Wolf-Dietrich von Witzleben

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Wolf-Dietrich von Witzleben (born April 19, 1886 in Oels ; † January 11, 1970 ) was a German entrepreneur. Until 1966 he was chairman of the supervisory boards of Siemens & Halske AG and Siemens-Schuckertwerke AG, the two parent companies of what later became the Siemens group.

Origin and education

Witzleben came from the Thuringian noble family von Witzleben . He was the son of Carl Ludwig von Witzleben (1853-1900). Witzleben had completed a commercial apprenticeship, but was then a career officer and took part in the First World War as such . After the war he studied economics and received his doctorate in 1926. During his studies, he already worked for Siemens & Halske AG, where his main focus was on human resources and social policy from the start.

1933 to 1945

Between 1927 and 1941 he headed the office of Carl Friedrich von Siemens , which made him his closest colleague and confidante. In 1930, as the successor to Hermann Görz, he also took over the management of the personnel department and thus responsibility for over 100,000 employees. Von Witzleben took part in the secret meeting of February 20, 1933 in Hermann Göring's official residence in the Reichstag Presidential Palace, which was about financing the NSDAP's election campaign . In 1934 he was appointed deputy and in 1939 he was appointed full board member of the two Siemens parent companies. At the same time he was a member of the supervisory board of Siemens Planiawerke AG for coal factories in Berlin. As a member of the board of directors for the human resources department, he was also responsible for the deployment of foreign workers (“ foreign workers ” and prisoners of war ), German Jews committed to forced labor , and prisoners from concentration camps . He was also head of security for the Berlin works . of air protection and political defense . In May 1945 he took over the chairmanship of both houses.
Von Witzleben did not join the NSDAP . After 1945, however, he was mainly referred to by representatives of the SED in their disputes with the SPD because of his previous professional functions as a "fascist" . This allegation is countered by the fact that von Witzleben, in his capacity as administrator and later as hereditary administrator of the Roßleben Monastery School Foundation , from which several members of the resistance of July 20, 1944 came, prevented this monastery school from being converted into a national political educational institution .

After 1945

After the end of the Second World War, Witzleben was arrested several times for short periods of time because of his work in the Third Reich . Initially, he was dismissed from the management board at Siemens, but at the beginning of April 1947 he resumed his position as chairman of the management board at Siemens after a strike vote by the works employee had resulted in a narrow majority for him, and works councils with members of the SED also voted in his favor and the Denazification Commission in Spandau had only classified him as a “fellow traveler”. Although the city council of Berlin and parts of the works council protested against the reinstatement as chairman of the board, the British military government revised neither the decision of the commission nor the appointment to the board. He held this office until 1949. His successor as CEO was Ernst von Siemens . Witzleben's achievement was the rebuilding of the company and the relocation of the group's focus from Berlin to the new locations in Munich, Nuremberg and Erlangen. In addition, in his role as Chief Human Resources Officer, he has redesigned training and further education as well as the qualification of young managers. Witzleben was a co-founder of the Baden-Baden Entrepreneur Talks and President of the German Institute for the Promotion of Young Industrial Managers.

Honors

During the time of National Socialism von Witzleben received the War Merit Crosses 1st and 2nd class and was appointed military manager.
On his 70th birthday, the “Wolf-Dietrich von Siemens-Stiftung” was founded with his collaboration in 1956, whose tasks included seminars for managers of the lower, middle and upper grades.
He was appointed honorary chairman of the Witzleben family association.

family

His daughter Edelgarde, born in 1915, married Gisbert Kley , a senior government councilor in 1935 , who later also worked with him at Siemens.

literature

  • Erich Stockhorst: 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich? Arndt 2nd edition 1985, Kiel, p. 452. First: "Five thousand heads." Blick und Bild-Verlag, Velbert & Kettwig 1967 (the publisher expired in 1982; this first edition is bibliographically listed under VMA-Verlag Wiesbaden 1967)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erich Matthias, Hermann Weber, Klaus Schönhoven, Klaus Tenfelde: "Sources on the history of the German trade union movement in the 20th century: The interzonal conferences of the German trade unions 1946-1948", Volume 14, p. 126 ff. Bund-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 9783801241582
  2. ^ Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Research Institute, Historical Commission zu Berlin (ed.): International scientific correspondence on the history of the German labor movement, Volume 27, page 4 ff, 1991, self-published
  3. ↑ Carola Sachse: “Siemens, National Socialism and the Modern Family. An investigation into social rationalization in Germany in the 20th century ”. Verlag Rasch u. Röhring, 1990, ISBN 9783891363744 , page 99, 279 ff
  4. ^ Career path and portrait on the Siemens international website
  5. ↑ a b c Harold Hurwitz, Ursula Böhme, Andreas Malycha (eds.): "The Stalinization of the SED: On the Loss of Freedom and Social Democratic Identity in the Executive Boards 1946–1949". In: “Writings of the Central Institute for Social Science Research at the Free University of Berlin”, Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 9783322850911 , page 126
  6. ↑ Appreciation of Wolf-Dietrich von Witzleben on the website of the Rossleben monastery school
  7. ↑ Hans J. Reichhardt (ed.): "The emergence of the Berlin constitution: a documentation", Volume 1, Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 1990, ISBN 9783110124149 , page 571
  8. ^ Wolf-Dietrich von Witzleben . In: Der Spiegel , H. 15/1947
  9. ↑ Christian Reuber: "The long way to the top: Careers of executives of large German companies in the 20th century". Campus Verlag, 2012, ISBN 9783593397474 , page 252
  10. ^ Hanns-Martin Schönfeld: The management training in the operational functional structure: Theoretical and practical basics. Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 9783322987945 , page 360
personal data
SURNAME Witzleben, Wolf-Dietrich von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Oils
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1970