Industrielleneingabe


The Industrielleneingabe was a petition signed by nineteen representatives of industry, finance, and agriculture on November 19, 1932, requesting that the President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg make Adolf Hitler the Chancellor of Germany.
There had already been two similar attempts to assist the Nazi party in gaining control of the government, namely a petition by the Wirtschaftspolitischen Vereinigung Frankfurt on July 27, 1931, and a declaration by 51 professors in July 1932 in Völkischer Beobachter.
The idea for the Industrielleneingabe had emerged at the end of October 1932 in the Keppler-Kreis and was supported by Heinrich Himmler, who worked as a liaison to Brown House. The drafting of the letter was aided especially by Hjalmar Schacht, who was the only member of the Keppler-Kreis with any significant political experience. The Industrielleneingabe was first published in 1956 in the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft and is used as evidence to support the idea that big business played a central role in the rise of the Nazi Party.

Signatures

The sixteen initial signatories were:
1. Hjalmar Schacht, former president of the Reichsbank, member of the Keppler circle
2. Friedrich Reinhart, board spokesman of the Commerzbank, board member of the AEG, president of the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce, member of the Keppler circle
3. August Rosterg, CEO of Wintershall AG, member of the Keppler circle
4. Kurt Baron von Schröder, private banker from Cologne, member of the Keppler circle and the Deutscher Herrenklub. Several weeks later in his house, the decisive negotiations took place before Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor.
5. Fritz Beindorff, owner of the Pelikan AG, in the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank
6. Emil Helfferich, member in the board of the German-American Petroleum Company, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of HAPAG, member of the Keppler circle
7. Franz Heinrich Witthoefft, Chairman in the Board of Commerzbank and Privat-Bank, president of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, member of the Keppler circle
8. Ewald Hecker, president of the Hanover Chamber of Commerce and Industry, member of the Keppler circle
9. Kurt Woermann, shipowner from Hamburg and member of the NSDAP
10. Carl Vincent Krogmann, co-owner of the Hamburger Bank, shipping company and trading house Wachsmuth and Krogmann, board member of the Hamburg National Club, mayor of Hamburg from 1933 to 1945, member of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Keppler circle
11. Kurt von Eichborn, co-owner of a private bank in Breslau
12. Eberhard Graf von Kalckreuth, president of the Reichslandbund, member of the Deutscher Herrenklub
13. Erich Lübbert, senior executive of Dywidag, chairman of the AG für Verkehrswesen, member of the Economic Council in Der Stahlhelm
14. Erwin Merck, supervisor of H. J. Merck & Co., a Hamburg commercial bank
15. Joachim von Oppen, president of the Brandenburg Chamber of agriculture
16. Rudolf Ventzki, general director of Maschinenfabrik Esslingen
Signatures of the following personalities have been submitted afterwards:
17. Fritz Thyssen, chairman of the Supervisory Board of Vereinigte Stahlwerke
18. Robert Graf von Keyserlingk-Cammerau, member of the board of the German agricultural employers' associations, member of the German men club
19. Kurt Gustav Ernst von Rohr-Manze, landowner.
Whether Engelbert Beckmann, the president of the Westphalian Land Association signed in any form is controversial.