Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Step-grandchildren of Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels are worth billions after inheriting industrial fortune

 
 
The step-grandchildren of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels share a fortune worth at least £3.8billion from their family's wartime industrial success, it has been revealed.
Four sisters and the two children of a deceased sibling are worth around £760million each, according to an investigation by Bloomberg.
The family's wealthy history can be traced to two men who owed their success to the rise of the Nazi party -  Joseph Goebbels and a businessman named Guenther Quandt.


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Both were married at different times to Magda Ritschel.
Harald Quant - the only surviving son from Magda's first marriage - joined the German Luftwaffe during the Second World War and was being held as a prisoner by Allied forces in the Libya when he received a farewell letter from his mother and step-father Joseph Goebbels.


The pair committed suicide alongside their six children on May 1, 1945 in Hitler's bunker.

He and his half-brother Herbert inherited their father's empire which produced Mauser firearms and anti-aircraft missiles for the Third Reich's war machine.

THE 'POISON DWARF' - PROPAGANDA MINISTER JOSEPH GOEBBELS

Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels was one of the most important and influential people in Nazi Germany.
Hitler put him in charge of the party's propaganda machine in 1929 and he played a key role in implementing the dictator's agenda.
His limp and sharp tongue earned him the nickname among some as the 'Poison Dwarf'.
He organized attacks against Jews, banned them from the world of the arts and media, censored the news and supported Nazi propaganda films.
As the Second World War turned in favour of the Allies, he increased his propaganda in order to convince the German people of the idea of 'total war' and mobilization.
Goebbels killed himself and his wife, and their six children biological children with cyanide capsules the day after Hitler in 1945.
The half-brothers passed away decades ago, but their financial success has endured.
Herbert’s widow, Johanna Quandt, 86, and their children Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, have remained in the public eye as BMW shareholders.
The billionaire daughters of Harald Quandt - Katarina Geller-Herr, 61, Gabriele Quandt, 60, Anette-Angelika May-Thies, 58, and 50-year-old Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo -- have kept a lower profile.






The four sisters inherited about 1.5 billion deutsche marks (£483 million) after the death of their mother, Inge, in 1978, according to the family’s official biography, 'Die Quandts'.
They manage their wealth through the Harald Quandt Holding GmbH, a family investment company and trust named after their father.
Fritz Becker, the chief executive officer of the family entities, told Bloomberg: 'The family wants to stay private and that is an acceptable situation for me.
'We invest our money globally and if it’s $1 billion, $500 million or $3 billion, who cares?'
The Quandt family fortune can be traced to Germany's involvement in both world wars.
Guenther Quandt inherited one of the country's biggest state clothing manufacturers from his father
Adolf Hitler with his propaganda minister Jospeh Goebbels, his wife Magda, and three of their children in 1938
Adolf Hitler with his propaganda minister Jospeh Goebbels, his wife Magda, and three of their children in 1938
Emil which made military uniforms in the First World War.
After his first wife died from Spanish flu he married Magda Ritschel in 1921 and the couple had their only son Harald.
They divorced in 1929 and two years later she married Jospeh Goebbels, a member of the German parliament and rising star in the Nazi party.
After the Nazis took power in 1933, their leader, Adolf Hitler, appointed Goebbels as the Third Reich’s propaganda minister. Hitler was the best man at the couple’s wedding.
Guenther Quandt joined the party that same year. His factories became key suppliers to the German war effort, even though his relationship with Goebbels had become increasingly strained.
'There was constant rivalry,' said Bonn-based history professor Joachim Scholtyseck, author of a family-commissioned study about their involvement with the Third Reich, in a telephone interview with Bloomberg.
'It didn’t matter that Goebbels didn’t like him. It didn’t have any influence on Quandt’s ability to make money.'
From 1940 to 1945, the Quandt family factories were staffed with more than 50,000 forced civilian laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp workers, according to Scholtyseck’s 1,183-page study.
The report was commissioned by the family in 2007 after German television aired the documentary 'The Silence of the Quandts,' a critical look at their wartime activities.
According to 'Die Quandts' the siblings try to get together a few times a year to discuss their investments.
After Scholtyseck’s study was published in 2011, cousins Gabriele and Stefan Quandt acknowledged their family’s ties and involvement with the Third Reich in an interview with Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper.
'Magda killed her six children in the Fuehrerbunker. Our father loved his half-siblings very much. And when, like me, you have something like this in your family history, you think: It can’t be any worse,' Gabriele Quandt said in the interview.
'It’s a sad truth that forced laborers died in Quandt companies,' said Stefan.
'They have to live with the name. It’s part of the history,' said Scholtyseck. 'It will be a constant reminder of dictatorship and the challenges that families have to face'


 

Cielo e terra (duet with Dante Thomas)