User:Eli185/Emil Tscheulin

Emil Wilhelm Tscheulin (December 26, 1884 in Teningen - October 17, 1951) was a German industrialist, pioneer of the aluminum industry and convicted Nazi leader involved in Aryanizing Jewish property.

Early years

Training and operations manager

Son of a molder in an iron foundry and machine factory, Tscheulin apprenticed in his father's company where he was trained as a machinist as well as in commerce. After military service he became plant manager at the age of 22.

Tscheulin became technical management of an aluminum company. In a start-up phase, the production process for aluminum foil was technically improved. The first foils were delivered as early as January 1911.

Founder

Tscheulin and his brother-in-law Wilhelm Ingold founded their own company in Teningen in 1913 under the name Aluminium-Folien-Fabrik GmbH, where he continued to produce foil using the book-rolling process.

During the First World War, production at this plant was severely restricted; at times, zinc was processed into foil instead of aluminum. For a short time, Tscheulin and Ingold were also drafted into the army as soldiers.

In 1919, Emil Tscheulin, Wilhelm Ingold and the owners of the Karlsruhe hardware store L. J. Ettlinger, Martin Elsas and Leopold Neumann, founded Breisgau-Walzwerk GmbH, Teningen.

With this new start, the company had also switched from the package or book rolling process to the strip rolling process. In 1926, AWAG in Schaffhausen, to which the aluminum plant in Singen also belonged, acquired L. J. Ettlinger's shares in the Breisgau rolling mill, and the Singen-based Aluwerke, headed by Hans Constantin Paulssen, took over the management of the plant. Tscheulin and Ingold left the reorganized company after a short period of affiliation and set up a new plant in Deißlingen, then in Württemberg, as they had contractually agreed not to settle in Baden for three years.

During this time Tscheulin was also in the USA and Canada, studying the North American aluminum industry, and making business contacts in the 1930s and also during the rebuilding after the Second World War. The time between 1926 and 1929 was used to build a completely new plant in Teningen.

Move to Teningen

In 1929, the company moved into the new factory buildings in Teningen, where a smelter and a strip rolling mill were set up. At the same time, an aluminum powder company was founded to recycle the aluminum waste. The powder factory was sold again in 1934.

In 1937, Tscheulin started the production of aluminum tubes, and from 1938, pleated bottle capsules for champagne and wine bottles were manufactured. However, the main products were aluminum foils for the production of condensers and for packaging. To enhance the latter, the foils were laminated, dyed and printed. This also resulted in collectible pictures made of colorful aluminum foil, which were enclosed with cigarette packages. Tscheulin produced the cigarettes in a cigarette factory he founded at the time. The pictures could be pasted into a scrapbook entitled "German Fairy Tales in Words and Pictures," which had been published by Tscheulin. Another curiosity was the production of emergency money during the 1923 inflation, in which aluminum foil was printed instead of paper. Apart from the Singen aluminum rolling mills, Tscheulin was the only producer of such banknotes.

In 1931,Tscheulin took over half the capital of the machine factory saving it from insolvency. In 1932, under Tscheulin's mediation, a Frankfurt capacitor factory moved its headquarters to Teningen because considerable cost advantages could be achieved here for the production of aluminum electrolytic capacitors due to the low transport costs for the aluminum foil and technological cooperation. In June 1933, Tscheulin submitted an application for the construction of a raw aluminum plant to the Reich Ministry of Economics. But in 1933, Berlin no longer permitted the establishment of plants that were important for armaments if they were located near the border. The application of Tscheulin, who wanted to invest one million RM, was not approved.

Nazi era 1933-1945

Early supporter of Nazis

Emil Tscheulin joined the Nazi party in 1932. He was one of the earliest and most influential promoters of National Socialism in Baden and had been a supporter of the Nazi party (NSDAP) since 1930. He supported the Baden NSDAP with considerable sums of money. In 1932, he also became head of the light metal goods section in the Freiburg Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK). Alongside Wilhelm Keppler in Eberbach, Eduard Max Hofweber of Heinrich Lanz AG and Fritz Reuther of Bopp & Reuther, both in Mannheim, he was one of the few industrialists in Baden to publicly declare his support for National Socialism before 1933.

From 1939 to 1945, aluminum foils were only allowed to be produced for war-related purposes. Emil Tscheulin produced 60 percent of the Reich's capacitor foils during the war using forced labor from Nazi occupied countries.

Thus, in addition to 99 Frenchmen (including 42 Alsatians), 62 Belarussians and 30 Ukrainians as well as members of other nations worked in the aluminum plant. Tscheulin also maintained a camp in which the forced laborers were housed. In 1944, among the approximately 800 employees of Tscheulin, there were 375 forced laborers. If one compares the proportion of forced laborers in the aluminum plant with that of other plants, such as the armaments forge Daimler-Benz in Mannheim, which was 31.2% in 1944, it becomes clear that the aluminum plant had requested a considerable number of forced laborers for its operations.

To evade regulations that protected German employees, especially for women, for example with regard to weekly working hours as well as night work, Tscheulin's companies used female forced workers from the East for the night shifts, with shifts of 62.75 hours a week. Tscheulin applied to be allowed to use his Eastern workers for 72 hours in production. The request was granted.

Tscheulin's role in building up the NSDAP in Teningen

Tscheulin was the driving force behind the establishment of the NSDAP local group in Teningen. His promotion of National Socialism in Teningen was reported in detail in the official gazette of the municipality from 1938 onwards, which is why Tscheulin's activities are particularly well documented. In 1930, for example, he recruited a foreman employed in his company for the NSDAP, after the foreman had already campaigned for Tscheulin and against the Social Democratic municipal councilor Fritz Schieler in a regional newspaper a year earlier..Tscheulin proposed his Werkmeister as NSDAP local group leader of the new local group to be founded. In the same year, the Werkmeister also founded the SA Emmendingen, in which he made a career as a Sturmbannführer of the SA.

An expression of Tscheulin's support of the NSDAP local group was the fact that of the first 67 party members in the village, 42 were employed in the aluminum plant. Tscheulin also bore the costs of the party work, granted the local group leader employed by him paid leave for his commitment to the NSDAP and in 1932 committed himself to the latter to pay for all costs incurred in hall battles of the Sturmabteilung, however, on the condition that the Teningen SA remained victorious.

The official gazette of the municipality reported retrospectively that the Tscheulin plant was already a "National Socialist stronghold" in the spring of 1932 and "literally a fortress from which the SA made its outbursts." In the aluminum plant "the weapons of the SA were stored, the files were seized and no police dared to touch the plant"..Furthermore, tips for the storm flags were made in the aluminum plant and deadbeats were cast from aluminum.Emil Tscheulin himself procured firearms, which he passed on to party comrades, although the SA, like the SS, was strictly forbidden to possess firearms. He also personally intervened on the side of the SA in their brawls with Social Democratic activists of the Reichsbanner..

National Socialist Business Cell Organizations (NSBO)

An essential role in the establishment of National Socialist structures in Teningen was played by the founding of National Socialist Business Cell Organizations NSBO. This action was particularly successful in Teningen, as evidenced by the fact that by February 1932, one year before Hitler's "seizure of power", 650 NSBO members had been recruited.In Emil Tscheulin's company, all but a few employees were already members of the NSBO by the end of 1931.

With the NSBOs, the National Socialists attempted from 1931 to eliminate the influence of trade unions and Social Democrats in the factories, an objective that Tscheulin successfully implemented in his plant. In August 1939, the official gazette of the municipality retrospectively stated that in Teningen in 1932 the "relatively largest company cell organization in the Gau Baden" existed.

NSDAP celebrities visit

The close and early connection between Tscheulin and the NSDAP is also characterized by the NSDAP party celebrities, some of whom were received in the canteen of the aluminum plant in Teningen even before 1933:

• Ernst Röhm, der Oberste SA-Führer.
• Robert Wagner, Gauleiter von Baden.
• Walter Köhler, SA-Führer und Ministerpräsident von Baden 1933 bis 1945.
• Karl Pflaumer, Badischer Innenminister 1933 bis 1945 und SS-Brigadeführer.
• Hanns Elard Ludin, Führer des SA-Gau-Sturms Baden.
• Josef Wasmer, Führer der SA-Brigade 54.
• Dietrich von Jagow, SA-Obergruppenführer.

President of the Freiburg Chamber of Commerce (IHK)

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Tscheulin became president of the Freiburg Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK), which was no longer independent, however, but subordinate to the Baden IHK in accordance with the Führer principle. He held this office until 1945. From 1940 to 1943, he was also president of the IHK Mulhouse and Kolmar, after Germany annexed Alsace. Tscheulin had excellent relations with the Nazi Gauleiter Robert Wagner, who from 1940 was also head of the civil administration in the reincorporated Alsace.

Leading role in Aryanizations of Jewish property

As president of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Tscheulin also played a role in the "Aryanization" of Jewish companies that should not be underestimated. The Chambers of Industry and Commerce had to provide expert opinions on the implementation of the "Aryanization" in the corresponding "proceedings" and had to approve the purchase agreement as well as the purchase price. Tscheulin apparently had considerable leeway in his decision-making and used this as late as 1942 in the case of Hans Mez, a Freiburg manufacturer of sewing silk, who was accused of being "half-Jewish". Tscheulin campaigned for Mez against various party circles, but was unsuccessful.

Takeover of Metallwerk Oscar Weil Gmbh

Metallwerk Oscar Weil G.m.b.H, a Jewish owned company in Lahr, had 150 employees at the time and was the market leader in Europe for steel and aluminum wool, known among other things for its abrazo brand. The company had considerable importance in terms of armaments and foreign exchange policy. In 1938, the Jewish head of the company, Hugo Weil, applied to the Reich Chancellery for an exemption from the threatened "Aryanization" on the grounds that his cooperation could not be dispensed with because of his foreign contacts, in an attempt to transfer his company to his non-Jewish son-in-law. Tscheulin spoke out against Weil's request and the Reich Ministry of the Interior rejected his request for an exception. Metallwerk Oscar Weil was transfered on December 1, 1939 to Tscheulin's son-in-law, Clemens Kentrup.

From 1945 to 1948, the plant was shut down. The production facilities were dismantled and the factory buildings were largely converted into French barracks.

War crimes and denazification

Post War

In 1949, Tscheulin was able to deliver the first tubes made of aluminum, and in 1950 the first rolling mills went into operation. In 1951, a few weeks before Emil Tscheulin's death, a new smelter and a blooming and strip rolling mill started operations.

The plant founded by Tscheulin still produces printed films today, belonged to the Canadian aluminum producer Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA) until 2010 and has since been taken over by the Australian packaging specialist Amcor Flexibles.

Conviction for Nazi crimes

Because of his active work for the Nazi regime, Tscheulin was sentenced to 40 months of internment and a fine of 5,000 marks; he served the sentence from 1945 to 1947.. His brother-in-law Wilhelm Ingold also served a prison sentence of several years.

Honors

Memorial plaque at the evangelic church in Köndringen

Straßenschild in Köndringen

• Emil Tscheulin war Ehrenbürger der Gemeinde Teningen. Die Ehrenbürgerschaft wurde ihm nach 1945 wegen seiner nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit aberkannt.
• 1951 wurde er vom Gemeinderat der damals selbständigen Gemeinde Köndringen zum Ehrenbürger ernannt.
• An der evangelischen Kirche Köndringen wurde 1954 von der Gemeinde Köndringen eine Gedenktafel zu seinen Ehren angebracht.
• In Teningen ist eine Straße nach Emil Tscheulin benannt (48.1327°N 7.8075°E / 48.1327; 7.8075 (Tscheulinstrasse)). Auch in anderen Orten Badens trugen Straßen Tscheulins Namen. Allerdings hatten diese Benennungen dort keinen Bestand, so in der Stadt Kenzingen, wo die Emil-Tscheulin-Straße nach 1945 in Offenburger Straße umbenannt worden ist.
• Tscheulin war Ehrensenator der Universität Freiburg. Im Oktober 2017 distanzierte sich die Universität Freiburg durch einen Senatsbeschluss von der Ernennung Tscheulins zum Ehrensenator.

Research into Emil Tscheulin

Ergänzungstafel zur Gedenktafel an der evangelischen Kirche in Köndringen

In October 2011, Teningen townspeople addressed a letter to Mayor Heinz-Rudolf Hagenacker and the Protestant pastor of Köndringen, Andreas Bordne, demanding clarification of Emil Tscheulin's National Socialist past. They were interviewed on the radio on November 18, 2011.

In response there was a pledge to commission historians, however, at the end of July 2012, the Teningen municipal council rejected the participation of the municipality in the historical reappraisal by scholars from the University of Freiburg.

Hans-Georg Otten-Tscheulin, a grandson of Emil Tscheulin, commissioned an investigation into Tscheulin's activities, while stating that there was no obligation to publishe the research since it was privately financed.

The awarding of honors for Emil Tscheulin was the subject of "Think without Nazis", a public event in Teningen in March 2013. Participants included historians Norbert Ohler and Wolfram Wette as well as Günter Stein from the organizer. Radio Dreyeckland, among others, reported on the event.

On February 1, 2015, information about Tscheulin's Nazi past was placed next to the honorary plaque at the Lutheran church. The DEMON citizens' initiative continues to demand the removal of a portrait of Tscheulin in the entrance room of Teningen's town hall and the renaming of Tscheulinstrasse in Teningen. The portrait in the entrance to the town hall was taken down in 2017 due to renovation work.

Literature

• Tscheulin-Zigarettenfabrik G.m.b.H. (Hrsg.): Deutsche Märchen in Wort und Bild. Mappe mit 6 Tafeln; Text auf der Rückseite und Aluminium-Klebebilder. Teningen 1934.
• Otto Ernst Sutter: Fünfundzwanzig Jahre der Herstellung von Aluminiumfolien zu Teningen i. Breisgau. Festschrift zum 11. Jan. 1936. Teningen i. Br. Aluminiumwerk Tscheulin G.m.b.H., Teningen 1936.
• Aluminium-Walzwerke Singen (Hrsg.): 25 Jahre Aluminium-Walzwerke Singen. AWS 1912–1937. Singen 1937.
• Aluminium-Walzwerke Singen (Hrsg.): 50 Jahre Singen Aluminium. Singen 1962.
• Ilse Benig: 50 Jahre Aluminium Folien. Verlag für Industrie, Wirtschaft und Verkehr, Mannheim 1963.
• Norbert Ohler: Die Gemeinden im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. In: Peter Schmidt (Hrsg.): Teningen – Ein Heimatbuch. Gemeinde Teningen 1990, ISBN 3-9802631-3-4, S. 377–466.
• Thomas Schnabel (Hrsg.): Die Machtergreifung in Südwestdeutschland. Das Ende der Weimarer Republik in Baden und Württemberg 1928–1933. (Schriftenreihe der Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg, Bd. 2.) Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-17-007549-7.
• Roland Peter: Rüstungspolitik in Baden. Kriegswirtschaft und Arbeitseinsatz in einer Grenzregion im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg Verlag, München 1995, ISBN 3-486-56057-3.
• Roland Peter: Die Kammern unterm Hakenkreuz. In: Bernd Boll, Ursula Huggle (Hrsg.): Die Industrie- und Handelskammer Südlicher Oberrhein. Geschichte und Wirkungsfeld der Kammern Freiburg und Lahr. hrsg. im Auftr. der Industrie- und Handelskammer Südlicher Oberrhein. IHK Südlicher Oberrhein, Freiburg 1998, ISBN 3-00-002797-1, S. 145–174.
• Ute Deichmann: Flüchten, Mitmachen, Vergessen. – Chemiker und Biochemiker in der NS-Zeit. 1. Auflage. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2001, ISBN 3-527-30264-6.
• Friedrich Burrer: Die Handelskammer Mannheim auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich. IHK – Wirtschaftsmagazin Rhein-Neckar 10:8-10. Mannheim 2004.
• Norbert Ohler: Die Geschichte der Ortsgruppe der Teninger NSDAP. Ein bemerkenswertes Dokument. In: Die Pforte. 28/29 Kenzingen 2009, S. 112–136.
• Gerhard A. Auer: „In unserer kleinen Stadt“ – Emmendingen zwischen 1910 und 1945. In: Hans-Jörg Jenne, Gerhard A. Auer (Hrsg. im Auftrag der Stadt Emmendingen): Geschichte der Stadt Emmendingen. Bd. 2: Vom Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1945. Emmendingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-9811180-1-8, S. 189–588.
• Neisen, Robert & Brieler, Andreas (Vorred.): Von der Aluminium-Folien-Fabrik zur Tscheulin-Rothal GmbH: 100 Jahre Aluminiumfolien aus Teningen. dori-Verlag Bötzingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-9814362-4-2.
• Ulrich Niemann: Emil Tscheulin: „Dem Fabrikanten und Ehrenbürger zum Gedächtnis“. In: Wolfgang Proske (Hrsg.): Täter Helfer Trittbrettfahrer. NS-Belastete aus Baden-Württemberg, Band 6: NS-Belastete aus Südbaden. Gerstetten : Kugelberg, 2017 ISBN 978-3-945893-06-7, S. 355–369

Weblinks

• Prof. Dr. Wolfram Wette, Freiburg/Waldkirch, zum Thema „NS-Geschichte: Verdrängen oder aufarbeiten? Erinnerungskultur am Beispiel Emil Tscheulin“

References

[[Category:1951 deaths]] [[Category:1884 births]] [[Category:German people]] [[Category:Nazi Party members]] [[Category:German businesspeople]] [[Category:20th-century businesspeople]] [[Category:Industrialists]]