Respectable Career of Fritz K.

Hartmut Berghoff is Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Göttingen in Germany. From 2008 to 2015 he was the Director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.. His latest book, together with Ingo Köhler, is Varieties of Family Business. Germany and the United States, Past and Present (Campus/University of Chicago Press, 2020). Recently he co-edited The Consumer on the Home Front: Second World War Civilian Consumption in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I (Berghahn, 2019).

“Berghoff and Rauh expertly weave Kiehn’s life into the historiography of twentieth- century Germany. They also tell the story of the German Mittelstand (owners of small to medium-sized companies) in the last century.” • Central European History“…offers a welcome addition to English-language readers who are interested in learning more about protagonists beyond the usual suspects of Daimler, Deutsche Bank, or Krupp…It is an intriguing story, perhaps more in the context of local than of business history. But then again, all business history is local.” • Journal of Modern History“Berghoff and Rauh provide an admirably well-researched picture of a Nazi provincial activist from the economic Mittelstand, and of the networks of corruption and cronyism that characterized the workings of the ‘Third Reich’ at the local and regional level…[They] do an exemplary job of integrating Kiehn’s biography with local, regional, and national history, in a fine example of the use of microhistorical analysis (of an inherently mediocre figure) to shed light on business history and the workings of the Nazi regime at the provincial level.” • European History Quarterly“By outlining Fritz Kiehn's career both in a rational-academic but also lively manner, the authors have succeeded in creating an unusually insightful and astute book on what was ‘normal’ in Germany in the twentieth century.” • Die Zeit“The documentation and interpretation of what was usual makes [the book's] presentation interesting and worth reading. It is also worth reading, of course, because of the writing talents of both its authors, [who] have not only penned a rich socio-historical study, they have, quite simply... written a good book.” • Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte“A historiographical masterwork, a successful example of how fruitful interdisciplinary historical research can be. It is about structures, milieus, mentalities, and microhistory. But it is also just as much about grand politics, economic history, and a very particular person whose contradictions the two authors managed to describe with brilliance.” • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

• List of FiguresForewordAbbreviationsIntroductionChapter 1. Kiehn’s Rise to the Middle Class: A Traveling Salesman Becomes a Factory OwnerChapter 2. Rapid Ascent through the Nazi Ranks: From Local Party Leader to Reichstag DelegateChapter 3. Fritz Kiehn, “Leader of the Württemberg Economy”Chapter 4. Riding Nazi Party Coattails: Kiehn’s Industrial AmbitionsChapter 5. Between Corruption and Camaraderie: The National Socialist Campaign to Curb AbusesChapter 6. Kiehn and Gustav Schickedanz in the Race for AryanizationChapter 7. Wartime Deals and “Marriage Politics”Chapter 8. “The King of Trossingen”: Fritz Kiehn as a Local Grandee in the Third ReichChapter 9. From “War Criminal No. 1” to Sought-After EmployerChapter 10. “Scot-free, by the skin of their teeth”—Denazification and CompensationChapter 11. “Ripe for Satire”: Entering the Social Market Economy with Public LoansChapter 12. “Kiehn left no one behind”? The “Factory Community” as a Network of “Old Comrades”Chapter 13. Honorable Citizen Again: Kiehn and the “Economic Miracle”  Chapter 14. The Twilight Years of an Honored West GermanChapter 15. Coming to Terms with the Past in the 21st CenturyConclusion: The (A)Typical Life of an Industrialist?BibliographyIndex