Waldtraut von Bohlen and Halbach

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portrait of the Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach family in 1928 by Nicola Perscheid . Waldtraut sits in the middle.
Grave in the Bredeney cemetery in Essen

Waldtraut Elisabeth Mechthild von Bohlen und Halbach (divorced Thomas, married Burckhardt; born July 31, 1920 at the Sayneck hunting lodge near Neuwied ; died May 27, 2005 ) was a younger sister of Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach .

Life

Waldtraut was one of the eight children of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach and his wife Bertha . She spent her youth at the Villa Hügel in Essen , built by her great-grandfather, the steel industrialist Alfred Krupp .

On November 15, 1943, like their four siblings who were still alive at the time, as well as Sita von Medinger (the widow of her brother Claus, who died in 1940), they were signed by Hitler in the “Leader's Decree on the Fried Family Business. Krupp ” excluded from inheritance so that the oldest brother Alfried could take over the Krupp company without paying inheritance tax.

She married the Berlin textile entrepreneur Henry Thomas on March 12, 1942. From this marriage the children Diana Maria (born 1944) and Regina (born 1945) emerged. In 1961 she married the ship owner Walter Burckhardt for the second time and lived mostly in Argentina at her Estancia Ampascachi. Daughter Diana Maria Friz was also active as a Krupp biographer and wrote works on Margarethe Krupp ( The Life of My Great Grandmother ) as well as Berthold Beitz and Alfried ( Alfried Krupp and Berthold Beitz: Der Erbe und seine Stadthalter ).

At the beginning of the 1950s, her brother Alfried, who had been convicted of the Nuremberg Trials , after his early release from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison , was obliged in the Mehlemer contract to pay her and her three other siblings who were still alive as well as Arnold, the son of his brother Claus , who died in 1940 To pay an amount of 10 million DM as compensation for the renunciation of inheritance. The Mehlemer contracts were intended to unbundle the Krupp group after the war.

In the 1990s, her daughter Diana and other members of the next generation tried in vain to obtain a permanent seat for the family on the board of trustees of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation .

Honors

In Essen, the Waldtrautstraße is named after her, which is not far from Villa Hügel at the entrance to the Hügelpark in the Brandenbusch settlement (built at the time for employees of Villa Hügel).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Sayneck hunting lodge in Sayntal had been a hunting lodge of the Krupps and von Bohlen Halbachs for many decades.
  2. ^ Diana Maria Friz: Margarethe Krupp: The life of my great-grandmother , Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag 2008. ISBN 978-3-423-24703-0 .
  3. ^ Diana Maria Friz: Alfried Krupp and Berthold Beitz: The heir and his governor , Zurich / Wiesbaden: Orell Füssli 1988. ISBN 3-280-01852-8 .
  4. ^ The struggle for the Krupp legacy , in: DER SPIEGEL 41/1997.
personal data
SURNAME Bohlen and Halbach, Waldtraut from
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bohlen and Halbach, Waldtraut Elizabeth Mechthild von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialists
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Sayneck Castle near Neuwied
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 2005