Berthold Beitz, Krupp Chief Who Hid Jews From Nazis, Dies at 99
By Nicholas Comfort -
Aug 1, 2013 7:00 AM GMT+0800
Berthold Beitz, the German
industrialist who rescued Jews from the Nazis during World War
II and helped rebuild Fried Krupp GmbH, a predecessor of the
country’s biggest steelmaker, has died. He was 99.
He died on July 30, a spokesman for Essen, Germany-based ThyssenKrupp AG (TKA) said yesterday in a telephone interview. No further details were given in a company statement. ThyssenKrupp was formed in 1999 by the merger of Thyssen AG and Fried. Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp.
In 1942, as the manager of Karpaten-Oel AG in Boryslaw,
Poland, a town now part of Ukraine, Beitz hid Jews in his home
and saved 250 men and women from a train destined for the Belzec
death camp by claiming them as workers, according to the website
of Israel’s Yad Vashem, a Jerusalem-based Holocaust research and
education center.
“We watched from morning to evening as close as you can get what was happening to the Jews in Boryslaw,” Yad Vashem quotes Beitz as saying after the war. “When you see a woman with her child in her arms being shot, and you yourself have a child, then your response is bound to be different.”
After the war, in 1953, Krupp owner Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach appointed Beitz chief executive officer of the engineering company and former arms maker. They revived its steel base and traveled outside Germany to enter foreign markets for building industrial plants, using Beitz’s reputation to win orders from the eastern bloc, according to ThyssenKrupp’s website.
In 1958, Krupp employed 105,200 workers and was Germany’s biggest company based on sales, according to ThyssenKrupp’s website, which doesn’t specify the sales figure. At the end of 2011, ThyssenKrupp had 171,312 employees in 80 countries, according to a quarterly report.
“We have lost an outstanding figure who played a major role in shaping the company,” Ulrich Lehner, chairman of ThyssenKrupp’s supervisory board, said in the statement. “Berthold Beitz experienced the highs and lows of Germany’s recent history. During World War II, together with his wife, he set an impressive example of courage and humanity.”
In 1939, Beitz went to work for the German unit of Royal Dutch Shell in Hamburg and was excused from military service when World War II broke out.
After the war, he was awarded Poland’s highest civil order and was the first West German businessman to be invited to the country on an official visit, according to Munzinger.
In 1963, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer asked Beitz to become ambassador to Moscow, as he enjoyed a good relationship with communist leaders and invited East Germany’s Erich Honecker on annual hunting trips, according to a report on ARD television. Beitz declined to take the job, the German broadcaster said in a report on the history of Germans and Poles on its website.
Beitz was a member of the International Olympic Committee from 1972 to 1988, according to the Olympic Movement’s website, which lists sailing, shooting and rowing as sports he practiced.
In 1973, Yad Vashem named him to its Righteous Among the Nations, honoring non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
“From the bottom of my heart, I am proud to have helped all these Jews escape the death trains,” Beitz told Marek Halter in an interview for “Stories of Deliverance,” Halter’s book. “But, truthfully, how could I have lived if I had not done it?”
Beitz and his wife, Else, had three daughters, Barbara, Susanne and Bettina.
In 2009, his grandsons Robert Ziff, Dirk Ziff and Daniel Ziff -- whose father, William Ziff, was an heir to and longtime CEO of the Ziff-Davis magazine publishing company who married Barbara Beitz before divorcing -- established the Berthold Beitz professor in human rights and international affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The position was created to “honor the life and legacy” of Beitz.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Comfort in Frankfurt at ncomfort1@bloomberg.net
*****The Economist
GERMANY’s great and good will gather on September 26th at the
Villa Hügel, the 269-room mansion which used to be the Krupp family pile
in the city of Essen, to celebrate what would have been Berthold
Beitz’s 100th birthday. Sadly, the grand old man of German industry, who
since 1967 had done more to further Krupp family interests than any
member of the clan, will not be there: he died on July 30th.
Mr Beitz was the last great German industrial baron. He was also respected as a German who saved Jews from deportation by the Nazis during the second world war. Born in 1913 the son of a civil servant, he did a banking apprenticeship before joining an oil company, a subsidiary of Shell, in 1938.
Four years later he was managing oil interests in occupied Poland. There he risked his life rescuing hundreds of Jews from deportation, insisting that he needed them as workers (as did Oskar Schindler in Nazi-occupied Bohemia). The Holocaust memorial centre Yad Vashem honoured Mr Beitz as “righteous among nations” in 1973.
After the war Mr Beitz was the driving force behind the steel concern Friedrich Krupp, which after two big mergers now trades as ThyssenKrupp. He met Alfried Krupp, the great great-grandson of the founder, by chance in 1953. Within a year he was his trusted general manager at the family firm. Yet his real power came after Alfried’s death in 1967, as chairman of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, which controls the family interests and today still has a blocking 25.3% stake in ThyssenKrupp and can appoint three members to the supervisory board.
Mr Beitz steered the firm through its darkest days in 1967, when banks would not lend to it without government support. In 1973 he brought in the Iranian monarchy as a 25% shareholder. He was less a visionary, more of a principled player, acting in the interests of the family and the business ethics they espoused. Shareholder value was less important than the general good of all stakeholders. But he did agree, in 1987, to close a historic steelworks at Rheinhausen, with the loss of thousands of jobs.
From that time until earlier this year his right-hand man was Gerhard Cromme, first as chief executive and then as chairman of the evolving concern. Mr Cromme took Krupp through mergers with Hoesch and Thyssen. He was also Mr Beitz’s heir-apparent at the Krupp foundation. Together they saw ThyssenKrupp flourish, especially in the early years of last decade.
But earlier this year some terrible business decisions came home to roost: billions misspent on greenfield factories in Brazil and North America, and ThyssenKrupp’s involvement in a steel railway track pricing cartel. Even Mr Beitz could see that Mr Cromme had to fall on his sword. That left a vacuum, more at the foundation than at ThyssenKrupp. Whoever succeeds Mr Beitz there will continue to call the shots at the firm—and will loom large in German industry.
He died on July 30, a spokesman for Essen, Germany-based ThyssenKrupp AG (TKA) said yesterday in a telephone interview. No further details were given in a company statement. ThyssenKrupp was formed in 1999 by the merger of Thyssen AG and Fried. Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp.
ThyssenKrupp honorary chairman
Berthold Beitz gestures during the annual shareholders meeting in 2009
in Bochum. Photographer: Patrik Stollarz/Getty Images
“We watched from morning to evening as close as you can get what was happening to the Jews in Boryslaw,” Yad Vashem quotes Beitz as saying after the war. “When you see a woman with her child in her arms being shot, and you yourself have a child, then your response is bound to be different.”
After the war, in 1953, Krupp owner Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach appointed Beitz chief executive officer of the engineering company and former arms maker. They revived its steel base and traveled outside Germany to enter foreign markets for building industrial plants, using Beitz’s reputation to win orders from the eastern bloc, according to ThyssenKrupp’s website.
Jewish Reparations
Krupp became the first German company to pay reparations to Jewish concentration-camp slave laborers, Joachim Kaeppner, a Beitz biographer, said in a November 2011 publication for Krupp’s 200th anniversary.In 1958, Krupp employed 105,200 workers and was Germany’s biggest company based on sales, according to ThyssenKrupp’s website, which doesn’t specify the sales figure. At the end of 2011, ThyssenKrupp had 171,312 employees in 80 countries, according to a quarterly report.
“We have lost an outstanding figure who played a major role in shaping the company,” Ulrich Lehner, chairman of ThyssenKrupp’s supervisory board, said in the statement. “Berthold Beitz experienced the highs and lows of Germany’s recent history. During World War II, together with his wife, he set an impressive example of courage and humanity.”
Early Years
Berthold Beitz was born on Sept. 26, 1913, in the German town of Zemmin. He trained as a banker, following in his father’s footsteps, and started his career in 1937 as the deputy branch manager of a lender in the northern German town of Demmin, according to the website of Munzinger Archiv GmbH, a Ravensburg, Germany-based archive company.In 1939, Beitz went to work for the German unit of Royal Dutch Shell in Hamburg and was excused from military service when World War II broke out.
After the war, he was awarded Poland’s highest civil order and was the first West German businessman to be invited to the country on an official visit, according to Munzinger.
In 1963, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer asked Beitz to become ambassador to Moscow, as he enjoyed a good relationship with communist leaders and invited East Germany’s Erich Honecker on annual hunting trips, according to a report on ARD television. Beitz declined to take the job, the German broadcaster said in a report on the history of Germans and Poles on its website.
Honorary Chairman
Beitz was an honorary chairman of ThyssenKrupp’s supervisory board and chairman of the board of trustees for the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, which held 25.3 percent of the company as of September 2012. The foundation manages the Krupp family fortune and sponsors sports and culture as well as reconciliation projects with eastern Europe and Russia.Beitz was a member of the International Olympic Committee from 1972 to 1988, according to the Olympic Movement’s website, which lists sailing, shooting and rowing as sports he practiced.
In 1973, Yad Vashem named him to its Righteous Among the Nations, honoring non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
“From the bottom of my heart, I am proud to have helped all these Jews escape the death trains,” Beitz told Marek Halter in an interview for “Stories of Deliverance,” Halter’s book. “But, truthfully, how could I have lived if I had not done it?”
Beitz and his wife, Else, had three daughters, Barbara, Susanne and Bettina.
In 2009, his grandsons Robert Ziff, Dirk Ziff and Daniel Ziff -- whose father, William Ziff, was an heir to and longtime CEO of the Ziff-Davis magazine publishing company who married Barbara Beitz before divorcing -- established the Berthold Beitz professor in human rights and international affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The position was created to “honor the life and legacy” of Beitz.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Comfort in Frankfurt at ncomfort1@bloomberg.net
*****The Economist
Berthold Beitz
The compassionate steel baron
Mr Beitz was the last great German industrial baron. He was also respected as a German who saved Jews from deportation by the Nazis during the second world war. Born in 1913 the son of a civil servant, he did a banking apprenticeship before joining an oil company, a subsidiary of Shell, in 1938.
Four years later he was managing oil interests in occupied Poland. There he risked his life rescuing hundreds of Jews from deportation, insisting that he needed them as workers (as did Oskar Schindler in Nazi-occupied Bohemia). The Holocaust memorial centre Yad Vashem honoured Mr Beitz as “righteous among nations” in 1973.
After the war Mr Beitz was the driving force behind the steel concern Friedrich Krupp, which after two big mergers now trades as ThyssenKrupp. He met Alfried Krupp, the great great-grandson of the founder, by chance in 1953. Within a year he was his trusted general manager at the family firm. Yet his real power came after Alfried’s death in 1967, as chairman of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, which controls the family interests and today still has a blocking 25.3% stake in ThyssenKrupp and can appoint three members to the supervisory board.
Mr Beitz steered the firm through its darkest days in 1967, when banks would not lend to it without government support. In 1973 he brought in the Iranian monarchy as a 25% shareholder. He was less a visionary, more of a principled player, acting in the interests of the family and the business ethics they espoused. Shareholder value was less important than the general good of all stakeholders. But he did agree, in 1987, to close a historic steelworks at Rheinhausen, with the loss of thousands of jobs.
From that time until earlier this year his right-hand man was Gerhard Cromme, first as chief executive and then as chairman of the evolving concern. Mr Cromme took Krupp through mergers with Hoesch and Thyssen. He was also Mr Beitz’s heir-apparent at the Krupp foundation. Together they saw ThyssenKrupp flourish, especially in the early years of last decade.
But earlier this year some terrible business decisions came home to roost: billions misspent on greenfield factories in Brazil and North America, and ThyssenKrupp’s involvement in a steel railway track pricing cartel. Even Mr Beitz could see that Mr Cromme had to fall on his sword. That left a vacuum, more at the foundation than at ThyssenKrupp. Whoever succeeds Mr Beitz there will continue to call the shots at the firm—and will loom large in German industry.
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