On June 22nd, it's that time again: On the birthday of and in honor of Herbert Quandt, who allowed concentration camp prisoners to work with toxic substances without protective clothing and to die, journalists will receive prizes totaling €50.000.
Addendum from 22 June 2020: This year, the controversial media award "in memory of the personality and life's work of the entrepreneur Dr. hc Herbert Quandt" was presented again. Contributions from SWR, NDR, ZDF and Weser-Kurier.
This ereporter research was also published in the taz published.
All Award winners Over the past three decades, many well-known journalists from almost all major media outlets have been nominated for the “Herbert Quandt Media Prize”, including BR, NDR, SWR, WDR, ZDF, Spiegel, BILD, World, Time, FAZ and SZThe award has been presented annually since 1986 by the Johanna Quandt Foundation, named after Herbert Quandt's third wife. This year's winners were announced before the award ceremony, including the Handelsblatt and Wirtschaftswoche.
The award winners and their media companies are bothered by few exceptions not because the prize, endowed with a total of €50.000, bears the name of a Nazi criminal: Herbert Quandt, the later “BMW savior”, employed around 1.500 concentration camp prisoners for battery production as head of personnel at Akkumulatorenfabrik AG, a predecessor company of the later Varta in Hanover-StöckenOver 400 forced laborers died in the company's own concentration camp, which was operated in direct cooperation with the SS, many of them from lead poisoning. "In Stöcken, you're dead after six months at the latest," the SS guards told new arrivals.
As CEO and head of human resources at Akkumulatorenfabrik AG, Herbert Quandt was directly responsible for the catastrophic nutrition and equipment of the forced laborers. His company reported to the SS a "fluctuation"—meaning incapacity to work or death—of 80 forced laborers every month.
In the ARD documentary “Das Schweigen der QuandtsIn 2007, former concentration camp prisoners were able to tell a wider public for the first time how they had to work 12 hours a day in Hannover-Stöcken without any occupational safety protection, using deadly substances like lead, and how they helplessly witnessed the deaths of their fellow prisoners. Later attempts to obtain an apology from the successor company, Varta, under the leadership of Herbert Quandt, were coldly rebuffed.
After the publication of the widely acclaimed documentary, the Quandt family issued a Study commissioned the Bonn historian Joachim Scholtyseck, who confirmed the allegations in 2011. Herbert Quandt's son and BMW heir Stefan Quandt described the study as "painful," but nevertheless saw no need to rename or discontinue the prize.
When you look at his life's work, I still think you get an overall picture that justifies awarding a Herbert Quandt Media Prize.
BMW heir Stefan Quandt in 2011
By the end of the war, Herbert Quandt had personally drawn up new plans for another concentration camp subcamp. Overall, he and his father, Günther Quandt, were two of the most influential entrepreneurs in the Third Reich. almost 60.000 forced laborers.
Stefan Quandt is currently Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Johanna Quandt Foundation. This body selects the winners of the Herbert Quandt Media Prize. Other members include phoenix program director Michaela Kolster from ZDF, Capital editor-in-chief Horst von Buttlar, long-time Welt editor-in-chief Jan-Eric Peters, and Tanit Koch, editor-in-chief of RTL Media Group Germany. Stefan Quandt is also a member of the Board of Trustees of BMW Foundation Herbert QuandtThis committee includes, among others, the former government spokesman and current BR Director Ulrich Wilhelm.
The Quandt family's wealth growth through armaments contracts, Aryanization, and the exploitation of forced laborers was enormous and formed the economic basis for the later takeover of BMW, which is now largely owned by Herbert Quandt's children, Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten. They inherited their father's fortune and earn their living solely through dividend payments. Billions.
Herbert Quandt was still one of the richest Germans in the 1950s. As a former Nazi Party member, he forced a female employee to testify under oath that he was not a National Socialist. The British intercepted the conversation, but they protected the businessman and protected him and his father from the Nuremberg prosecutors. The Quandt batteries, which had previously been used in many German weapons, were now also intended to be of use to the British military.
The website of the Johanna Quandt Foundation for the “Herbert Quandt Media Prize” still speaks of the supposedly high ideals of the entrepreneur Herbert Quandt:
The Media Prize is awarded in memory of the personality and life's work of entrepreneur Dr. hc Herbert Quandt. (...) Herbert Quandt's work was characterized by his dedicated commitment to free entrepreneurship and the social market economy. He wished that the entrepreneur should be perceived as a human being whose actions and behavior are guided by a sense of responsibility for the community, beyond economic gain.
Website of the Johanna Quandt Foundation
However, the website of the journalism prize named after him doesn't mention Herbert Quandt's actions during the Nazi era. The Scholtyseck study is only referred to in very general terms:
The research project, led by Joachim Scholtyseck, ranges from the imperial era of the 19th century to the death of Günther Quandt in the 20s, and thus also includes Herbert Quandt's entrepreneurial beginnings.
Website of the Johanna Quandt Foundation
Confronted with these concrete quotations, the Johanna Quandt Foundation again refers to the Scholtyseck study and to a ZEIT interview in 2011:
In response to your questions, I would like to inform you that the history of the Quandt family from 1993 to 1945 has been intensively examined and presented in a comprehensive and independent study. In an interview with "ZEIT," Gabriele Quandt and Stefan Quandt assessed and commented on the study's findings from the family's perspective.
Statement from the Johanna Quandt Foundation
Numerous media outlets are happy to boast about receiving the award in their press releases, including the Mirror in 2017 or ZDF in 2018In 2008, the then editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel had been withdrawn from the Board of Trustees and in 2009, Der Spiegel had the prize money still donated. The author of this article reported for the ZDF heute-journal in 2011 about the shocking results of the Scholtyseck study.
On June 22, 2019, the next €50.000 will be ceremoniously awarded to journalists from Germany's most well-known media houses in the name of Nazi criminal Herbert Quandt.
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