Rolf Magener

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Rolf Magener (born August 3, 1910 in Odessa , Russian Empire , † May 5, 2000 in Heidelberg ) was a German manager. He became famous for his escape in 1944 from the Dehradun internment camp in British India . Later he was CFO of BASF in Ludwigshafen am Rhein .

Life

Magener was born in Odessa as the son of a Russian woman and a German businessman who is said to have owned the Hotel Metropol in Moscow (as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported in a detailed obituary on August 5, 2000). However, out of consideration for the mother's health, the family spent a long time on the Cote d'Azur . Magener graduated from the Hermann-Lietz-Schule Schloss Bieberstein .

He then studied business administration and received his doctorate, probably in 1937, at the University of Frankfurt am Main with the dissertation industrial liquidity in the economic cycle in this subject. He had spent several semesters of his studies in Exeter , which is why he has been fluent in English since then.

In 1935 he entered the service of IG Farben , was sent to China and from 1938 worked in the IG Farben representation in Bombay . There he was interned by the British as an enemy alien at the outbreak of World War II and taken to the Dehradun camp at the foot of the Himalayas.

On April 29, 1944, he escaped the camp with six companions, of whom Heinrich Harrer , Peter Aufschnaiter and Heins von Have had already made several unsuccessful attempts to escape. This time, however, Magener and Have disguised themselves as British officers with sticks and blueprints under their arms. The rest of them were disguised as local workers with turbans and tools. So they managed to march out of the gate of the camp together and unmolested. While Harrer and the others headed for the nearest border in order to get to the Japanese allied with Germany in China or Burma via Tibet, Magener and Have for their part took the train to Calcutta with the same goal . Familiar with India, the English language and British peculiarities, they succeeded in not attracting attention either on the drive or in Calcutta when they allowed themselves a few days of quiet in hotels and clubs of the British upper class.

Pretending to be Swiss business travelers, they then traveled by train and river steamer to Chittagong , by sampan to Cox's Bazar and from there on foot. After more than a month they crossed the border river Naaf and reached the front at Maungdaw in the jungle of Mayu . A Japanese patrol they captured as spies and handed them the dreaded Kempeitai - military police . After two months they were taken to Rangoon and a month later they were flown to Tokyo , where they were accommodated at the German embassy. It was there that Magener met Doris von Behling (1911-2010), whom he married in 1947.

In the same year he returned to Germany and after a short stay in a reception camp initially worked for Deutsche Commerz GmbH in Frankfurt. In 1954 his book about his escape from the Dehradun camp was published under the title Die Chance Was Null , and in the same year as Prisoner's Bluff also in England.

In 1955, Magener moved to BASF and worked for them in London from 1957. In 1958 he became director and from 1962 headed the finance department as a member of the board . In 1974 he retired. From 1976 he was a member of the supervisory board of BDO Deutsche Warentreuhand and was its chairman from 1983 to 1989. During this time he was also a member of the management board of Mercedes-Automobil-Holding AG and advised the JP Morgan bank until his death . Magener spent the last decades of his life as a respected citizen of Heidelberg.

Fonts

  • The chance was zero ; Ullstein Verlag, Vienna 1954, reprint: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2000, ISBN 0850528445 .
  • Our Chances Were Zero: The Daring Escape by Two German POW's from India in 1942 . Pen & Sword Books Ltd, o. Place 2001, ISBN 0850528445 , originally published as: Prisoner's bluff . translation by Basil Creighton. Hart-Davis, London 1954.
  • Economics in large-scale operations , in: Die Zeit , June 4, 1965.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ulla Hofmann: From prisoner number 1775 to chief financial officer - The unusual life of Rolf Mageners , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 5, 2000. Available at GBI-Genios .
  2. ↑ Heinrich Harrer: Seven Years in Tibet , 1952, Chapter 4: A daring masquerade
  3. ↑ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8127231/Doris-Magener.html The Telegraph November 11, 2010
  4. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from February 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Your Securius: Mercedes shares have a life of their own . In: The time . No. 14/1977 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Magener, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German manager
DATE OF BIRTH August 3, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Odessa
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 2000
Place of death Heidelberg