Dog Years (88 page)

176
Franz and Karl Moor,
rebels against society in Schiller's early revolutionary drama
Die R
ä
uber.

184
Arthur Greiser,
National Socialist, succeeded Hermann Rauschning as President of the Danzig Senate and signed a treaty with the Nationalist Socialists regarding relations between Poland and Danzig.

193
Houston Stewart Chamberlain,
1855-1927, son-in-law of Richard Wagner, propagated Count Gobineau's racial theories. His main work,
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,
exalts the Teutonic race and laid the groundwork for ideological anti-Semitism in Germany.

204
SA man Brand,
propaganda figure of National Socialism, touted as hero and martyr of the Movement. --
Herbert Norkus,
Hitler youth, killed in 1932 in one of the bloody battles between Nazis and Communists. --
Horst Wessel,
SA leader of dubious morals, killed in a fight with Communists. Author and composer of the "Horst Wessel Lied," which became the second National Anthem in the Third Reich.

206
Wilhelm Lobsack,
Nazi publicist and speaker, who edited the speeches and writings of the Danzig Gauleiter Albert Forster.

244
Richard Billinger,
Austrian dramatist, dealt with the conflict between progress and mechanized city life on the one hand and the demonic world of the peasant on the other. In
The Giant
(1937), a peasant girl succumbs to the temptations of the city and finally drowns herself. Her seducer is the son of Donata Opferkuch. --
The phenomenology of a stockingcap:
the reference is to Martin Heidegger, who studied under Edmund Husserl, the founder of a new philosophical method which he called phenomenology. In 1927, Heidegger published his principal work,
Being and Time.
Soon after Hitler's rise to power, Heidegger came out in favor of the Nazi regime. His predilection for the stockingcap of the Alemannic peasant betokened his attachment to the simple life and the soil of his native Baden. He lives in Todtnau, in the Black Forest. --
Abstrusely secular lyric poetry
is a reference to the Expressionist poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), who also supported National Socialism from 1932 to 1934, but was later disillusioned and attacked by the regime. The fragments cited in the text are from his poem "Das sp
ä
te Ich" (The late I). One of his early works is entitled "Morgue."

388
The raving Beckmann
is a reference to the protagonist of the postwar play
Outside the Door
by Wolfgang Borchert, which describes the plight of the returning and unwanted soldier.

407
Max Reimann,
Communist Party leader in postwar Germany.

410
Quirinus Kuhlmann,
1651-89, great lyric poet of the baroque, burnt in Moscow as a heretic.

418 In article 12 of the Potsdam Pact, signed at the end of the war, the Allies outlawed "undue concentration of German economic power." A number of "decartelization laws" were issued, affecting all cartels, or trusts, and many other corporations and private businesses. Their purpose was to break the power of German heavy industry which had helped establish Hitler's rule. It was argued that excessive concentrations of economic power impeded the functioning of democratic institutions and that German economic life should be guided by the spirit of free competition prevailing in the United States, France, and England. But the worm was in the economic system from the start -- the expansion following the currency reform led to the formation of new trusts and monopolies. The old and new men of power:
Axel Springer,
who soon after the war founded the radio magazine
H
ö
r Zu
(Tune In), published under British license, which today has the largest circulation of any German periodical (four million). He now directs the largest and most influential newspaper chain in Germany, which publishes the newspapers
Bild, Die Welt,
and the magazine
Kristall.
Springer also controls two publishing houses, Ullstein AG and Propylaen Verlag. --
Gerd Bucerius,
founder of Zeit-Verlag GmbH, which own an interest in the Henry Nannen Verlag. These houses publish the weekly
Die Zeit
and
Stern,
one of the big illustrated magazines. From 1949 to 1962 Bucerius was a Christian Democratic member of the Bundestag. --
Rudolf Augstein,
after a short-lived experiment with the weekly
Die Woche,
in 1946 founded the news magazine
Der Spiegel
on the model of
Time
magazine. --
Otto-Ernst Flick,
son of the industrialist Friedrich Flick, who was sentenced to a prison term by the Nuremberg War Crimes court. Friedrich Flick KG was obliged by the decartelization law to withdraw from mining. Today it again holds an interest in Harpener Bergbau AG and is in fluential in numerous corporations, such as Daimler Benz AG. Otto-Ernst Flick is a board member and executive in these firms. --
Ernst Schneider,
chairman of the board and a large shareholder in Kohlensaure-Industrie AG, in which the C. G. Trinkhaus private bank also holds an interest. --
The Michel group,
whose holdings in the Soviet zone were confiscated, built up a new soft-coal corporation on the basis of four mines it had retained in West Germany. --
Vicco von Bülow-Schwante,
landowner in Mecklenburg and retired ambassador, is chairman of the board of the Stumm family's mining company in the Saar --
Bertold Beitz.
was director of the Polish oil fields during the war. In 1953 he became chairman of the board of Friedrich Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach and directed the rebuilding of the Krupp Corporation, which was largely dissolved in 1945. --
Carl F. W. Borgward,
owner of the Borgward Automobile Corporation, which has meanwhile gone into bankruptcy. --
Heinrich Nordhoff,
chairman of the board of Volkswagen AG, Europe's largest producer of automobiles. --
Herbert Quand
directs in partnership with his brother Harald the concern inherited from their father, which has absorbed the Burbach Potash Works. --
I-G Successors:
In 1945 I-G Farben (the German Dye Trust) was the largest of German corporations. On the strength of Law No. 35 of the Allied High Commission it was split up into the following concerns: Badische Anilin- u. Soda-Fabrik AG, Farbenfabriken, Bayer AG, Farbwerke H
ö
chst AG. --
Hjalmar Schacht,
economist, banker, former finance minister and president of the Reichsbank, in 1946 acquitted of war crimes charges by the Nuremberg court. Today he is part owner of the Schacht & Co. export-import bank, in Düsseldorf. --
Julius Munnemann
became, thanks to a new method of industrial financing, one of the most successful German financiers in the years after the war. --
Willy H. Schlieker
developed, in the same period, an important government enterprise in the Ruhr. After having built the world's most modern shipyard in Hamburg, his firm went into bankruptcy. --
Joseph Neckermann
in 1950 founded the Neckermann Versand KG, a mail-order house, which with ninety-one outlets is today the leading German enterprise of its kind. --
Max Grundig
developed after the war a small radio business into a large corporation which is now one of the world's foremost producers of radios, phonographs, and other electrical appliances. --
Hermann F. Reemtsma
vastly expanded the production of the Reemtsma cigarette factories after the war. --
Rudolf Brinckmann,
banker, part owner of the Brinckmann, Wirtz & Co. bank (formerly M. M. Warburg). --
Hermann J. Abs,
chairman of the Deutsche Bank AG, one of the three largest German banks. Member of the board of almost thirty leading corporations. --
Kurt Forberg,
banker, part owner of the C. G. Trinkhaus bank; member of the board in some twenty-five concerns. --
Robert Pferdmenges,
banker, part owner of Sal. Oppenheim Jr. & Cie. bank. Helped to found the Christian Democratic Party in the Rhineland. Long-time friend of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. --
Rudolf August Oetker
expanded the flourishing baking powder factory inherited from his father and subsequently founded the largest German steamship company. --
Kurt Schumacher,
1930-33 Social Democratic member of the Reichstag, spent the years 1933-45 in a concentration camp. He was the first postwar chairman of the German Socialist Party and up to the time of his death in 1952 the most prominent figure in the opposition. --
Erich Ollenhauer,
chairman of the German Socialist Party after Schumacher. During the war he was a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party in exile. --
Dr. Eugen Gerstenmaier,
Protestant theologian and member of the German resistance movement during the war. Since 1949 a member of the Bundestag, of which he is now president. --
Dr. Otto Dibelius,
Protestant Bishop of Berlin since 1945. From 1954 to 1961 he was chairman of the World Council of Protestant Churches. --
Franz Joseph W
ü
rmeling
became Minister for Family Affairs in 1953. Known for his proposed legislation in favor of large families. --
Bruno Leuschner
became vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic in 1955, in 1960 a member of the state council, in charge of the co-ordination of economic plans. He died February 11, 1965. --
Otto Nuschke,
first chairman of the Communist Party in the German Democratic Republic, long vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers. --
Kurt Mewis,
appointed in 1960 to the Council of State of the German Democratic Republic. In 1961 became a minister and first chairman of the State Planning Commission. --
Petersberg Agreement:
an agreement concluded in May 1952 between the three Western occupation powers and the German Federal Republic. --
Erich Kuby,
left-wing journalist. --
Hans Globke,
one of the jurists who formulated the notorious Nuremberg laws by which the Nazis deprived the Jews of the rights of citizenship. In postwar Germany, he became chief assistant to Chancellor Adenauer.

434-435
Jan Wellem,
popular name of John William, elector palatine, 1679-1716, whose equestrian statue stands on Düsseldorf market place. --
Christian Dietrich Grabbe,
1801-36, German dramatist, who visited Düsseldorf and left it after a quarrel. Among his historical tragedies is the unfinished drama
Hannibal.

518f
Bundschuh and Poor Konrad, the monk Pfeiffer, Hipler and Geyer, the peasants of Mansfeld and Eichsfeld, etc.
are all references to the Peasants' War in South Germany in 1525. The Anabaptist Thomas Münzer (the Fury of Allstedt) was one of the leaders of the revolt. The insurgents were defeated at Frankenhausen and their leaders executed.