Read Online Fromms: How Julis Fromm's Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis by Michael Sontheimer, Götz Aly, Shelley Frisch - Free Book Online Page B
Ads: Link
quoted from Kafka’s
The Trial
, “does not come all at once; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgment.” Weitzmann added this interpretation of Kafka’s words: “There is absolutelyno pronouncement of a sentence: the defendant learns neither whether he has been found guilty nor when the judgment will be executed—until it is actually executed upon him.” In March 1960, Siegfried Weitzmann died in Tel Aviv. 28
View from the fourth floor of the factory, 1931
Nearly all the buildings Korn and Siegfried Weitzmann constructed between 1922 and 1934 have been destroyed. And the friendship between these two architectural masters came to an end in 1937 because of a woman. 29
In August 1990, Edgar Fromm applied for restitution of the Fromms Act working capital, the factory premises in Köpenick, and the real estate in Friedrichshagen on his own behalf and that of the widows of his brothers Max and Herbert at the Office for the Settlement of Disputed Property Claims in Berlin. He retained Petra Benoit-Raukopf, a lawyer in West Berlin, to handle the legal work. Her background, in brief, was this: She was the daughter of the Czech communist writer Otto Katz, who survived the Nazi years in French, British, and American exile andpublished under the name André Simone. After the war, Katz returned to Czechoslovakia and worked as editor-in-chief of the party newspaper
Rude Pravo
. In 1952 he and ten Jewish codefendants were found guilty of “Zionism” during the Stalinist, anti-Semitic Slánský trial in Prague, and they were hanged. All the non-Jewish defendants received prison sentences. His ashes and those of the other executed men were mixed into the road grit used in the winter by the Prague sanitation department.
In the hope of expediting the return of the properties, Edgar Fromm traveled to Berlin in the summer of 1991 to meet with officials at the Treuhandanstalt (the post-reunification privatization agency for East German enterprises), which was about to sell the site in Köpenick. This agency was located in the former Air Force Ministry of Hermann Göring. The meeting left Edgar Fromm reeling. The official who spoke with him was cordial, but he explained that this was no easy matter. “Look here,” he added by way of explanation, “I am working on the case of a gentleman in Israel who is ninety-three years old and in poor health. He will probably not live to see payment of the restitution.”
Edgar Fromm, who died in 1999, lived to see his restitution payment validated. In July 1994, the Office for the Settlement of Disputed Property Claims confirmed the legitimacy of the heirs’ claim to the property in Köpenick. But since the Stinnes Corporation had already invested money in it, a simple return of the property was deemed unfeasible, and the Treuhandanstalt had to pay out the proceeds of the sale to the heirs. 30 Edgar Fromm had died by the time reparations were finalized for the real estate in Friedrichshagen. In 2006—a full sixteen years after the application for restitution had been submitted—Petra Benoit-Raukopf was finally able to close the file for the restitution of the property, but the file on the restitution of the firm’s working capital remains open nineteen years later.
6.
F ROMMS A CT FOR G öRING’S G ODMOTHER
JULIUS FROMM WAS FAR TOO PREOCCUPIED with his company to show much interest in politics. He usually voted for the Deutsche Volkspartei (German People’s Party), whose business-friendly agenda meshed with his own interests. Besides, he quite liked the fact that the head of the Deutsche Volkspartei, Gustav Stresemann, was married to the daughter of a Jewish industrialist.
When Hitler became Reichskanzler in 1933, Fromm’s two directors in the company were Berthold Viert and Karl Lewis. Viert had joined the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party quite early, on October 1, 1930 (his membership number was 336158), and later served as the acting head of the local
The Trial
, “does not come all at once; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgment.” Weitzmann added this interpretation of Kafka’s words: “There is absolutelyno pronouncement of a sentence: the defendant learns neither whether he has been found guilty nor when the judgment will be executed—until it is actually executed upon him.” In March 1960, Siegfried Weitzmann died in Tel Aviv. 28
View from the fourth floor of the factory, 1931
Nearly all the buildings Korn and Siegfried Weitzmann constructed between 1922 and 1934 have been destroyed. And the friendship between these two architectural masters came to an end in 1937 because of a woman. 29
In August 1990, Edgar Fromm applied for restitution of the Fromms Act working capital, the factory premises in Köpenick, and the real estate in Friedrichshagen on his own behalf and that of the widows of his brothers Max and Herbert at the Office for the Settlement of Disputed Property Claims in Berlin. He retained Petra Benoit-Raukopf, a lawyer in West Berlin, to handle the legal work. Her background, in brief, was this: She was the daughter of the Czech communist writer Otto Katz, who survived the Nazi years in French, British, and American exile andpublished under the name André Simone. After the war, Katz returned to Czechoslovakia and worked as editor-in-chief of the party newspaper
Rude Pravo
. In 1952 he and ten Jewish codefendants were found guilty of “Zionism” during the Stalinist, anti-Semitic Slánský trial in Prague, and they were hanged. All the non-Jewish defendants received prison sentences. His ashes and those of the other executed men were mixed into the road grit used in the winter by the Prague sanitation department.
In the hope of expediting the return of the properties, Edgar Fromm traveled to Berlin in the summer of 1991 to meet with officials at the Treuhandanstalt (the post-reunification privatization agency for East German enterprises), which was about to sell the site in Köpenick. This agency was located in the former Air Force Ministry of Hermann Göring. The meeting left Edgar Fromm reeling. The official who spoke with him was cordial, but he explained that this was no easy matter. “Look here,” he added by way of explanation, “I am working on the case of a gentleman in Israel who is ninety-three years old and in poor health. He will probably not live to see payment of the restitution.”
Edgar Fromm, who died in 1999, lived to see his restitution payment validated. In July 1994, the Office for the Settlement of Disputed Property Claims confirmed the legitimacy of the heirs’ claim to the property in Köpenick. But since the Stinnes Corporation had already invested money in it, a simple return of the property was deemed unfeasible, and the Treuhandanstalt had to pay out the proceeds of the sale to the heirs. 30 Edgar Fromm had died by the time reparations were finalized for the real estate in Friedrichshagen. In 2006—a full sixteen years after the application for restitution had been submitted—Petra Benoit-Raukopf was finally able to close the file for the restitution of the property, but the file on the restitution of the firm’s working capital remains open nineteen years later.
6.
F ROMMS A CT FOR G öRING’S G ODMOTHER
JULIUS FROMM WAS FAR TOO PREOCCUPIED with his company to show much interest in politics. He usually voted for the Deutsche Volkspartei (German People’s Party), whose business-friendly agenda meshed with his own interests. Besides, he quite liked the fact that the head of the Deutsche Volkspartei, Gustav Stresemann, was married to the daughter of a Jewish industrialist.
When Hitler became Reichskanzler in 1933, Fromm’s two directors in the company were Berthold Viert and Karl Lewis. Viert had joined the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party quite early, on October 1, 1930 (his membership number was 336158), and later served as the acting head of the local
Similar Books
