Robert Allmers

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Robert Anton Hinrich Allmers (born March 10, 1872 in Absen near Rodenkirchen im Stadland ; † January 27, 1951 at Thurant Castle ) was a German industrialist and from 1926 to 1945 President of the Reich Association of the German Automobile Industry (RDA), the predecessor organization of the Association of Automotive industry .

biography

Early years

Allmers was born as the son of the farmer and later newspaper publisher Adolf Allmers (1839–1904) and his wife Anna. Schmidt born. During his school days in Varel he learned the Gabelsberger stenography from the well-known stenographer Ernst Ahnert , which he later used in his commercial and industrial activities. He attended the secondary schools in Idar and Quakenbrück as well as the grammar school in Bützow , where he passed the Abitur. In 1892 he went to the University of Freiburg and joined the Freiburg fraternity of Teutonia in his first semester . Allmers first studied history , then medicine, and finally decided on economics and law . In 1894 he moved to the universities of Berlin and Munich , where he spent two years later with an economic history thesis on the lack of freedom of the Frisians between the Weser and Jade at Lujo Brentano doctorate . In 1896 he joined his father's company in Varel, which he took over in 1897 after his father fell ill. As the publisher and editor of the non-profit organization , which had already been the unofficial organ of the Progressive People's Party (FVP) under his father , he ensured the expansion of the newspaper and sharpened its political profile. The political commitment of Allmers and the non-profit organization is particularly evident in the years of journalistic support for Albert Traeger , who represented Oldenburg constituency II as a member of the left-wing liberals in the Berlin Reichstag from 1887 to 1912. Allmers also had good contacts with Eugen Richter , who was the leading representative of the Free People's Party in the German Empire at the time , and was also politically active. He was a member of the Varel City Council from 1902 to 1906 and from 1912 to 1914, and in 1903 he was intended to be a candidate for the FVP in the constituency of Aurich . A close friendship connected him - like his father - with his great-uncle, the marching poet Hermann Allmers (1821–1902), who lived in Rechtenfleth on the Lower Weser, and the non-profit organization reported on his literary work in numerous articles. At the age of around thirty, Allmers began to be more and more interested in automobile construction .

Engagement in the automotive industry

On December 1, 1905, Allmers founded Hansa-Automobil GmbH in Varel together with the engineer Franz Sporkhorst and his father-in-law, the banker and iron foundry owner Franz Koppen . He himself became commercial director , while Sporkhorst took over the technical management. The first goal of the two men was to design and build a cheap, high-performance automobile for a wide range of medium-sized buyers. The two-seater with a 9 hp engine they developed attracted attention at the Berlin Motor Show in 1906 and was a sales success. The company has now been continuously expanded and the company capital gradually increased to 2.6 million Reichsmarks in 1912. In order to raise the necessary investment capital, Allmers and Sporkhorst dissolved their GmbH in March 1913 and founded a stock corporation with a capital of 4.4 million Reichsmarks, in which they brought in the previous business and thereby secured the majority. Since the manufacturing possibilities in Varel were not sufficient in the long run, the Hansa-Aktiengesellschaft merged in the spring of 1914 with the stagnating and in need of renovation Norddeutsche Automobil- und Motoren-AG , a subsidiary of Norddeutscher Lloyd . The new company, in which several large banks participated, was named Hansa-Lloyd -Werke AG . The Borgward Group emerged from it in 1929 . Aided by large armaments orders, production was able to be expanded considerably after the outbreak of the First World War . The workforce soon comprised 5,000 workers who were spread across four plants in Bremen , Varel and Bielefeld . As a result of the merger, Allmers had lost its majority stake and in the course of the war increasingly shifted his activities to association work. In 1915 he was elected to the board of the Association of German Motor Vehicle Manufacturers , which distributed the army orders and the raw materials available to the individual companies. In October 1918, in an extensive memorandum, he developed proposals for protecting the German auto industry against expected American competition. He also advocated the formation of a syndicate of the large manufacturers, whose most important task was to reduce the variety of models, with each company only producing a single type, but in large numbers. He partially realized these ideas in 1920 through the merger of the Hansa-Lloyd-AG Bremen, the Hansa-Werke Varel, the Berliner Nationalen Automobilgesellschaft (NAG) and the Brennabor -Werke to form the Kartell Gemeinschaft Deutscher Automobilfabriken (GDA), which existed until 1928. Due to internal disputes, Allmers withdrew more and more from Hansa-Lloyd-AG and Hansa-Werke during these years. Eventually he sold all of his shares and concentrated entirely on the association's work. On November 3, 1926, he was elected President of the Reich Association of the Automobile Industry (RDA) and moved to Berlin. He stepped up the association's public relations work and, in 1931, achieved the founding of the Deutsche Automobil Treuhand GmbH (DAT), which aimed to regulate the prices of new and used cars in a generally recognized way.

Work at the time of National Socialism

1934 was approved by the Nazi Reich government, the business group called automotive industry into being, the head of an industrialist to be had. The post of permanent representative of the head of the economic group was created for Allmers, who was meanwhile regarded as a tried and tested association official . He also retained the leadership of the RDA, which he prevented from being dissolved. His work during the Third Reich has not yet been conclusively assessed scientifically. It seems that his relationship with those in power was one of conformity and careful distancing. However, in his function he was also in close contact with leading figures of the Third Reich and performed a variety of representative tasks, for example, alongside Goebbels and Hitler, he gave speeches at the opening of the international automobile and motorcycle exhibitions in Berlin for several consecutive years. Since the main tasks during the Second World War were shifted to the Ministry of Armaments and its committees, Allmers had less and less to do and in 1943 moved to Thurant Castle on the Moselle , which he had acquired in 1911 and partly reconstructed. In March 1945 he was arrested as a former business leader and interned in Reims , but released two months later after a serious illness. He then retired again to Thurant Castle, where he died in 1951.

family

Allmers was married twice. In 1899 he married Martha Koppen (* 1876), the daughter of the Varel banker and foundry owner Franz Koppen. In 1936 he married Sophie Marie von Stülpnagel (1892–1973). His son Hermann and his daughter Irmgard Wulf-Allmers came from their first marriage and later took over the publishing house and published the non-profit .

Writing activity

In addition to his work as an entrepreneur and association official, Allmers was also active as a writer . In addition to a biography of the industrialist Ernst Sachs and unpublished biographical sketches on the history of the German auto industry, he has written several novels since 1930, some of which have autobiographical features. His estate is in the family's possession at Thurant Castle.

Works (selection)

  • The lack of freedom of the Frisians between the Weser and Jade . Dissertation. Cotta. Stuttgart. 1896.
  • Our automobile trip , Varel 1904 (private print).
  • What the German automotive industry needs. Bremen 1918.
  • The German automobile industry of the present. Edited with R. Kaufmann and C. Fritz. Reimer Hobbing Publishing House. Berlin 1928.
  • Under the pseudonym R. Stühmer: Kampf um Thurant. 13th century novel. German publishing house. Stuttgart 1931.
  • Under the pseudonym A. Römers: Thurant. Romantic Singspiel in three acts. Fischer & Jagenberg Verlag. Cologne 1932.
  • Rhine trip. Patriotic poetry. Berlin 1933.
  • Ernst Sachs. Large industrialist 1867-1932. Schweinfurt around 1933.
  • Ernst Sachs. Life and work. Berlin 1937.
  • Fantasies in the castle cellar: A Moselle ballad. Berlin 1942.
  • Under the pseudonym SR Stümers: Rona and Rochus . Burgverlag. Thurant Castle 1948.

Allmers as namesake

In 1921 Allmers acquired a country house in the Horn-Lehe district of Bremen, which later became known as the Borgward House , with the associated park. After Allmers left Bremen in 1931, the associated park was acquired by the city as Allmers Park and converted into a rhododendron park together with an adjoining land area and the Rickmers Park adjoining it to the south .

On the occasion of Allmers' 100th birthday, the VDA Board of Directors donated the Robert Allmers Medal in 1972 . It is sometimes awarded annually to several people for services to German road transport.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the connection between Robert Allmers and the stenographer Ernst Ahnert cf. Hans Sauer: [1] Closely connected to the common good. Published in: Nordwest Zeitung-Der Gemeinnützige . Friday Packet for September 11, 2015.
  2. ↑ Willy Nolte (Ed.): Burschenschafter Stammrolle. List of members of the German fraternity according to the status of the summer semester 1934. Berlin 1934, p. 7.
  3. ↑ On the history of the charitable and the Allmers publishing family, cf. Hans Begerow: [2] Name Allmer's well-known trademark. Published in: Nordwest Zeitung-Der Gemeinnützige . Issued October 27, 2005.
  4. ^ Nordwest Zeitung, edition of February 13, 1982, supplement: Oldenburger Nachrichten.
  5. ↑ Weser Courier. Edition of November 8, 1990 (No. 257). Page IV.
  6. ^ Annual report 1971/72 of the Verband der Automobilindustrie eV (VDA) . Frankfurt am Main. September 1972. page 104.
personal data
SURNAME Allmers, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Allmers, Robert Anton Hinrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist and President of the Reich Association of the German Automobile Industry
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Absen near Rodenkirchen in the Stadland
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1951
Place of death at Thurant Castle