Business association for the promotion of intellectual reconstruction forces
The business association for the promotion of intellectual reconstruction forces was founded in 1919 as a reaction to the November Revolution by representatives of the German National People's Party and was the umbrella company of the Hugenberg Group .
aims
The trade association consisted of twelve people, which is why it was also called the "12-man college". Its members acted in secret. Like Alfred Hugenberg , they came from heavy industry . The connection to heavy industry remained important for the policy of the trade association. The cooperation with the association for mining interests and the colliery association remained close. Hugenberg described the trade association as the “camouflage of the colliery association or mining association”. In addition to representing industrial interests, their main goal was to build a nationally minded press and propaganda apparatus . This is how Ludwig Bernhard , the close colleague of Hugenberg, described in his book The Hugenberg Group , published in 1928, as the first point of the group's "essential and life-giving basic views":
“A lack of a sense of home and a sense of nationality leads to the undermining and weakening of a people compared to other people. A sense of home and nationality must therefore be strengthened. "
Compared to this political goal, the company's profitability was secondary. Bernhard wrote:
"For the decision about investments or the establishment and expansion of the various companies, the foreseeable political impact is primarily decisive and only secondarily the business result."
Members
- Alfred Hugenberg , from 1909 to 1918 Chairman of the Directorate for Finance of Friedrich Krupp AG and from 1918 media entrepreneur ( Hugenberg Group )
- Emil Kirdorf , industrialist
- Hans von und zu Löwenstein , managing director of the mining association
- Eugen Wiskott , deputy chairman of the mining association
- Ludwig Bernhard , economist and university professor
- Leo Wegener , Director of the Provincial Association of Raiffeisen Cooperatives in Poznan
- Albert Vögler , Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG, RWE, presidential member of the Reich Association of German Industry, co-founder of the German People's Party in 1919
- Johann Bernhard Mann , Hugenberg's General Representative
- Johann Neumann , Lübeck Senator, member of the main management of the Pan-German Association
- Hermann Winkhaus , General Director of the Cologne-Neu-Essen Mining Association
- Franz Heinrich Witthoefft , Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Commerzbank
- Johann Becker , former Reich Minister of Economics. D.
| company | total |
|---|---|
| Friedrich Krupp AG | 12,166,650 marks |
| Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG | 5,135,140 marks |
| Mining Association | 5,000,000 marks |
| Phoenix AG for mining and smelting operations | 4,776,111 marks |
| Hugo Stinnes GmbH | 4,401,300 marks |
| Rhenish-Westphalian coal syndicate | 1,850,000 marks |
| total | 33,329,401 marks |
literature
- Dankwart Guratzsch : Power through organization, the foundation of the Hugenberg press empire . Düsseldorf 1974
- Georg Honigmann : Capital crimes or the case of Privy Councilor Hugenberg . Verlag Der Nation, Berlin 1976
- Heidrun Holzbach: The "System Hugenberg", the organization of bourgeois collection politics before the rise of the NSDAP . Stuttgart 1981
- Klaus Wernecke, Peter Heller: The forgotten leader, press power and National Socialism . Hamburg 1982
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Heidrun Holzbach: The "System Hugenberg", The organization of bourgeois collection policy before the rise of the NSDAP . Stuttgart 1981, p. 305.
- ^ A b Ludwig Bernhard : The "Hugenberg Group", psychology and technology of a large organization of the press . Berlin 1928, p. 106 f.
- ↑ Dankwart Guratzsch : power through organization, the foundation of the Hugenberg press empire . Düsseldorf 1974, p. 328.