Werner Plappert

Werner Karl Wilhelm Plappert (born March 19, 1902 in Heilbronn ; † between February 18, 1970 and March 1974 ) was a German lawyer and cigar manufacturer. He was the first Lord Mayor of Heidenheim an der Brenz after the Second World War . Like several other witnesses to the HS-30 scandal , he died under circumstances that have not yet been fully clarified.

Life

Political career

Werner Plappert's father was Karl Wilhelm Plappert (* January 1, 1876, † November 1933), who had been a partner in a cigar factory in Heidenheim since 1913. His mother was Julia Plappert. Werner Plappert had a doctorate in law (studied in Tübingen ) and joined his father's cigar factory as a partner in 1934. After the Second World War , he was temporarily appointed Lord Mayor of Heidenheim by the US military government in 1945/46 .

Allegedly he owed the tax authorities at least 66,700 German marks since 1952 , originally it should have been around 1.5 million DM. It was alleged that as a post-war profiteer , Plappert did his business selling tobacco from Wehrmacht stocks that had been confiscated by the US Army. From the other side it was speculated that the tax liability originated from the HS-30 business. The Federal Ministry of Finance announced in April 1967 that it was a question of arrears in taxes from the years 1948 to 1963.

German customs had been watching Plappert since 1952. He was also temporarily in Liechtenstein . Plappert himself admitted that he had participated in several discussions in Switzerland about the purchase of the HS-30. He also claimed that the manufacturing company Hispano-Suiza initially lacked capital, so that the CDU , which was in government at the time, approved the budget for the purchase and then received around 50 million DM for its election campaign in 1957.

The same man who had decided on the armored personnel carrier 15 years earlier, namely the former Federal Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss , who was Federal Minister of Finance in 1967 , decided on Plappert's tax matters . Also in 1967 Plappert was waived DM 700,000 tax debts.

Role in the HS-30 scandal

In the wake of the HS-30 scandal in the 1960s, Plappert accused the CDU of having diverted around 50 million DM for election campaign costs from an "air business" in the arms trade for the HS 30 armored personnel carrier in 1957, because he knew all sorts of things about the HS -30 scandal and he knows bribe lists. In January 1968 he was supposed to testify before a parliamentary committee of inquiry, but initially refused to testify on the grounds that it was a matter of “party justice”. Later he testified before the committee: “... on the German side, the tank business was only a means of illegal party financing. What was then delivered was secondary. "

Disappearance and death

A few days after the testimony before the committee, Plappert's house was given a forced mortgage of 134,000 DM. After the foreclosure auction of the same, he disappeared on February 18, 1970 without a trace. His body was recovered by divers from Lake Constance near Überlingen in March 1974 and later identified.

Documentation

• Jean-Michel Meurice: Black Coffers. Documentary, ARTE France, Maha and Anthracite (2008), Jean-Michel Meurice, France 2008.

Web links

• What does Werner Plappert know? HS-30 tank and a waived tax debt. In: Die Zeit , No. 15, April 14, 1967
• Der Spiegel , 9/1968
• Der Spiegel , 27/1969
• Obituary in Der Spiegel
• Article ( memento of June 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on arte

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} What does Werner Plappert know? HS-30 tank and a waived tax debt. In: Die ZEIT , No. 15, April 14, 1967, accessed on September 9, 2012
2. ↑ ^{a b} Obituary in Der Spiegel
3. ↑ Der Spiegel , 9/1968 Nur Donner. Der Spiegel , February 26, 1968, accessed on September 7, 2012.
4. ^ Report of the investigative committee of the German Bundestag on the HS 30 scandal, Bundestag printed matter V / 4527 of June 26, 1969. In: Negotiations of the German Bundestag , printed matters, volume 132.