The Respectable Career of Fritz K. Studies in German History Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C
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The Respectable Career of Fritz K. Studies in German History Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. General Editors: Hartmut Berghoff, Director of the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. Uwe Spiekermann, Deputy Director of the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. Volume 1 Volume 10 Nature in German History Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, Edited by Christof Mauch 1918–1933: Battle for the Streets and Fears of Civil War Volume 2 Dirk Schumann Coping with the Nazi Past: West German Debates on Nazism and Generational Conflict, Volume 11 1955–1975 The East German State and the Catholic Church, Edited by Philipp Gassert and Alan E. 1945–1989 Steinweis Bernd Schaefer Volume 3 Volume 12 Adolf Cluss, Architect: From Germany to America Raising Citizens in the “Century of the Child”: Edited by Alan Lessoff and Christof Mauch The United States and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective Volume 4 Edited by Dirk Schumann Two Lives in Uncertain Times: Facing the Challenges of the 20th Century as Scholars and Volume 13 Citizens The Plans that Failed: An Economic History of Wilma Iggers and Georg Iggers the GDR André Steiner Volume 5 Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Volume 14 Autobahn, 1930–1970 Max Liebermann and International Modernism: Thomas Zeller An Artist’s Career from Empire to Third Reich Edited by Marion Deshmukh, Françoise Volume 6 Forster-Hahn and Barbara Gaehtgens The Pleasure of a Surplus Income: Part-Time Work, Gender Politics, and Social Change in West Volume 15 Germany, 1955–1969 Germany and the Black Diaspora: Points of Christine von Oertzen Contact, 1250–1914 Edited by Mischa Honeck, Martin Klimke, Volume 7 and Anne Kuhlmann Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany Volume 16 Edited by Alon Confino, Paul Betts and Dirk Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany Schumann Edited by Richard F. Wetzell Volume 8 Volume 17 Nature of the Miracle Years: Conservation in West Encounters with Modernity: The Catholic Church Germany, 1945–1975 in West Germany, 1945–1975 Sandra Chaney Benjamin Ziemann Volume 9 Volume 18 Biography between Structure and Agency: Central The Respectable Career of Fritz K.: The Making European Lives in International Historiography and Remaking of a Provincial Nazi Leader Edited by Volker R. Berghahn and Simone Hartmut Berghoff and Cornelia Rauh Lässig Translated by Casey Butterfield THE RESPECTABLE CAREER OF FRITZ K. The Making and Remaking of a Provincial Nazi Leader S Hartmut Berghoff and Cornelia Rauh Translated by Casey Butterfield Published by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com English-language edition ©2015 Berghahn Books German-language edition ©2000 Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt Fritz K.: Ein deutsches Leben im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berghoff, Hartmut. [Fritz K. English] The respectable career of Fritz K.: the making and remaking of a provincial Nazi leader / Hartmut Berghoff and Cornelia Rauh; translated by Casey Butterfield. -- First edition. pages cm. -- (Studies in German history; 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78238-593-6 (hardback: alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-78238-594-3 (ebook) 1. Kiehn, Fritz, 1885-1980. 2. Nazis--Germany--Trossingen--Biography. 3. Trossingen (Germany)--Biography. 4. Industrialists--Germany--Trossingen-- Biography. 5. National socialism--Germany--Württemberg. 6. Denazification. I. Rauh, Cornelia, 1957- II. Butterfield, Casey, translator. III. Title. DD247.K525B4713 2015 324.243‘0238092--dc23 [B] 2015006167 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78238-593-6 hardback ISBN: 978-1-78238-594-3 ebook CONTENTS List of Figures and Tables vii Preface ix List of Abbreviations xii Introduction 1 1. Kiehn’s Rise to the Middle Class: A Traveling Salesman Becomes a Factory Owner 11 2. Rapid Ascent through the Nazi Ranks: From Local Party Leader to Reichstag Delegate 28 3. Between Gleichschaltung and the Party Purge of 1934: Fritz Kiehn Becomes “Leader of the Württemberg Economy” 45 4. Riding Nazi Party Coattails: Kiehn’s Industrial Ambitions 73 5. Between Corruption and Camaraderie: The National Socialist Campaign to Curb Abuses 87 6. Kiehn and Gustav Schickedanz in the Race for Aryanization 102 7. Wartime Deals and “Marriage Politics” 131 8. “The King of Trossingen”: Fritz Kiehn as a Local Grandee in the Third Reich 144 9. From “War Criminal No. 1” to Sought-After Employer 187 10. “Scot-Free, by the Skin of Their Teeth”: Denazification and Compensation 202 – v – vi | Contents 11. “Ripe for Satire”: Entering the Social Market Economy with Public Loans 228 12. “Kiehn Left No One Behind”? The “Factory Community” as a Network of “Old Comrades” 257 13. Honored Citizen Again: Kiehn and the “Economic Miracle” 273 14. The Twilight Years of an Honored West German 289 15. Coming to Terms with the Past in the Twenty-First Century 312 Conclusion: The (A)Typical Life of an Industrialist? 323 Bibliography 339 Index 357 FIGURES AND TABLES Fig. 1: Fritz Kiehn in 1900 12 Fig. 2: Gasthof Rose, the Neipp family’s inn 12 Fig. 3: A good match (1911) 13 Fig. 4: Notice of Kiehn’s takeover (1912) and Kiehn’s first business on Rosenstraße (1912) 14 Fig. 5: Kiehn (seated) as a war volunteer 15 Fig. 6: Efka label 16 Fig. 7: At a distance to old Trossingen: Kiehn’s villa in Deibhalde 16 Fig. 8: Rehearsing upper-class prestige: the study in Deibhalde 17 Fig. 9: A family on the way up: Fritz, Herbert, Gretl, and Berta Kiehn 21 Fig. 10: A closed society: the Trossingen “ladies’ circle” (Damenkränzchen) before Berta Kiehn’s inclusion, circa 1929 22 Fig. 11: Efka factory with swastika banner (ca. 1931–1932) 33 Fig. 12: Friends in more than politics: Fritz Kiehn and Gregor Straßer in Deibhalde 39 Fig. 13: President Fritz Kiehn, MdR (Reichstag delegate), 1937 46 Fig. 14: Self-dramatization: Kiehn’s New Year’s card from 1938–1939 51 Fig. 15: “Happy hunter” Prützmann (second from left) and Kiehn 65 Fig. 16: Kiehn in his SS uniform with honorary dagger 66 Fig. 17: Small-scale production facilities at the Efka factory (1930s) 74 Fig. 18: Automotive exhibition in 1936: Kiehn, next to his son (from left), stands with the Führer 77 Fig. 19: Pride of title and ownership in Kiehn’s letterhead 139 Fig. 20: Souvenirs of the “wartime acquisitions” in the family album from the 1970s. Okriftel is on the bottom 140 Fig. 21: The Hohner accordion orchestra with Reichsstatthalter Wilhelm Murr (1933) 145 Fig. 22: “May Queen” Gretl Kiehn on National Workers’ Day 147 Fig. 23: Silver wedding anniversary (1936): the private element 149 Fig. 24: Silver wedding anniversary (1936): the National Socialist element— portrait of a trio 149 Fig. 25: The trappings of self-aggrandizement (1936) 150 Fig. 26: Kiehn and Hitler 152 Fig. 27: Trossingen in a sea of swastikas 161 – vii – viii | Figures and Tables Fig. 28: Kiehn’s Mercedes, with SS pennant 164 Fig. 29: Invitation to Efka factory anniversary, bearing the new company coat of arms, 1937 166 Fig. 30: Efka factory with political propaganda 168 Fig. 31: No industrialist mansion: the Ermingen homestead 197 Fig. 32: Kiehn, “not fully his old self,” with his wife and daughter after his release from internment 205 Fig. 33: The Chiron factory celebrates: “The President’s 65th Birthday” (1950) 240 Fig. 34: Trippel and the Kiehns at a social evening at Chiron (ca. 1950) 241 Fig. 35: Portrait with the new star of the family, from the left: Fritz and Gretl Wieshofer, as well as Herbert E., Berta, and Fritz Kiehn 263 Fig. 36: Baldur von Schirach wishes Gretl Wieshofer-Kiehn a happy fiftieth birthday (1968) 265 Fig. 37: The park behind the new house in Deibhalde 275 Fig. 38: Mayor Maschke congratulates the old and new honorary citizen of Trossingen on his seventieth birthday 277 Fig. 39: New Efka building (1958) 283 Fig. 40: A symbolic handshake: Ernst Hohner and Fritz Kiehn (1957) 285 Fig. 41: Academic honors at the University of Innsbruck in the 1960s 293 Fig. 42: Bruno Heck arranges a meeting between the Kiehns and Chancellor Adenauer 298 Fig. 43: The Kiehns and the Walters in Deibhalde 301 Fig. 44: Kiehn, the big-game hunter, in Africa 303 Table 1: Reichstag election results in Trossingen and in Germany, 1930–1933 (in percentages) 35 Table 2: Kiehn’s donations to Nazi organizations, 1935–1944 (in RM) 60 Table 3: Kiehn’s donations to SS offices, 1935–1944 61 Table 4: Efka’s profits and sales, 1928–1948 132 Table 5: Staff and sales at Efka, 1957–1973 269 PREFACE Some research projects begin with great expectations but fail to reach their set tar- gets because of adversity or a lack of material. We encountered the opposite case when writing this biography. For a good decade and a half—while we were both in Tübingen, Germany, albeit in very different professional contexts—we contin- ued to come across the character of Fritz Kiehn, a middle-class business owner and Nazi functionary, in our research. We first planned to write an article dealing with the political biography of this colorful personality, who through years of radical political change always managed to succeed in his social and professional life. The project grew into a book, practically on its own, and was published in German in 2000.