Willy Bürkle

Willy Bürkle (born October 7, 1906 in Stuttgart ; † 1973 ) was a German entrepreneur who was known as the “Salatkönig” and was embroiled in a financial scandal in the post-war period.

Life

Willy Bürkle completed his elementary school days in Undingen and Stuttgart, where he was raised in the Paulinenpflege. He then did an apprenticeship as a businessman at a timber trading company and attended the municipal trade school in Stuttgart. He worked in a dairy cooperative, in the motorcycle trade and a delicatessen store and later worked as an independent sales representative. From 1928 he traded in cooking oil and fat-free salad dressings. He initially sold his “Salatine” from the handcart at the front doors; He put the profits in other companies. As soon as an item was difficult or impossible to obtain, his motto was: “I could do that too, I'll do it myself.” This referred in particular to the production of substitute foods, which Bürkle focused on during the Second World War misplaced. Among other things, he made a vitamin yeast extract, a malt extract and a syrup substitute called Cerebona .

In 1944 he ran a sugar factory in Schwetz on the Vistula .

After the end of the Second World War, he expanded his property holdings and business activities in and around Stuttgart. Among other things, he leased a brick factory , built a building materials factory and sold radio sets, initially under the brand name "Rondo", later as "Ponti" sets. The radios were built into clay vessels that Bürkle had produced in his ceramic workshop on Gutenhalde . The trading companies Schmidt & Co. GmbH in Stuttgart-Feuerbach and Ernst Spiess GmbH in Stuttgart also went back to Bürkle.

In 1950 the Bürkle affair broke out, a financial scandal involving excessive credit for Bürkle.

Bürkle's wife Elisabeth survived her husband, who died in 1973.

The financial scandal

On September 17, 1948, the board of directors of the Stuttgarter Girokasse accepted Bürkel's assets in the amount of 1.7 million DM as security for a bill of 185,000 DM. By February 28, 1950, Bürkel's debts at the current account increased to almost 8 million DM.

Bürkle made investments in various projects in the post-war period. Among other things, his childhood friend Lothar Fink advertised a homecoming settlement that Bürkle wanted to build in the Filder community of Bonlanden . The “salad millionaire” bought 60 acres of heather for 200,000 DM in order to build a model farm on the property called “Gutenhalde”, the first part of which he had already acquired in 1941, with paved farm roads, tiled horse stables and oak wood Pig and cow stalls. However, the farm was never self-sustaining; the feed had to be financed from the surplus of the Willy Bürkle food factory. There was a sauna and a bath with mosaic pictures in the house of the estate. In addition to this courtyard, which was outwardly in the Low German style, Bürkle set up a ceramics workshop on the site, which at times employed up to 100 people.

The facility on the Gutenhalde was used by the Lord Mayor of Stuttgart, Arnulf Klett, as a festival area, where a meeting of the German Lord Mayors ended. The party was celebrated with an open-air performance by the State Theater and an opulent meal in which whole oxen were roasted on a spit. The US occupation forces also appreciated the Bürkle property.

At the same time, however, Bürkle and the companies associated with it ran into financial difficulties. His supplier company Weisschädel in Eßlingen am Neckar went into fraudulent bankruptcy, the food factory Willy Bürkle had to file for bankruptcy, and the radio factory Lennartz & Boucke in Tübingen became insolvent. Further projects that Bürkle had considered never came about. Among them was the idea of ​​the "Bona-Gilde", a trade organization that should avoid wholesale and intermediate trade and carry out direct sales of goods by refugee women from trucks, and the construction of a tube-free radio, possibly based on plans by the inventor Robert Denk .

The first loans from the current account were granted by Mayor Klett, Mayor Kirn and Senator Krämer, the members of the credit committee, in order to counteract the decline in Bürkle companies.

Christian Härle, President of the Landesversicherungsanstalt and member of the Board of Directors, gave an early warning against lending. He found that Bürkel's collateral was not even enough for half of the total loan granted, but was apparently not taken seriously. He then let himself be released from his office.

However, after the giro account took stock and the municipality had to guarantee the millions in claims, the municipal council decided to take over the default guarantee . After an out-of-court framework agreement, however, Bürkle received various securities from Bürkle in the form of land, machines, etc., "about their [...] value", according to a quote in Spiegel on August 3, 1950, "not yet saying anything final" let. An operating and asset management company for the Bürklesche operations, subsidiaries and holdings was founded, which took over all assets and liabilities and over which Bürkle no longer had any influence. Only the import-export company Schmid & Co., which traded in caviar , Ponti GmbH and Gutenhalde were excluded from this , but without the ceramics company.

This procedure triggered outrage and unrest among the customers of the current account. The Girokasse tried to counter this in a letter: “The savings deposits are in no way endangered. It is now a matter of calmly winding up the Bürkle loan commitment by drawing on its considerable assets with the support of the City of Stuttgart. "

After this collapse, Bürkle himself planned to reorganize its east-west business in the textile sector. However, he did not succeed. After the claim was launched that Bürkle had been specially recommended to the government of the Eastern Zone on the grounds that he had supported the KPD with monetary payments, judicial investigations took place. The accuracy of the claim could not be confirmed. Nevertheless, Alois Mahringer, who had to deal with the Bürkle affair, was quoted at the end of 1950 with the statement: “The Bürkle said he went for a walk with Fraulein Pieck .” According to these rumors, the occupying powers prevented Bürkle's planned west-east business.

Coming to terms with the financial scandal

In retrospect, it was no longer possible to clarify how it came about that Bürkle received loans in such amounts. While he himself claimed that he had the money imposed not only by the then current account manager Wolf, but also from the top of the city and current account administration, Wolf's successor, Dr. Alois Mahringer, Bürkle before blackmail. Superintendent George had planned to bring down Bürkle "as the owner of eleven companies under all circumstances", but could not achieve this goal. Wolf himself died before investigations into the Bürkle affair got underway.

It was found that after the currency reform in 1948, Wolf had lured Bürkle as a customer of the All-Bank for the current account by offering him 6 instead of 12 percent interest. This was a tempting suggestion for Bürkle, since at that time he had overdrawn his account at All-Bank by 250,000 DM. At that time he had bought wood from the Prince of Hohenzollern , which he could not get rid of immediately and which he could only later sell to the Volkswagen factory for DM 700,000 . Wolf had obviously relied on Bürkle's proven business acumen in times of shortage of goods; In addition, Bürkle's personal relationships with the Klett family apparently played an important role: Arnulf Klett's wife, for example, had already taken the wife of American General Clay to a bath in the open-air swimming pool in Bonlanden. Wolf made a first tour of the house and works at Bürkle with the change department head Beutler and the credit officer Schmid, a second was carried out by the current account managers Laemmle and Richter. Wolf then informed Willy Bürkle personally by telephone that 250,000 DM in cash were ready for him to collect and to redeem from the All-Bank.

On the same day, the investigations later revealed, the first bill of exchange was discounted to the amount of 185,000 DM. An auditor confirmed to the supervisory bodies of the Stuttgarter Girokasse, i.e. the administrative board chaired by Arnulf Klett and the credit committee, which was also chaired by Klett, that the Bürkle companies were worth 1.6 million DM. Klett also signed the bank form in which the loan for Bürkle was granted for the first time.

Bürkle obtained the next loan in November 1948. He applied verbally and informally to Director Wolf for the sum of 1.7 million DM and received it immediately.

Willy Bürkle submitted only one loan application at all to the Girokasse in writing: On March 1, 1949, he applied for 2.25 million DM, which he received together with an exchange loan of 750,000 DM.

On April 20, 1949 he had a debt of 3.8 million DM, on June 3, 1949 4.6 million DM, on June 11, 1949 it was 4.8 million DM and on July 20, 1949 Bürkel's debts were 5.162 million DM increased.

Now the Stuttgart Mayor Hirn (SPD), who also belonged to the board of directors of the Girokasse, protested against this constant expansion of credit. Nevertheless, by October 21, 1949, Bürkle was able to accumulate a total of DM 5.533 million in loan debts at the current account, which, according to its statutes, was not actually allowed to issue any industrial loans and was only allowed to spend one percent of the total deposits as personal loans. In total, it should have granted Bürkle a maximum of 1.78 million DM.

The Bürkle companies were then to be liquidated. The head of the Württembergische Finanz-AG Raach was appointed as trustee, who apparently continued to operate in the same style as Bürkle. In times of the Reichsmark abundance and the shortage of goods, the companies had thrown a lot of money, but were no longer viable under the changed conditions after the currency reform: After the market for corn products and soup paste in the eastern zone collapsed, the products of the Willy Bürkle food factory, for example, were no longer for sale. Under Raach, the sum on Bürkle's debt account rose to DM 5.991 million on November 18, 1949, whereupon the credit committee granted him another DM 300,000; on November 24, the limit of 6 million was exceeded, on December 14, 1949 Bürkle had 6.110 million DM loan debts and on January 5, 1950 6.245 million DM. Further loans were still granted to support the ailing economic constructs.

Raach was released from his trusteeship in March 1950 "because of the impossibility of working with Bürkle". At this point in time the loan debt was DM 7,866,397. Raach and Bürkle accused each other of having caused this further increase.

The credit affair has now been negotiated before the Stuttgart city parliament. A motion of no confidence was filed against the board of directors of the Girokasse and the management of the Girokasse was removed. The new boss was Dr. Alois Mahringer, who had already witnessed the Lahusen case in Berlin in 1931 and described the Bürkle scandal as a tenfold Lahusen case.

It was only Mahringer who tried to draw a line under the Bürkle affair by founding the business and asset management company: "Put an end to all attempts to recoup the millions of dollars lost by injecting more money into the ailing Bürkle businesses."

After the events became public, the Council of Ministers met . On December 18, 1950, he decided to appoint a state commissioner to clarify the Bürkle affair. This was supposed to determine, among other things, whether the Städtische Girokasse had claims for compensation against the members of the board of directors. At this point it was already known that the current account had also granted excessive loans to insecure companies in at least 24 other cases. The BHE -Abgeordnete Wilhelm Mattes yet announced during the investigation, to make further cases publicly.

Individual evidence

1. ^ History of the Pauline Care ( Memento from January 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} I'll do it myself , in: Der Spiegel 31/1950, pp. 21-23
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} [Munzinger biography].
4. ↑ Pictures and descriptions on radiomuseum.org .
5. ↑ So the spelling in the Munzinger archive, the Spiegel articles use the name form "Schmid".
6. ↑ Elisabeth Bürkle
7. ↑ Buildings of Bürkles in Bonlanden
8. ↑ Filderstadt.de
9. ↑ Private homepage of Robert Denk
10. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Taken into the grave , in: Der Spiegel 52/1950, p. 12 f.