The Respectable Career of Fritz K. (eBook)

Hartmut Berghoff is Director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. and Professor of Economic History at the University of Göttingen in Germany. In 1998 he won the ABB-Wissenschaftspreis for his book on the harmonica manufacturer Hohner, Zwischen Kleinstadt und Weltmarkt (Schöningh, 1997). Most recently he co-edited Business in the Age of Extremes: Essays on the Economic History of Germany and Austria (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

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.

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