Kurt Herrmann

Kurt Herrmann (20 May 1888 – 4 November 1959) was a German architect, publisher and industrialist. Under Nazi Germany he prospered by the Aryanization and expropriation of Jewish businesses. Toward the end of World War II in Europe, he fled to Liechtenstein. Denazification proceedings resulted in no punishment, and he lived as an expatriate in Vaduz with access to considerable wealth from his Swiss bank accounts. However, in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, he was sentenced to death in absentia and his assets there were confiscated. After the fall of the East German regime, his heirs sought to recover the properties but their legal claims were denied.

Early life Herrmann was born in Leipzig, the son of a master craftsman, and completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer from 1902 to 1905. He then studied at the (Royal Saxon Building Trades School, Leipzig) until 1908, earning a Diplom in engineering and becoming a state-certified master builder. He was then employed as a construction manager in the Leipzig municipal building administration until July 1912 when he set up shop as a self-employed architect. Herrmann designed a new building for the Leipzig publisher and print shop owner Bernhard Meyer in 1913, and he married Meyer's daughter Erna Agnes in 1914. In 1911, Meyer also had founded the Deutsche Flugzeug-Werke (DFW) aircraft manufacturing company in Lindenthal, a suburb of Leipzig. When Meyer died in April 1917, Herrmann inherited considerable industrial assets, becoming general director of DFW and director of the publishing house.

Expansion of business interests After the end of the First World War, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles banned a German air force and many aircraft factories went out of business. By 1920, Herrmann founded the by converting a DFW plant in Leipzig to produce electric monorails, cable cars, cable cranes and conveyor bridge machinery for lignite mining. The mining equipment operation proved especially successful and eventually was sold to the mining conglomerate headed by Friedrich Flick in May 1933. During the 1920s, Herrmann also founded financial companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The Technische Universität Dresden appointed him an honorary senator in 1927. By 1931, Herrmann's magazine publishing empire employed 12,000 people. In October 1931, he took up residence in Eschen in Liechtenstein and applied for citizenship, which was granted. However, he hid his Liechtenstein citizenship from the German authorities. Herrmann owned a large number of properties in Leipzig, including the former , and several manor houses in Saxony and Mecklenburg. With assets estimated to be around 9 million ℛℳ in bank deposits and around 14 million ℛℳ in securities, he was considered one of the wealthiest residents of Leipzig.

"The Reichsmarshall's jeweler" During the war years, Herrmann often traveled to the occupied countries of France and The Netherlands on Reichsmarshall Goring's behalf to obtain jewels and other treasures and artworks at less than market value. In The Netherlands, he acted as Göring's Sonderbeauftragter (special representative) for diamond purchases. Post-war investigations by Dutch officials concluded that Hermann participated in the transfer of considerable lots of diamonds taken under duress from Dutch jewelers during the occupation. In 1942, his German Goldsmiths' Art Workshops was allowed to purchase, at below market value, jewels that had been looted by the Nazis from the Rothschild family collection in France. During the course of the war, Herrmann was awarded the War Merit Cross.

Post-war years In the closing days of the war in Europe, Herrmann left Leipzig and traveled via Austria to Liechtenstein, where he arrived on 30 April 1945. In interviews with government authorities, he claimed not only that he had been a citizen of Liechtenstein since 1931 but that he had given up his German citizenship. He professed his opposition to the Nazi regime and claimed that he had been "persecuted" by them. He even claimed to have helped finance the 20 July plot on Hitler's life. The authorities in the Soviet occupation zone sentenced him to death in absentia as a war criminal and his assets there were expropriated in 1948. However, in Liechtenstein he retained access to his assets that were safeguarded in Swiss bank accounts. Denazification proceedings held in Hanover in 1950 classified him in category 4 (follower) and issued no punishment. He continued to live comfortably as an expatriate in Vaduz until his death in 1959.

Legal dispute over Herrmann's assets Following the fall of the Communist regime of East Germany, Ursula Herrmann, the wife of Herrmann's deceased son Heinz, and also a resident of Lichtenstein, claimed to be the sole heir to the 40 to 50 properties formerly owned by her deceased father-in-law. Leipzig rejected her request for return of the Hôtel de Pologne property, which was valued at 11 million DM. The heiress then filed a lawsuit against the city, which alleged that Kurt Herrmann had been a citizen of Liechtenstein since 1931 and, as such, his assets were protected from expropriation. The court rejected this argument and denied the case in 1994. An appeal was filed with the Federal Administrative Court, and the case was reheard. At the end of 1998, the court upheld the original denial. A final appeal was then submitted to the Federal Constitutional Court, which decided not to accept the case for review.