61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

«Aryan» Swiss companies
Only months after the National Socialists took power, Swiss companies endeavoured
to obtain recognition from the German authorities as being «Aryan». In
December 1933, Werk Grenzach, a German subsidiary of the Basel chemical
company J. R. Geigy, applied for a permit to produce dyes for NSDAP
clothing. 14 According to an NSDAP decree, such «symbols of the nationalist
movement» could not be manufactured and sold by Jewish companies. This is
why Carl Köchlin, a member of the Board of Directors and sales manager at
Geigy, made a statutory declaration to the Nazi Central Procurement Agency
(«Reichszeugmeisterei») that «the shareholders in our company are of purely Aryan
stock and include no Jews». 15 Negotiations being slow, Köchlin turned to his
contact in the politico-military office (Wehrpolitisches Amt) of the NSDAP in
Berlin and informed him as follows:
«You are acquainted with our management; I do not need to tell you more.
With regard to the other gentlemen, whom you do not know, I believe that
I can quite rightfully say that every single one down to the last employee
is in order as far as this matter is concerned; at any rate, none of them is
Jewish. If someone’s grandmother somewhere along the line was not purely
Aryan, I cannot tell of course. The same can be said of our labour pool». 16
In November 1934, the Grenzach factory was granted an official permit to
«supply dyes for textiles and fabrics expressly approved by the Party», and was
therefore allowed to supply dyes for the «symbols of the Nationalist
movement». This meant that until the beginning of the Second World War, the
Geigy-owned factory in Grenzach, along with IG Farben, was the only officially
recognised source of dyes in the Third Reich. It is obvious that Geigy sought to
obtain recognition as an «Aryan» company in order to acquire contracts from
the Party, and excluded Jews at a time when other chemical firms were retaining
their Jewish staff. This applied not only to the factory in Grenzach, but also to
the firm’s headquarters in Basel; an internal survey carried out in 1937 revealed
that there were no Jews among the 287 employees. As late as 1940 Geigy
insisted that, as far as both the staff and the shareholders were concerned, «the
purely Swiss and Aryan character of the company could be proved at any
time». 17
Swiss companies that strove for recognition as «Aryan» often provided information
about the name and «race» of their Board members and directors. They
were more reticent with regard to shareholders, although they confirmed at the
same time that the vast majority of the shares were in «Aryan» possession. They
could also have claimed that they did not have the necessary knowledge about
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