Werner Nachmann

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Werner Nachmann (1978)

Werner Nachmann (born on August 12, 1925 in Karlsruhe ; died on January 21, 1988 there ) was a German entrepreneur and politician ( CDU ). From 1969 to 1988 he was chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany .

Life

Nachmann was born as the son of the Karlsruhe businessman Otto Nachmann . In 1938 he fled with his family to France and returned to Germany in 1945 as an officer in the French army . He settled back in Karlsruhe, where he rebuilt the family's company, a scrap metal company, and later took over management.

From 1961 to 1988 he was chairman of the Jewish community in Karlsruhe and of the senior council of the Israelites in Baden . In 1962 he became a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, in 1965 he was elected to the board of directors and from 1969 he was chairman. At the same time he was elected the first President of Makkabi Germany in 1965. He is considered to be an important pioneer in the rapprochement between official agencies of the Federal Republic and Jewish organizations. Nachmann was honored many times for his work during his lifetime, but was also sharply criticized from his own ranks, especially in the early 1970s, because his efforts at reconciliation were seen as a lack of distance from Germany.

In 1972 Nachmann was a member of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games in Munich. In 1986 he received the Theodor Heuss Prize for his services to "Jewish-German reconciliation and the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Christians in the Federal Republic of Germany".

Graves of the Nachmann family in the main cemetery in Karlsruhe

After his death in 1988 it became known that between 1981 and 1987 Nachmann had embezzled a total of more than 29 million DM (initially about 33 million DM) in interest income from reparation funds from the federal government and community funds, of which around three quarters reappeared on accounts of his bankrupt companies. Nachmann was personally considered a modest man, but had dubious business connections and uncontrolled bookkeeping.

The whereabouts of the funds are still largely unclear, even though Nachmann's successor in office, Heinz Galinski , tried hard to clear up the matter for years. Nachmann's widow and son left for the USA in 1988, which fueled speculation about the whereabouts of the funds.

In 2017, the suspicion arose that Werner Nachmann had been murdered and not, as assumed at the time, had died of natural causes. In the weeks before his death, he is said to have told people around him that he was being poisoned. After a seven-month examination, the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office decided in March 2018 not to initiate any investigative proceedings, as there were insufficient indications of poisoning.

family

Werner Nachmann's widow Avira and his then 18-year-old son Marc stayed in the United States after Nachmann's death, where Marc attended an elite college. Marc Nachmann already worked as a young man for the investment bank Goldman Sachs and was brought into the management of the US bank by bank boss Lloyd Blankfein in 2015 . In 2017 he moved up to the position of co-head of the investment banking division under the direction of John Waldron together with Gregg Lemkau, who was about the same age and has been working in London ever since .

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Ambros : The verbose German silence. Hamburg 2013, p. 54.
  2. ^ Robin Streppelhoff: Successful bridging. Sport in German-Israeli relations (= Studies on Sport History , Vol. 10). Academia, Sankt Augustin 2012, p. 84.
  3. ↑ Peter Ambros: The verbose German silence. Hamburg 2013, p. 55.
  4. ↑ Joachim Riedl : Abandoned Money. In: The time . No. 22, May 27, 1988, pp. 21 f. ( online ).
  5. ↑ Alexander Jungmann: Jewish life in Berlin: The current change in a metropolitan diaspora community. transcript Verlag , Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-847-6 , p. 104 f. ( online in Google Book Search).
  6. ↑ 60 years of the Central Council of Jews. Photo series with accompanying text from the SZ from July 19, 2010, accessed on September 3, 2016.
  7. ↑ a b Correctly dumped . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1988, pp. 69-72 ( online ).
  8. ↑ a b Andreas Müller: Nachmann's death remains unexplained. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , March 7, 2018, accessed on July 12, 2019.
  9. ↑ Lutz Reiche: German moves into the center of power at Goldman Sachs. In: Manager Magazin , May 10, 2017;
    see. Management Committee - Marc Nachmann (profile on the Goldman Sachs homepage, English); all accessed on October 17, 2017.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Nachmann, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur, politician and chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1988
Place of death Karlsruhe