main bodies of the association.

Bureau

The chairmen of the presidium were:

Executive members of the presidency were:

The number of presidium members was initially 16, from 1923 36 members. Other well-known members of the executive committee were: Robert Bosch , Alfred Hugenberg , Paul Reusch , Paul Silverberg , Carl Friedrich von Siemens , Ernst Borsig , Hugo Stinnes , Julius Deutsch (AEG), Max Fischer (Carl Zeiss Jena), Hans Kraemer , Abraham Frowein , Rudolf Frank , Otto Moras and Philipp Rosenthal . From its founding in 1919 to its dissolution in 1933, Jacob Herle was one of the managing directors of the RDI, where he led the right wing.

literature

  • Fritz Günther, Manfred Ohlsen: Reich Association of German Industry (RDI) 1919–1933 . In: Dieter Fricke (Hrsg.): The bourgeois parties in Germany, manual of the history of the bourgeois parties and other bourgeois interest organizations from the Vormärz to 1945 . Volume 2. Leipzig 1968, pp. 668-671.
  • Reinhard Neebe: Big Industry, State and NSDAP 1930–1933. Paul Silverberg and the Reich Association of German Industry in the Crisis of the Weimar Republic (= Critical Studies on History . Volume 45), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, ISBN 3-525-35703-6 ( Dissertation A University of Marburg , Department of History, 1980 ), 314 pages DNB 213227002 2003 full text (PDF; 6.6 MB).

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Neebe: Big Industry, State and NSDAP 1930-1933. Paul Silverberg and the Reich Association of German Industry in the Crisis of the Weimar Republic (= critical studies on historical science. Volume 45). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, ISBN 3-525-35703-6 , p. 117; zum.de (PDF) accessed on September 14, 2007.
  2. ^ Hans-Peter Ullmann : Interest groups in Germany . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-11283-X , p. 142 ff.
  3. ^ Udo Wengst : The Reich Association of German Industry in the first months of the Third Reich . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 28 (1980), issue 1, p. 98; online (PDF) accessed on January 16, 2018.