Thyssen family

Thyssen family, one of the world’s wealthiest families, its fortune based on a vast iron and steel empire established in the late 19th century.

August Thyssen (b. May 17, 1842, Eschweiler, Westphalia [Germany]—d. April 4, 1926, Kettwig, Ger.), variously called “King” and “Rockefeller of the Ruhr,” was a self-made millionaire. Born to a poor family in the Rhineland, Thyssen nonetheless managed to save 20,000 marks by his early 20s and bought a rolling mill. In 1871 he established the firm of Thyssen & Co. KG at Mülheim. Recognizing the vast natural resources of the Ruhr for iron and steel production, he literally transformed the region. By the outbreak of World War I he was employing 50,000 workers and producing one million tons of steel and iron a year.

A firm believer in vertical organization, Thyssen had his own railroads, ships, and docks. His holdings extended from Germany to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and even India, Russia, and South America. He was the biggest coal operator in Germany, owned cement and allied industries, and broke the Krupp monopoly on heavy armaments manufacturing during World War I.

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Despite his enormous wealth—estimated at $100 million at his death—Thyssen was noted for his simple, unostentatious lifestyle. He wore cheap suits, drove an old car, worked in a dingy office overlooking his steelworks, and often drank beer and ate wurst with his workmen. He was a thoroughgoing republican with a deep dislike of the kaiser and all hereditary power. His credo was unrelenting work, and the motto on the Thyssen coat of arms was “If I rest, I rust.” He died of pneumonia at the age of 84, following complicated eye surgery.

Fritz Thyssen (b. Nov. 9, 1873, Mülheim, Ger.—d. Feb. 8, 1951, Buenos Aires, Arg.) was a leading German industrialist and a major financial backer of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Trained as an engineer, Fritz Thyssen entered the family iron, steel, and coal business created by his father, August. After World War I Fritz Thyssen was arrested for refusing to accede to the demands of French authorities occupying the Ruhr. Then, in 1921, the German government charged him with betraying the Ruhr district to the French during the war. It would not be the last time that he would run afoul of his nation’s leadership.

In 1926, at the age of 53, Fritz Thyssen inherited his father’s fortune and industrial empire. His brothers Heinrich and August, Jr., had proved disappointments to their father—Heinrich married a noblewoman and settled down to the comfortable life of a Hungarian baron, and August, Jr., became a spendthrift who fought for his mother’s dowry in a legal battle with his father. Fritz, on the other hand, was a shrewd businessman who combined the family holdings into a trust (Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG [United Steelworks Co.]) that controlled more than 75 percent of Germany’s ore reserve and employed 200,000 workers.

Distressed at what he viewed as the socialistic drift of Germany into economic chaos during the 1920s, Fritz Thyssen became an early backer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party and helped organize the meeting of German industrialists on Jan. 26, 1933, at which Hitler outlined his program. During Hitler’s drive for the German Chancellery, Thyssen contributed three million marks. Hitler then rewarded his financial sponsor by making Thyssen a member of the German Economic Council and a Prussian state counselor.

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But Thyssen, viewing fascism as the only bulwark against bolshevism, backed Hitler solely as a nationalist and anticommunist. When Hitler led Germany into war and began persecuting Jews and Catholics (Thyssen was a Catholic), the industrialist broke with the Nazis and in 1939 fled to Switzerland. Hitler promptly confiscated the Thyssen fortune (about $88 million) and stripped Fritz Thyssen of German citizenship. Thyssen later wrote a scathing denunciation of Nazism titled “I Paid Hitler.”

Thyssen moved to France in 1940, but in 1941 the Vichy government picked him up as he was about to leave for South America. He was reportedly sent to Dachau and was found in a detention camp in the Italian Tirol at war’s end. Tried and convicted by a German denazification court of being a “minor Nazi,” Fritz Thyssen was ordered to turn over 15 percent of his property to a restitution fund for victims of Nazi persecution. A bitter man, he left Germany in 1950 to visit his daughter, Countess Zichy, in Argentina. It was at her Buenos Aires home that he died of a heart attack at the age of 77.

Amelia zur Helle Thyssen (b. 1878?—d. Aug. 25, 1965, Puchhof, Bavaria, W.Ger.) inherited the Thyssen steel and coal empire upon the death of her husband, Fritz, in 1951. During World War II she had voluntarily joined her husband at the Dachau concentration camp and later was held at Buchenwald as well. Following her husband’s death, she returned to Germany, but she never reclaimed her citizenship. She ran the family enterprises from her Bavarian castle (Puchhof), which was filled with valuable paintings and rare porcelain. Under her, Thyssen Steel merged with another large producer, creating the biggest steel company in western Europe and the third largest company (behind Volkswagen and Krupp) in Germany. For her role in launching the Fritz Thyssen Foundation to help advance German science, she received West Germany’s highest civilian medal, the Federal Service Cross.