Wilhelm Roelen

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Wilhelm Roelen (born July 8, 1889 in Mariadorf near Aachen ; † May 22, 1958 in Mülheim an der Ruhr at Styrum Castle ) was a German mining engineer and entrepreneur.

Life

Youth and education

Wilhelm Roelen was the son of Friedrich Wilhelm Roelen (1858–1915) and Johanna Frohn (1859–1934), who belonged to an old mining family from the Aachen area. From 1910 to 1914 he studied mining sciences at RWTH Aachen University , graduating as a graduate engineer, and in 1915 was granted a license as a mine separator . In 1922, Roelen was awarded the title “The scheduled recording and evaluation of operational processes in the hard coal mining ”. Ing. PhD.

Professional background

Roelen gained his first professional experience as an engineer at the Eschweiler Mining Association in the field of business rationalization. In 1917 he moved to the German Emperors Union in Duisburg, a company of the Thyssen Group , where he was appointed works inspector in 1920. From 1924 to 1926 he worked as a mine director of the Friedrich Thyssen 2/5 collieries in Dinslaken-Lohberg and Rhein I in Walsum - Wehofen .

After the establishment of the United Stahlwerke AG in 1926, Roelen worked there as a consultant in the mining head office with rationalization in the mining industry and developed the concept of the composite mine , which he later implemented with the Walsum mine . In 1929 Roelen moved to the Thyssen gas and water works, where he became managing director in 1933 and general director in 1937. From 1939 he was general director of all German plants of the Thyssen group and general representative of Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza .

After the Second World War , Wilhelm Roelen was denazified in 1947 and classified as "unencumbered" and played a key role in the reconstruction and rationalization of the West German coal industry. In 1953 he left the management of the Thyssen Group, but remained on the executive board of the Walsum union and sat on the supervisory boards of various Thyssen companies.

As General Director of Thyssen, Wilhelm Roelen Castle Styrum in Mülheim / Ruhr was given as his residence. He lived here with his family until the end of his life in 1958. Roelen's estate is in the Thyssen Krupp corporate archive.

Offices and honors

  • 1917 to 1919 teacher of mining and geology at the Hamborn Bergschule
  • Member of the German Center Party until the party was banned in 1933
  • 1932 to 1933 member of the Dinslaken district council for the Center Party
  • 1940 honorary citizen of RWTH Aachen
  • 1943 Appointment as military economist despite objection from the NSDAP -Austical branch in Essen
  • 1946 Participation in the founding of the Max Planck Society
  • 1949 Participation in the establishment of the Fraunhofer Society
  • 1951 to 1955 second president of the Fraunhofer Society
  • 1954 Awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • 1954 Shaft II of the Walsum composite mine is named the Wilhelm Roelen shaft
  • 1954 Renaming of Timmermannstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse in Walsum to Dr.-Wilhelm-Roelen-Strasse on the occasion of the 65th birthday

Forced labor

Wilhelm Roelen has come under fire because under his leadership as " Wehrwirtschaftsführer " the Walsum mine employed an above-average number of prisoners of war and forced laborers during the Second World War . The actively requested Soviet forced laborers lived under inhumane conditions in shelters that lacked the most essential things. More than a hundred Soviet workers died.

In 1947 Roelen withdrew his candidacy for the head of the administration of the German coal mines after trade unionists, social democrats and communists protested against his work as a military economic leader in Nazi heavy industry.

In 2005 the Walsum district council refused to rename Dr.-Wilhelm-Roelen-Straße.

On the occasion of a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Wilhelm Roelen's death in summer 2008 on the grounds of the Walsum mine, protests and a demonstration took place.

Publications (selection)

  • The planned recording and evaluation of the operating processes in the hard coal mining . 1922 (dissertation, Aachen)
  • The development of the composite mine in the Ruhr coal district . In: Glückauf , No. 66, 1930, pp. 1749–1759, 1789–1794
  • The Ruhr coal in the world economy , 1948
  • Verbundwirtschaft as the basis for future economic design . In: Energieverbundwirtschaft , conference report 1951, issue 3, pp. 267–278

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Manfred Rasch:  Roelen, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , pp. 720 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. Munzinger biography online (2011)
  3. ^ A b Gregor Herberhold: Thanks for fair treatment . In: The West . May 26, 2008 ( derwesten.de [accessed September 3, 2018]).
  4. Information on the ThyssenKrupp corporate archive ( Memento of the original dated February 9, 2011 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. Retrieved November 28, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thyssenkrupp.com
  5. 60 years of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft - a success story . Munich 2009
  6. Thomas Urban: Forced labor at Thyssen: "Stahlverein" and "Baronkonzern" in World War II . Paderborn 2014, ISBN 3-506-76629-5 , pp. 167 .
  7. The only Bravo - Glückauf für Kost . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 1947, pp. 1 ( online ). Quote: "With the somewhat difficult reasoning that as the head of a mine controlled by foreign capital he could easily get into a conflict of conscience in such an office, Roelen withdrew from the candidacy."
  8. Gregor Herberhold: I have become a buffer stop . In: The West . May 30, 2008 ( derwesten.de [accessed November 29, 2011]).
  9. Fabienne Piepiora: No chance for critics . In: The West . May 23, 2008 ( derwesten.de [accessed November 29, 2011]).