“Our Laundry was brown but otherwise clean.” With this Freudian blunder brought Hermann Röchling, inadvertently, his relationship to national socialism. The German industrial Baron scored in the first half of the twentieth century the most important German steel and arms manufacturers. A Arte documentary traces the eventful life story of the innovative entrepreneur, was able to continue its economic interests to the political situation.
Behind the big steel cookers from the Ruhr area, Röchling has played only second fiddle. This has rankled the 1871 as the Scion of an industrial family-born entrepreneur’s life. It has but also his ambition spurred.
even as a 24-Year-old, he was in the order of the father of his first factory on the green Meadow. From a trip to the East coast of the US, where steel production was a leader, he brought advanced production techniques with home. Thanks to his technical expertise, Saarland blast furnaces in Europe have been competitive.
the Film is The ambivalent image of a visionary reconstructed large-scale entrepreneur. So the steel workers in times of peace, were in the enjoyment of exemplary social services. Röchling, a company built its own hospital with its own Nursery. Photographs document even, a preform of today’s fitness studios. The success story is, however, wars are closely intertwined with the world, from which the shrewd man of business, each capital was able to beat. In the First world war, he produced the steel helmets of those soldiers that fell at Verdun.
Under the Nazis, he then became a close Confidant of Adolf Hitler, the extermination plans he supported as a “General Plenipotentiary for the iron and steel industry” actively. With his “vengeance weapon the V3”, also known as “Industrious let Chen”, should London be fired.
The double Threw, two martial facial scar
Röchlings trademark: The double Kicked, two martial facial scar, and signaled in accordance with the ideology of the student’s scale: this man, back before the enemy. Not everyone in his family came clear with this attitude. The older brother Richard took in 1898 by the life.
By this blow of fate Hermann Röchling was not to be dissuaded from his path. As a typical “Mr man”, the sat, in spite of horse-hair Allergy, like to Ross, he was also Hitler’s racial madness, he “mantra” repeated. Already in 1940, the first prisoners of war came to Völklingen. More than 1200 people, including the Soviet Union, had to toil as forced labor for the armaments industry. In front of the camera for a Russian time, remembers a witness to this dark period.
Nina Koshofer, known for documentaries such as “The Jews: story of a people”, rolls out a lesser-known Chapter of Franco – German industrial and economic history. Discreet Nachinszenierungen, in which Klaus Schindler in Röchlings slips role, illustrate the life and work of a charismatic Patriarch.
Former workers of the 1986 decommissioned site at the völklingen ironworks, today, next to the great wall of China and the pyramids of Giza as a world heritage site, a tribute to the work of the old man great respect, despite his doubts past: After he had been sentenced already by the end of the First world war for crimes against humanity, it was Röchling 1946, the accused in Rastatt.
The following the example of the Nuremberg trials, held the Tribunal of the French military authorities sentenced him to ten years in prison, the catchment of the assets and the loss of civil rights. Amazingly, the price received Röchling 1952, three years before his death, the Ernst-Siemens-a high-level award for persons who have distinguished themselves by scientific and technical achievements. German history is sometimes not easy to understand.
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Joachim Göres