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August von Finck Sr.

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August von Finck Sr. (18 July 1898 – 22 April 1980) was a German banker and businessman. He was the son of banker Wilhelm von Finck (1848–1924), founder of insurance giant Allianz and private bank Merck Finck & Co. Due to his close connections with Adolf Hitler's regime, he was called "Hitler's banker".[1]

August von Finck Sr.
Haus der Deutschen Kunst, Munchen - Hitler, August von Finck, Adolf Wagner
Born(1898-07-18)July 18, 1898
Kochel am See
DiedApril 22, 1980(1980-04-22) (aged 81)
Grasbrunn
NationalityGerman
EmployerMerck Finck & Co.
OrganizationNazi Party
Spouse(s)Margot von Rücker (?-1942), Gerda Mau (?-?)
ChildrenWilhelm von Finck, August von Finck, Helmut von Finck, Gerhard von Finck, Eleonore Grziwa née von Finck
Parents
  • Wilhelm von Finck (father)
  • Marie Fäustle (mother)

August von Finck was one of the most influential bankers of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. He financed Hitler in the 1930s. He was described as the ‘richest and stingiest’ man in Bavaria. He used a Volkswagen Beetle for decades.[2]

August von Finck, standing behind the lectern, performing the Nazi salute during the topping out ceremony of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, 29 June 1935, in the presence of Adolf Hitler.

Biography

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August von Finck was born on 18 July 1898 in Kochel am See. He was born to Wilhelm von Finck (1848-1924) and Marie Fäustle (1865-1935). Von Finck had two sisters.[3] His brother, Wilhelm von Finck Jr. (1893-1916), was killed in action during World War I. After his brother's death, von Finck was enrolled in 1916 and served in the German army in the Balkans for two years.

As per the wishes of his father, von Finck became principal partner at Merck Finck after his father's death in 1924. Von Finck also inherited his father's other business holdings and a large amount of land.

On February 3, 1931, Wilhelm von Finck, along with other industrialists, met Adolf Hitler for their first time at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin. At this meeting, von Finck and Schmitt pledged 5 million Reichsmark from Allianz to fund the SA in the event of a leftist uprising. The pledged amount, however, was never handed over to Hitler as the uprising never occurred.[4]

In May 1933, von Finck became a member of the NSDAP.[5] He helped raise funds to build Haus der Kunst museum, Hitler's pet project to house the artworks, and used his hunting lodge in the Upper Bavarian Alps to entertain Nazi bigshots like Gauleiter Adolf Wagner. Between 1933 and 1938, he benefited and called for the Aryanisation of Jewish property, and led the hostile overtaking of Jewish owned companies across Germany and annexed Austria including Jewish bank S. M. von Rothschild in Vienna which was sold to Merck, Finck & Co. at a very low price which allowed the latter to attain a commanding position in Europe's private bank industry. He also profited massively from war and Allianz flourished during the war through the successful cultivation of ties between the NSDAP and Finck.[6][7]

In a letter to Chamber of Commerce in 1937, he wrote: “Today, the German private banking sector is still largely made up of non-Aryan firms. The gradual cleansing of this trade, which is strongly influenced by the Jewish element, must not be halted by the granting of applications for exemptions but must … be promoted by all means.”[8]

In 1941 he was a member of the board of directors of the Grossbetschkereker Zuckerfabriks-Aktiengesellschaft, a sugar factory in Veliki Bečkerek (now Zrenjanin) in German occupied Serbia.[9] He divorced his first wife, Margot von Rücker, in 1942.[10] He became a member of the German advisory board for private banking in 1944.[11]

After the end of World War II, von Finck withdrew temporarily and management was handed over to a trustee. He asserted that he was apolitical, even anti-Nazi, and submitted forty Persilschein to denazification court. Von Finck spent 500,000 deutsche marks to make sure that incriminating witnesses did not appear in court or alter what they had intended to say. He also threatened the prosecutor that he would reveal that he was gay. In 1948, he was classified as a “fellow traveler” of the Nazis and the court ordered him to pay 2,000 marks to a restitution fund. Von Finck, dissatisfied, appealed and was granted amnesty.[12][13]

He was suspended from running a bank for five years. In 1951, he returned to his positions and took a conservative course in running the bank. He rebuilt Merck Finck & Co. after the war despite tremendous handicaps. He also started focusing on stopping a land reform.[14]

He bought Weinfelden Castle from a Jewish family in 1972 for 340.000 Swiss francs and renovated it. Today the castle is inhabited by August von Finck jr.[15]

August von Finck died 22 April 1980 in Möschenfeld, in the municipality of Grasbrunn.[16]

Descendants

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August von Finck had five children:

With Margot von Rücker, his first wife:[17]

  • Wilhelm von Finck (1927–2003)
  • August von Finck Jr. (1930–2021)
  • Eleonore Grziwa, née von Finck (25 November 1931 – 7 June 2014)[18]

With Dr. Gerda Mau, his second wife:[17]

  • Gerhard von Finck (born 1954)
  • Helmut von Finck (born 1959)

Notes and references

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  1. ^ Affairs, United States Congress Senate Committee on Military (1945). Elimination of German Resources for War: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Military Affairs, United States Senate, Seventy-ninth Congress, First Session, Pursuant to S.R. 107 (78th Congress) and S. Res. 146 (79th Congress), Authorizing a Study of War Mobilization Problems. U.S. Government Printing Office. Archived from the original on 2024-01-03. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  2. ^ "Locals knew nothing about glamorous women's hidden wartime histories". The Southern Star. Archived from the original on 2022-10-04. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  3. ^ Hielscher, Henryk (27 July 2010). "Finck-Clan: Schlammschlacht ums Milliardenerbe". Archived from the original on 28 June 2023. Retrieved 28 June 2023.
  4. ^ Turner, Henry Ashby Jr. (1985). German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 150. ISBN 0-19-503492-9.
  5. ^ De Jong 2022, p. 61.
  6. ^ Tsigos, Stamatios; Daly, Kevin (2020-06-01). The Wealth of the Elite: Toward a New Gilded Age. Springer Nature. ISBN 978-981-15-2148-5. Archived from the original on 2024-01-03. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  7. ^ Kopper, Christopher (January 2017). "The Munich Re: an internationally-oriented reinsurer in the Nazi era". Business History: 9 – via Academia.edu.
  8. ^ Michels, Josué. "The Nazi Billionaire Family Behind Germany's Far Right". theTrumpet.com. Archived from the original on 2024-01-03. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  9. ^ "War Department Pamphlet No. 31-128, Civil Affairs Information Guide, German Penetration of Corporate Holdings in Serbia". Elimination of Nazi public agencies in Germany. 29 July 1944. p. 17. Archived from the original on 26 June 2023. Retrieved 26 June 2023.
  10. ^ "Das Erbe des Schlossherrn". 22 January 2015. Archived from the original on 27 June 2023. Retrieved 27 June 2023.
  11. ^ "Wirtschaftsgruppe Privates Bankgewerbe: Erweiterter Beirat". Kölnische Zeitung. 19 March 1944. Archived from the original on 25 June 2023. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
  12. ^ "From the Nazis to the AfD: Big business finances the far-right". World Socialist Web Site. 2018-11-28. Archived from the original on 2023-01-31. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  13. ^ "Nazi billionaire dynasties built on Jewish blood explored in new book". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 2022-03-24. Archived from the original on 2023-12-12. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  14. ^ "THE GERMANS SURVIVORS OF TUMULTUOUS TIMES - October 12, 1987". money.cnn.com. Archived from the original on 2010-04-20. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  15. ^ Trüby, Stephan (2021). "Negative Anthropology: An International Comparison of Various Types of Right-Wing Spaces". Footprint. 15 (2). doi:10.7480/footprint.15.2.6299. ISSN 1875-1490. Archived from the original on 2023-06-07. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  16. ^ August von Finck Sr. in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.
  17. ^ a b De Jong 2022, p. 314.
  18. ^ "Traueranzeigen von Eleonore Grziwa". 21 June 2014. Archived from the original on 27 June 2023. Retrieved 27 June 2023.

Sources

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