Flick family
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The Flick family is a wealthy German industrial and political dynasty, heir to an industrial empire that formerly embraced holding in companies involved in coal, steel and a minority holding in Daimler AG.
Friedrich Flick (July 10, 1883 in Ernsdorf - July 20, 1972 in Konstanz) was the founder of the dynasty, establishing a major industrial conglomerate during the Weimar Republic, becoming a member and funder of the Nazi party, and profiting from the liquidation of Jewish property, becoming one of Hitler's major armaments producers, his factories becoming notorious for using slave labour from 48,000 concentration camp inmates, 80% of whom died during the war.
He was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials in 1947, and received a seven-year prison sentence, but only served three years, benefitting from the infamous release of Nazi industrialist Alfred Krupp et al. in 1951 by U.S. high commissioner John J. McCloy, after which he went on to rebuild his business empire, becoming one of the world's wealthiest people by the time of his death in 1972, refusing to compensate his victims and leaving his empire to his son Friedrich Karl Flick (1927-2006).
The 1983 Flick Affair revealed that German politicians had been bribed to allow the Flick family to reduce its tax liabilities, and after becoming an Austrian citizen to further reduce his tax obligations, in 1985 Friedrich Karl Flick sold most of his industrial holdings to Deutsche Bank for $2.5 billion (£1.4 billion), retiring until his 2006 death.
On Thursday November 20th 2008, it was reported that his body was stolen from a cemetery in Veldel, Austria.
[edit] Controversy
The Flick family has courted controversy for its Nazi legacy and total refusal to pay compensation to wartime victims, along with kidnapping attempts. Only Dagmar (Flick) Ottmann paid into the German fond for forced laborers after realizing that the rest of her family is unconvinceable.
In 1997 Oxford University rejected a £350,000 donation from Gert Rudolph Flick to endow a professorship in Human Thought at Balliol College, Oxford, after a campaign by university staff and the Jewish community.
The attempt by Friedrich Christian Flick to display his art collection in Zurich in a museum to be built by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, was rejected by the Swiss authorities. In September 2004, the collection was exhibited in Berlin at the Hamburger Bahnhof gallery over the protest of Jewish groups.
A German High School in Friedrich Flick's hometown was called "Friedrich-Flick-Gymnasium" until September 2008, named after a convicted war criminal. With a contribution Flick had made in possible to built this school in 1969. After a 20 year controversy the municipal renamed the school, especially after a iniatives of former students run a campagne called "Flick ist kein Vorbild" (Flick is no example). The website of this campagne http://www.flick-ist-kein-vorbild.de (german) shows not only detailed information about Friedrich Flick, his involvement in the holocaust, and the connection to his hometown, it mainly documentates the controversy about the Flick-Gymnasium, e. g. Videos from German or Polish and Ukrainian News-Channels, because most of Flick's forced laborers lived in Poland or Ukraine.
[edit] Notable members of the Flick family
Children of Friedrich Flick:
- Otto-Ernst Flick (1916-74), his children :
- Dagmar Gräfin (countess) Vitzthum von Eckstaedt, now Ottmann
- Gert Rudolph Flick "Muck Flick" (married and divorced to Princess Donatella Missikoff of Ossetia)
- Friedrich Christian Flick "Mick Flick" (September 19, 1944) :
- Friedrich-Alexander (March 9, 1986) (with Maya Gräfin von Schönburg-Glauchau)
- Maria-Pilar (August 2, 1988) (with Maya Gräfin von Schönburg-Glauchau)
- Ernst-Moritz (August 27, 1989) (with Maya Gräfin von Schönburg-Glauchau)
- Rudolf Flick (born 1919, died during WW II)
- Friedrich Karl Flick (February 3, 1927 - October 5, 2006)- industrialist, involved in a German political scandal; married three times (no children with first wife) :
- Alexandra (with Ursula Kloiber née Reuther)
- Elisabeth Anna (December 24, 1973) (with Ursula Kloiber née Reuther) m. Prince Wilhelm Alexander von Auersperg-Breunner (April 23, 1968)
- Victoria-Katharina (with Ingrid Ragger)
- Karl-Friedrich (with Ingrid Ragger)
Other Flick family members:
- Donatella Flick, born Princess Donatella Missikoff - socialite and philanthropist, former wife of Gert Rudolph Flick.
- Maria (Maya) Flick, born Gräfin (countess) von Schönburg-Glauchau - daughter of Joachim, Count von Schönburg-Glauchau and sister of Gloria, Princess of Thurn and Taxis.[[
