The Dark Nazi Ties of Germany's Biggest Fortune

Vanity Fair looks into the family history of Klaus-Michael Kuehne
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 29, 2024 8:30 AM CDT
The Dark Nazi Ties of Germany's Biggest Fortune
Klaus-Michael Kuehne, at right, is pictured in a 2008 file photo. He is Germany's richest man.   (AP Photo/Joerg Sarbach)

The richest man in Germany is 87-year-old Klaus-Michael Kuehne, who heads the global transportation empire Kuehne + Nagel and has a fortune pegged at $44 billion by Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Kuehne's grandfather founded the company back in 1890, and a Vanity Fair story explains that the company is the behemoth it is today thanks largely to the actions of Kuehne's father, Alfred, and uncle, Werner, decades ago. But "the thing about Alfred is that he built part of the family business profiting from the Nazi regime's persecution and genocide of European Jews," writes David de Jong. The machinations began when the brothers ousted their Jewish partner soon after Hitler gained power and joined the Nazi party. The company has acknowledged its dealings with the Nazi government previously, and it paid into a $2.5 billion reparations fund in 2000 along with thousands of other German businesses.

But one thing that sets Kuehne + Nagel apart is its refusal to open its company archives to historians. What's more, de Jong's interviews and research show that the Kuehne brothers "began profiting from the persecution of Jews much earlier than is known: years before World War II and mere months after Hitler seized power" in 1933. As it turns out, they had a "quasi-monopoly" on the practice of shipping looted treasures from Jewish homes back to Nazi Germany—known as "M-Aktion," or the "furniture operation." The story details Klaus-Michael Kuehne's efforts to protect and polish the family legacy, which ends with him because he has no children. For instance, he commissioned a study of his father and uncle as part of the company's 125th anniversary celebration, but then refused to allow its publication upon reading it. (Read the full story.)

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