Hermann Josef Abs (15 October 1901,

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

– 5 February 1994,

Bad Soden Bad Soden am Taunus (, ), commonly known as Bad Soden, is a town and spa in the Main-Taunus-Kreis, Hessen, Germany. It had a population of 22,563 , up from 21,412 in 2005. Information Bad Soden is a residential town for commuters working in F ...

) was a leading Nazi banker and advisor to Chancellor Adenauer. He was a member of the board of directors of

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (, ) is a Germany, German multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. ...

from 1938 to 1945, as well as of 44 other companies, including

IG Farben I. G. Farbenindustrie AG, commonly known as IG Farben, was a German Chemical industry, chemical and Pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. It was formed on December 2, 1925 from a merger of six chemical co ...

. As the most powerful commercial banker of the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

, he was, according to economic journalist Adam LeBor, "the lynchpin of the continent wide plunder". The Allies arrested him in January 1946; however, British intervention got him freed after three months, and German courts later dropped all charges. He was chairman of

, and contributed to the reconstruction of the German economy. He chaired the German credit facility that distributed the counterpart funds created by the Marshall plan. Working closely with Chancellor

Konrad Adenauer Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman and politician who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of th ...

, he was a leader in rebuilding heavy industry, and helped draft the investment policy for basic industries in 1952. He played a major diplomatic role in resolving the prewar German debts at the London War Debt Agreement of 1953. In 1953 he negotiated the restitution to Israel and individual Jews for the Holocaust.

Controversies about Joest WWII role

In 1974, the artist

Hans Haacke Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of institutional critique, and is considered to be the most harsh and consistent critic of museums among t ...

revealed the supposed role of Abs with the Nazi regime in a project for the exhibition Manet-PROJEKT '74' which detailed, in ten panels, the ownership history of Édouard Manet's Bunch of Asparagus (1880). The Wallraf-Richartz Museum rejected the Haacke display. In 1995, studies of the Deusche Bank archives by Harold James show that, while the DB helped the Nazi in different variating degrees, direct and indirectly, there has various links between Abs and anti-Nazi resistance during the war, while Abs decided not direct participate in resistance organized acts, he went to various secret meetings and such links were described as something that made James "astounded". After the war, he participated in the restitution to Israel and individual Jews for the Holocaust.

References

Other sources

*''Hermann J. Abs'', i
Encyclopædia Britannica online

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Abs, Hermann Josef 1901 births 1994 deaths Deutsche Bank people German bankers German chairpersons of corporations Grand Crosses 1st class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Businesspeople from Bonn