61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

4.10 «Aryanisation»
The Swiss public first became aware of the involvement of Swiss firms in the
«Aryanisation» of Jewish companies in 1989 when three radio journalists
discovered that the tobacco company Villiger, based in Lucerne, had taken over
the Gebrüder Strauss cigar factory in Bad Cannstatt, Württemberg, in 1935.
The broadcast in which this was mentioned had serious repercussions, not least
because a descendant of the family and former co-owner of the company, Kaspar
Villiger, had just been elected to the Federal Council. 1 The debate surrounding
this issue at the time gave rise to the only in-depth investigation of the subject
so far in Switzerland – Urs Thaler’s monograph on the history of Swiss cigar
factories in the Third Reich. Thaler, who describes the «Aryanisation» of over
100 cigar factories, shows how four of the twelve Swiss tobacco companies
operating in Germany between 1933 and 1938 took over Jewish firms. It must
be said, however, that the examination results of this particular sector cannot be
applied in a broader way, since the cigar industry – which had been considerably
shaken by the economic crisis – consisted mainly of small and medium-sized
companies and was strongly focused on Baden at the Swiss border. Furthermore,
it was subject to state protection measures aimed at maintaining the current
structure, including the restricted use of machinery and processing quotas for
tobacco, which the Nazis had put in place shortly after taking power. In the first
of his two volume work, Thaler uses the examples of Hediger (Reinach, Aargau),
which took over Feibelmann (Mannheim), and Burger (Burg, Aargau), which
took over Günzburger (Emmendingen), to reveal the manoeuvring leeway and
the different approaches possible for Swiss companies that were involved in the
– conceptually rather vague – «Aryanisation» process. 2
Definitions and Questions
The term «Aryanisation» arose from the «völkisch» anti-Semitic trend of the
1920s, entered the official jargon when the National Socialists came to power
and, finally, the language. Its meaning differed depending on the time, the
geographic area, and the branch of the economy involved. Broadly speaking, it
is used to denote the exclusion of Jews from business circles by means of banning
them from certain professions, as well as by applying boycotts, expropriation,
forced liquidation, and take-overs; in this connection, the Nazis used the term
«de-Semitisation» («Entjudung»). In a narrower sense it denotes the transfer of
Jewish property, in particular companies and real estate, to «Aryan»
ownership. 3
According to the Third Ordinance of the German Law on Citizenship (Dritte
Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz) of 14 June 1938, firms were considered Jewish
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