Tilo von Wilmowsky

Barbara von Wilmowsky b. Krupp and Tilo von Wilmowsky

Tilo von Wilmowsky (born March 3, 1878 in Hanover ; died January 28, 1966 in Essen-Bredeney ; full name: Karl Adolf Thilo Freiherr von Wilmowsky ) was a German administrative lawyer , manorial estate owner and industrialist .

Life

In his childhood, Wilmowsky was often in Spiez Castle , his grandfather's summer retreat

Grave slabs for Tilo von Wilmowsky and his wife Barbara geb. Krupp at the Krupp family cemetery in Essen-Bredeney

His father Kurt von Wilmowsky was head of the Reich Chancellery in 1894/95 . Tilo von Wilmowsky passed his Abitur at the French grammar school in Berlin and then studied law at the universities of Munich, Göttingen, Halle (Saale) and in Great Britain. In Göttingen he joined the Corps Saxonia in 1898 .

After passing the state examination and subsequent legal clerkship , von Wilmowsky initially worked as an unskilled worker in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. On May 7, 1907, he married Barbara Krupp , the second daughter of Friedrich Alfred Krupp and his wife Margarethe, in the Villa Hügel in Essen . The marriage had six children: Ursula (1908–1975), Friedrich (1911–1988), Renate (* 1914), Kurt (1916–1940), Brigitte (1918–2006) and Reinhild (1925–2011). The family lived at Marienthal Castle near Eckartsberga in the province of Saxony , the family manor acquired in 1893, which was rebuilt in 1910 by the architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg . The property was managed by a tenant, but Wilmowsky, in addition to his function as district administrator in Merseburg (1913 to 1919), represented the interests of the development of agricultural infrastructure and technology.

During the First World War, he was seconded to the General Government of Belgium from 1915 to 1918 as head of the German civil chancellery under the Governors General Moritz von Bissing and Ludwig von Falkenhausen and, as he later self-critically stated, drafted annexation plans to incorporate French industrial areas .

In 1919 he resigned from civil service. From 1920 to 1933 he worked as chairman of the Landbund and at the same time from 1922 to 1933 as vice-president of the Chamber of Agriculture in the province of Saxony. He created the Reich Board of Trustees for Technology in Agriculture , which he headed as President from 1922 to 1933. During the seven months imprisonment of his brother-in-law Gustav Krupp in 1923, he led Friedrich Krupp AG , whose deputy chairman of the supervisory board he had been since December 9, 1918, and had been a member of the supervisory board since December 3, 1910. From 1925 to 1930 he led the DNVP faction in the provincial parliament of the province of Saxony . His departure from Alfred Hugenberg's German national course in 1929 was only half-hearted, however, he accompanied the transfer of power to Hitler with a quietly doubting "I think he has the good will" (diary entry on January 1, 1934).

From 1925 he headed the Central German Business Association for ten years . In 1930 he was briefly a member of the Prussian State Council , from 1931 to 1933 deputy chairman of the Federation for the Renewal of the Reich (Lutherbund) , which was supposed to plan a comprehensive constitutional and administrative reform, with which the Prussian dominance in the German Empire should be pushed back.

From 1931 to 1944, Wilmowsky headed the Central European Business Day as chairman of the executive committee , an interest group of leading German companies and associations that worked long-term towards the economic unification of Central and Southeastern Europe under the control of the German economy. In the autumn of 1932 he did not accept the post of Upper President of the Province of Saxony, offered to him by the Papen cabinet . The office was not occupied due to the dismissal of the democratic Prussian state government Braun-Severing.

In 1933 he was forced out of public office by the National Socialists, but nevertheless joined the NSDAP in 1937 and “in retrospect” was one of those who “persevered to prevent worse things from happening”. He remained a member of the Reichsbahn Advisory Board and was thus an influential business leader during the National Socialist era as well as chairing the Central European Economic Conference and deputy chairman of the supervisory board at Krupp. After the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , he and his wife Barbara were imprisoned. He was accused of participating in the Reusch circle and of Goerdeler's diary entries, which fell into the hands of the Gestapo, about a conversation in which Johannes Popitz and Ulrich von Hassell had also participated. Although it could not be proven that he was directly involved in the attack, he was transferred from the Halle police prison to the Lehrter Strasse cell prison for six weeks and then to the Ravensbrück concentration camp . He survived the eleven-day march of the concentration camp prisoners to Schwerin and returned to Marienthal after the liberation.

After the end of the war, the couple tried to keep the Marienthal estate, but after the region had been handed over by the Americans to the Soviet occupying power , the political pressure increased enormously, so that in the course of the land reform, due to the size of the agricultural property of over 100 hectares expropriated and displaced. They were initially accommodated in their forest estate in Buchenau near Bad Hersfeld . They later lived in a lavishly converted former goalkeeper's house in the park of Villa Hügel in Essen.

When Krupp process he was heard as a witness for the defense. His brother-in-law was convicted and he wrote a pamphlet against the Nuremberg Trials , which was published in 1950, shortly before Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was pardoned on January 31, 1951.

Even after the war he was a member of the Krupp board of directors. Until his death he had a seat on the family council. At the funeral service in the Villa Hügel in February 1966 , the then Federal President Heinrich Lübke paid tribute to Tilo von Wilmowsky, whom he had known personally for more than forty years, as a man of balance, freedom and understanding between people. The burial took place in the Kruppfriedhof of the Bredeneyer cemetery .

Honors

In 1953 Wilmowsky was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Tilo von Wilmowsky was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena .

The Board of Trustees for Technology and Construction in Agriculture (KTBL) as the successor organization to the Reich Board of Trustees for Technology in Agriculture , headed by Wilmowsky, has been awarding the Tilo-Freiherr-von-Wilmowsky Medal since 1978, honoring "personalities who have provided valuable impulses for the benefit of the agricultural sector. " active people, have served the KTBL in its objectives and have sustainably promoted agricultural progress. The endowment includes the medal worth approx. EUR 1,500 and a certificate ” .

granddaughter

Wilmowsky's granddaughter Barbara Rogers took part in a project in 2001 in which she reflected on the aftermath of the lies in the Krupp family about forced labor and the Holocaust.

Fonts

• Origin, activity and future tasks of the liaison offices of the German Agriculture Council. German Publishing Society, Berlin 1933.
• Why was Krupp convicted? Legend and miscarriage of justice. Vorwerk, Stuttgart 1950; 3rd rev. A. Econ , Düsseldorf 1962.
• My hunting memories. Self-published, Ebersteinburg 1958.
• Looking back, I would like to say ... On the threshold of the 150th Krupp anniversary. Stalling, Oldenburg 1961; Reprint : Münster-Hiltrup 1990, ISBN 3-7843-1331-0 .

literature

• Uwe Kessler: On the history of management at Krupp. From the beginning of the company to the dissolution of Fried. Krupp AG (1811-1943) . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-515-06486-9
• Erich Neuss: history of the sex v. Wilmowsky. A foundation. With 2 colored heraldic panels, 35 figs. on 25 plates, 36 figs. and manuscript images in the text, 17 overview tables in the text and 3 family tables. Gebauer-Schwetschke, Halle 1938.

Web links

• Literature by and about Tilo von Wilmowsky in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography in the files of the Reich Chancellery

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wilmowsky, Retrospect , p. 15
2. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 45 , 491
3. ^ Wolfgang von der Groeben: Directory of the members of the Corps Saxonia zu Göttingen 1844 to 2006. Düsseldorf 2006.
4. ↑ Information on the history of Marienthal Castle from the current operator [1] also: 1910-1912 .
5. ↑ Wilmowsky, Retrospect , p. 81.
6. ↑ Wilmowsky, Retrospect , p. 222.
7. ↑ Wilmowsky, Retrospect , p. 223.
8. ↑ Wilmowsky, Retrospect , p. 182.
9. ↑ Wilmowsky, Rückblickend , p. 225, p. 227.
10. ↑ Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of February 8, 1966: Moving funeral for Tilo Wilmowsky
11. ↑ Wilmowsky, Retrospect , p. 175.
12. ↑ KTBL ( Memento of the original from May 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
13. ↑ Barbara Rogers: Encounter with a wall of silence , in: Naomi Berger; Alan L. Berger (Ed.): Second generation voices: reflections by children of Holocaust survivors and perpetrators . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001 Web (en)