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Hugo Ferdinand Boss (8 July 1885 – 9 August 1948) was a German businessman. He was the founder of the fashion house Hugo Boss AG. He was an active member of the Nazi Party from 1931, and remained so until Nazi Germany's capitulation. His clothing company also utilized forced labour drawn from German-occupied territories and POW camps, to manufacture uniforms for the SS and later the Wehrmacht.


Early life

Boss was born in
Metzingen Metzingen () is a Swabian city with about 22,000 inhabitants, in Reutlingen county, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, south of Stuttgart. Geography The following towns and municipalities are on the borders of Metzingen, they are named starting ...
, Kingdom of Württemberg, to Luise (née Münzenmayer) and Heinrich Boss, the youngest of five children. He
apprenticed Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a ...
as a merchant, did his military service from 1903 to 1905, and then worked in a weaving mill in Konstanz. He took over his parents' lingerie shop in Metzingen in 1908, as heir. In 1914, he was mobilized into the army and served through World War I, ending it as a
corporal Corporal is a military rank in use in some form by many militaries and by some police forces or other uniformed organizations. The word is derived from the medieval Italian phrase ("head of a body"). The rank is usually the lowest ranking non- ...
.


Hugo Boss company

Boss founded his own clothing company in Metzingen in 1923 and then opened a factory in 1924, initially with two partners. The company produced shirts and jackets and later work clothing, sportswear, and raincoats. In the 1930s, it produced uniforms for the SA, the SS, the Hitler Youth, the postal service, the national railroad, and later the Wehrmacht.


Support of Nazism

Boss joined the Nazi Party in 1931, two years before
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
came to power. By the third quarter of 1932, the all-black
SS uniform The uniforms and insignia of the ''Schutzstaffel'' served to distinguish the Nazi Germany paramilitary ranks, Nazi paramilitary ranks of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) between 1925 and 1945 from the ranks of the ''Wehrmacht'' (the regular German arme ...
(to replace the SA brown shirts) was designed by '' SS-Oberführer'' Prof. Karl Diebitsch, and graphic designer Walter Heck, who had no affiliation with the company. The Hugo Boss company produced these black uniforms along with the brown SA shirts and the black-and-brown uniforms of the Hitler Youth. Some workers were French and Polish prisoners of war forced into labour. Zwangsarbeit in Metzingen (Forced Work in Metzingen)
Ch.7: Die Firma Hugo Boss
/ref> In 1999, US lawyers acting on behalf of
Holocaust survivors Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally acce ...
started legal proceedings against the Hugo Boss company over the use of slave labour during the war. The misuse of 140 Polish and 40 French forced workers led to an apology by the company. After World War II, the denazification process saw Boss initially labeled as an "activist, supporter and beneficiary" of
national-socialism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Naz ...
, which resulted in a heavy fine, also stripping him of his voting rights and capacity to run a business. However, this initial ruling was appealed, and Boss was re-labeled as a " follower", a category with a less severe punishment. Nevertheless, the effects of the ban led to Boss's son-in-law, Eugen Holy, taking over both the ownership and the running of the company.


Death

Boss died in 1948 of a tooth abscess in Württemberg-Hohenzollern,
Allied-occupied Germany Germany was already de facto occupied by the Allies from the real fall of Nazi Germany in World War II on 8 May 1945 to the establishment of the East Germany on 7 October 1949. The Allies (United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Fra ...
. He was 63.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boss, Hugo 1885 births 1948 deaths Förderndes Mitglied der SS German chief executives German company founders 20th-century German businesspeople German fashion businesspeople German fashion designers German Army personnel of World War I Menswear designers Nazi Party members People from Metzingen People from the Kingdom of Württemberg