I.G. Farben in Liquidation from the 1950s to 1990
Acting with the agreement of the West German government, the Allied High Commission issued the I.G. Liquidation Conclusion Law on January 21, 1955,[1] formally establishing I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in Liquidation (i.L.) as the legal successor to the I.G. combine. Its first chairman was a former I.G. Farben board member, August von Knieriem.
The liquidation company was charged with two tasks. First, it should secure claims to foreign assets of the former I.G., including assets in the German Democratic Republic. The plants in East Germany were assessed by the liquidators as worth “more than half of the total value of I.G. in Germany.”[2] They therefore considered it indispensable that the former I.G. be maintained as a legal person until the eventual reunification of Germany would make it possible to lay claim to properties in the GDR. If that happened, the “liquidation share certificate holders will receive the benefits of whatever is returned as property from the east.”[3] This hope of “eastern assets” served to maintain the liquidation certificate’s value on the Frankfurt bourse.
Second, the liquidation company was supposed to satisfy creditors and claims against I.G. Farben. To this end, the Tripartite IG Farben Control Group (TRIFCOG) had published newspaper ads in 1950 calling on potential plaintiffs with claims against I.G. Farben to come forward. This notice was read by a former I.G. Farben forced laborer, Norbert Wollheim. His view was that above all the former forced laborers at I.G. Auschwitz were entitled to claim unpaid wages and compensation for damages from I.G. Farben. In 1951, Wollheim and his lawyer Henry Ormond therefore filed a civil suit against I.G. Farben i.L. with the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court (Landgericht), demanding restitution for lost wages. I.G. Farben rejected any responsibility for the deployment of forced laborers
A second surviving I.G. forced laborer, Rudolf Wachsmann, had earlier filed suit with the US military court in Mannheim, demanding 500,000 DM for damages to his health and 50,000 DM in unpaid wages. I.G. Farben i.L. reached a settlement with Wachsmann out of court in late 1953, paying him 20,000 DM in exchange for dropping the action.[4] The liquidators considered it vital that they had avoided “an Allied court ruling in regard to the claims of the prisoner, since no further cases are pending and the initiation of new trials by an occupation court […] is no longer allowed.”[5]
I.G. Farben i.L. took up negotiations with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference) on reaching a settlement in the Wollheim case. Here as well, it seemed to be in the interests of German business and government to avoid having any judicial precedents for the compensation of former forced laborers on the books, on the basis of which other companies could have also been sued. The negotiations culminated in a 1957 agreement under which I.G. Farben i.L. gave the Claims Conference a one-time payment of 27 million DM for the restitution of claims by Jewish forced laborers at I.G. Auschwitz. Recipients would be required to forego all further claims against I.G. Farben i.L. The liquidators would also pay an additional 3 million DM directly to non-Jewish former forced laborers at I.G. Auschwitz. In late 1961, I.G. Farben i.L. demanded 2 million DM back from the Claims Conference to use in satisfying claims from non-Jewish Polish forced laborers. A return payment of 750,000 DM was agreed upon in 1963. In the meantime, however, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) had rejected the suit of a Polish forced laborer, ruling that his claim had been suspended as a consequence of the London Debt Agreements of 1953 between Germany and the Allies of the Second World War. I.G. Farben i.L. was now also secured against demands from this direction.
In the decades that followed, I.G. liquidation share certificates, still denominated in reichsmark, led a shadow existence on the Frankfurt Bourse. During the cold war, the hopes for laying claim to the “eastern assets” were constantly delayed. Starting in the 1980s, I.G. Farben i.L. was subjected to frequent protests against its continued existence from Holocaust survivors, critical shareholders and anti-fascist organizations. After the GDR finally joined the Federal Republic in 1990, I.G. Farben i.L. saw new opportunities in the years that followed to realize its old claims on assets in eastern Germany.
(MN/PEH; transl. NL)