Berthold Beitz

German industrialist who saved hundreds of Jews and Poles from the Nazis

n Berthold Beitz, industrialist. Born: 26 September, 1913, in Zemmin, germany. died: 30 July, in Sylt, germany, aged 99.

The rise of Berthold Beitz to the head of ThyssenKrupp, the steel conglomerate, is the stuff of modern German legend. he played a critical role in the rebuilding of postwar Germany into an industrial powerhouse.

Yet when Beitz died on Tuesday at the age of 99, he was remembered as much for his efforts to save hundreds of Jews and Poles from the Nazis while stationed in Poland during the Second World War.

Beitz worked for an oil company when the war broke out. Instead of being called up for active duty, he was sent by the Nazis to supervise the Borislav oil fields, which had fallen into German hands with the invasion of Poland in 1939.

Oil was crucial to hitler’s war machine, and Beitz wielded considerable power. he used it to create unneeded jobs that spared hundreds of Poles and Jews from being deported to death camps.

Often called “the grand old man of German steel”, Beitz joined the company after the war and over the next six decades transformed it into a publicly traded international conglomerate. While continuing to make steel and armaments, it expanded into building and equipping factories and manufacturing lifts, among other things.

Beitz’s reputation for integrity, earned during the war, gained him the confidence of leaders beyond Germany’s industrial backbone in the Ruhr River Valley and placed him in a position after the war to renew business and restore diplomatic ties to countries in eastern europe, especially Poland.

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer sent him on an exploratory mission to Poland in the 1960s, paving the way for Willy Brandt’s normalisation of relations with east Germany and its allies a decade later.

“With the death of Berthold Beitz, Germany has lost one of its most eminent and successful corporate personalities, who helped to shape the country in important ways,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Born in 1913, in the eastern German city of Zemmin, Beitz trained to become a banker, but his career took a turn in 1938 when he joined the Shell Oil Company in the northern port city of hamburg. his experience there led to his war duty in Poland.

After the war, Poland awarded him its highest civilian honour, and the Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial in Israel, honoured him as a Righteous Among the Nations, its highest recognition for non-Jews who saved Jews from the holocaust.

“I saw how people were shot, how they were lined up in the night,” he said in 1983. “My motives were not political; they were purely humane, moral motives.”

After the war, as president of the German insurance company Iduna, Beitz adopted business methods, like bonuses and competitions, that were unusual at that time.

his success caught the eye of Alfried Krupp, then 45 and the sole owner of the Krupp steel company. Krupp had recently left prison after serving part of a 12-year sentence for war crimes, including using slave labour.

Krupp needed someone with

Court circular

an unblemished reputation, and in 1953 he made Beitz the company’s chairman. One of his major tasks was to re-establish a sense of purpose and direction among the company’s demoralised employees.

Krupp died in 1967, leaving Beitz as executor of his will. Beitz persuaded Krupp’s sole heir to renounce his inheritance, with which he then established the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und halbach Foundation and converted the company into a publicly traded corporation. The foundation today holds a 25.3 per cent stake in ThyssenKrupp.

In recent years, ThyssenKrupp has suffered from Germany’s slow economic growth as the country’s centre of economic power has shifted away from the Ruhr Valley.

Mindful of that shift, Beitz invested heavily in the arts and established a cultural foundation that helped transform the Ruhr Valley from an industrial heartland to a hub of postmodern and postindustrial art. The foundation provided the Folkwang Museum with financing for a new building, designed by David Chipperfield. It opened in January 2010.

Beitz is survived by his wife of more than 70 years, else; three daughters and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Robert Ziff, a grandson, said Beitz did not like to talk about his experiences during the war. Instead, he gathered letters he had received from survivors and bound them in a book, which he gave to his family.

he “let that do Ziff said. l Copyright New York Times 2013. Distributed by NYT syndication service.

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talking”. YEAR: 1492: Christopher Columbus left Spain on his famous voyage of discovery. 1610: Hudson’s Bay was discovered by Henry Hudson. 1675: French defeated Dutch and Spanish fleets in Bay of Palermo and took Sicily. 1767: Burmese forces invaded Siam (Thailand). 1778: The opera house La Scala in Milan was opened. 1829: The cornet was first used in an orchestra, in a performance of Rossini’s William Tell in Paris. 1858: Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile, was discovered by the explorer John Speke. 1881: British troops occupied Suez, Egypt. 1904: British troops, led by Colonel Francis Younghusband and General James Macdonald, entered the “forbidden city” of Lhasa, Tibet. 1914: The first ships passed through the Panama Canal. 1921: First aerial crop spraying used powdered arsenate of lead over fields in Troy, Ohio. 1926: Britain’s first traffic lights were installed at Piccadilly Circus. 1926: The play HalfwayToHell opened in the West End of London and closed at the first interval – the audience had left the theatre. 1934: The German Cabinet joined the offices of president and chancellor and made Adolf Hitler “Der Fuhrer”. 1949: The Council of Europe was inaugurated. 1954: The first vertical take-off and landing aircraft was flown in Britain – the Flying Bedstead. 1955: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting ForGodot was performed for the first time in London at the Arts Theatre. The performance was punctuated throughout with the clatter of seats as half the audience walked out. 1960: The French colony of Niger became independent. 1963: Michael Darbellay, Swiss climber, completed the first successful solo climb of the

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Sir Kingsley Wood (Secretary for Air) was warmly cheered on making his appearance after his recent accident, when the aeroplane in which he was a passenger made a forced landing. l archive.scotsman.com