Paul Pleiger - DPLA - bbf2f051e7daa2b8bdcd24012fab3302

Paul Pleiger (28 September 1899, in Buchholz, now part of

Witten Witten () is a city with almost 100,000 inhabitants in the Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis (district) in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Geography Witten is situated in the Ruhr valley, in the southern Ruhr area. Bordering municipalities * Bochum * Dortmu ...

Westphalia Westphalia (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the regio ...

– 22 July 1985, in

Hattingen Hattingen is a town in the northern part of the Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. History Hattingen is located on the south bank of the River Ruhr in the south of the Ruhr region. The town was first mentioned in 13 ...

) was a German state adviser and corporate general director. The miner's son underwent training as an

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

and soon afterwards established himself as a small-scale

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

and

machine factory A machine factory is a company, that produces machines. These companies traditionally belong to the heavy industry sector in comparison to a more consumer oriented and less capital intensive light industry. Today many companies make more sophistic ...

owner. He later createdTime line of Pleiger Unternehmensgruppe
Paul Pleiger Handelsgesellschaft in 1952, specializing in the manufacturing of

polyurethane Polyurethane (; often abbreviated PUR and PU) refers to a class of polymers composed of organic chemistry, organic units joined by carbamate (urethane) links. In contrast to other common polymers such as polyethylene and polystyrene, polyurethan ...

cast elastomers for Bayer's Vulkollan. Quite early on – the exact date has been lost – he joined the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

. For the Party, Pleiger functioned as a Gau economic adviser in the Gau of Westphalia-South (Westfalen-Süd), before he was summoned to the Raw Materials Office in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

in 1934. In 1937,

Hermann Göring Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...

transferred to Pleiger the management of the ''Reichswerke AG für Erzbergbau und Eisenhütten "Hermann Göring"'', commonly known as the ''Reichswerke Hermann GörIng'', an industrial establishment dealing in ore

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

and

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...

, which was huge but unprofitable, but nevertheless deemed necessary to further Germany's growth and power. In 1941, Pleiger became Reich commissioner for

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

supply, and in 1942 "Reich Commissioner for the Whole Economy of the East". In the

Ministries Trial __NOTOC__ The Ministries Trial (or, officially, the ''United States of America vs. Ernst von Weizsäcker, et al.'') was the eleventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg af ...

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

, Pleiger was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correc ...

in 1949. He was released from prison in 1951. One of his lawyers was Robert Servatius, who had defended

Fritz Sauckel Ernst Friedrich Christoph "Fritz" Sauckel (27 October 1894 – 16 October 1946) was a German Nazi politician, ''Gauleiter'' of Gau Thuringia from 1927 and the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment (''Arbeitseinsatz'') from March 1942 unti ...

in the Nuremberg trials of the main war criminals,

Karl Brandt Karl Brandt (8 January 1904 – 2 June 1948) was a German physician and ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) officer in Nazi Germany. Trained in surgery, Brandt joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and became Adolf Hitler's escort doctor in August 1934. A member of ...

in the

Doctors' trial The Doctors' Trial (officially ''United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.'') was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of high-ranking German officials and industrialists that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone ...

and later also

Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
''

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

's most influential economic functionaries and state entrepreneurs. As Reich Commissioner for the Eastern Economy, along with his position at the Göring Works, he was jointly responsible for the exploitation of people and material from Nazi-occupied lands. After his retirement from the company he founded, operations continued under the direction of his son Dr. Paul Pleiger, Jr., who died in an automobile accident in 1983. His company would later see expansions to South Korea, Germany, and the United States.

References

1899 births 1985 deaths People from Witten People from the Province of Westphalia Nazi Party politicians Nazi Party officials Sturmabteilung personnel People convicted by the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunals Recipients of the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross {{Nazi-stub

See also

References