The Respectable Career of Fritz K.

The Making and Remaking of a Provincial Nazi Leader
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78238-593-6
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 18, 376 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 697 g

Reihe: Studies in German History

Entrepreneur and Nazi functionary Fritz Kiehn lived through almost 100 years of German history, from the Bismarck era to the late Bonn Republic. A successful manufacturer, Kiehn joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and obtained a number of influential posts after 1933, making him one of the most powerful Nazi functionaries in southern Germany. These posts allowed him ample opportunity to profit from “Aryanizations” and state contracts. After 1945, he restored his reputation, was close to Adenauer's CDU during Germany's economic miracle, and was a respected and honored citizen in Trossingen. Kiehn's biography provides a key to understanding the political upheavals of the twentieth century, especially the workings of the corrupt Nazi system as well as the “coming to terms” with National Socialism in the Federal Republic.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Berghoff, Hartmut

Rauh, Cornelia

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Geschichtspolitik, Erinnerungskultur
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Biographien & Autobiographien: Historisch, Politisch, Militärisch
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

Foreword

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. Kiehn’s Rise to the Middle Class: A Traveling Salesman Becomes a Factory Owner

Chapter 2. Rapid Ascent through the Nazi Ranks: From Local Party Leader to Reichstag Delegate

Chapter 3. Fritz Kiehn, “Leader of the Württemberg Economy”

Chapter 4. Riding Nazi Party Coattails: Kiehn’s Industrial Ambitions

Chapter 5. Between Corruption and Camaraderie: The National Socialist Campaign to Curb Abuses

Chapter 6. Kiehn and Gustav Schickedanz in the Race for Aryanization

Chapter 7. Wartime Deals and “Marriage Politics”

Chapter 8. “The King of Trossingen”: Fritz Kiehn as a Local Grandee in the Third Reich

Chapter 9. From “War Criminal No. 1” to Sought-After Employer

Chapter 10. “Scot-free, by the skin of their teeth”—Denazification and Compensation

Chapter 11. “Ripe for Satire”: Entering the Social Market Economy with Public Loans

Chapter 12. “Kiehn left no one behind”? The “Factory Community” as a Network of “Old Comrades”

Chapter 13. Honorable Citizen Again: Kiehn and the “Economic Miracle”  

Chapter 14. The Twilight Years of an Honored West German

Chapter 15. Coming to Terms with the Past in the 21st Century

Conclusion: The (A)Typical Life of an Industrialist?

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Rauh, Cornelia
Cornelia Rauh holds the Contemporary History Chair at the University of Hanover. She is the author of Katholisches Milieu und Kleinstadtgesellschaft (Thorbecke, 1991) and Suisse Aluminium for Hitler’s War? The History of Alusuisse from 1918 to 1950 (Beck, 2009), which won the Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte (GUG) prize. She has also published biographies of entrepreneurs and other books on twentieth-century German and French history. Recently she has been researching the Nazi business of the Guelphs, an important family of the German high nobility.

Berghoff, Hartmut
Hartmut Berghoff is Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Göttingen in Germany. From 2008 to 2015 he was the Director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. His latest book, together with Ingo Köhler, is Varieties of Family Business. Germany and the United States, Past and Present (Campus/University of Chicago Press, 2020). Recently he co-edited The Consumer on the Home Front: Second World War Civilian Consumption in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I (Berghahn, 2019).

Hartmut Berghoff is Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Göttingen in Germany. From 2008 to 2015 he was the Director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. His latest book, together with Ingo Köhler, is Varieties of Family Business. Germany and the United States, Past and Present (Campus/University of Chicago Press, 2020). Recently he co-edited The Consumer on the Home Front: Second World War Civilian Consumption in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I (Berghahn, 2019).