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By the mid-1930s, Escher-Wyss had again found itself in financial trouble. In order to rescue the company this time, a consortium was brought on board to save the ailing engineering firm. The consortium was partly formed by the Federal Bank of Switzerland (which was coincidently headed by a Max Schwab, who is of no relation to Klaus Schwab) and further restructuring took place.
In 1938, it was announced that an engineer at the firm, Colonel Jacob Schmidheiny would become the new President of the Board of Directors at Escher-Wyss. Soon after the outbreak of war in 1939, Schmidheiny was quoted as saying, “The outbreak of war does not necessarily mean unemployment for the machine industry in a neutral country, on the contrary.”
Escher-Wyss, and its new management, were apparently looking forward to profiting off the war, paving the way for their transformation into a major Nazi military contractor.
A Brief History of Jewish Persecution in Ravensburg
When Adolf Hitler came to power, many things changed in Germany, and the story of the Jewish population of Ravensburg during that era is a sad one to tell. Yet, it was hardly the first time that anti-Semitism had first been recorded as having reared its ugly head in the region.
In the Middle Ages, a synagogue, mentioned as far back as 1345 was located at the centre of Ravensburg, serving a small Jewish community which can be traced from 1330 to 1429. At the end of 1429 and through 1430, the Jews of Ravensburg were targeted and a horrific massacre ensued.
In the nearby settlements of Lindau, Überlingen, Buchhorn (later renamed Friedrichshafen), Meersburg and Konstanz, there were mass arrests of Jewish residents.
The Jews of Lindau were burnt alive during the 1429/1430 Ravensburg blood libel, in which members of the Jewish community were accused of ritually sacrificing babies. In August 1430, in Überlingen, the Jewish community was forced to convert, 11 of them did so and the 12 who refused were killed.
The massacres which took place in Lindau, Überlingen and Ravensburg happened with the direct approval of the ruling King Sigmund and any remaining Jews were soon expelled from the region.
Ravensburg had this ban confirmed by Emperor Ferdinand I in 1559 and it was upheld, for example, in an 1804 instruction issued for the city guard, which read:
“Since the Jews are not allowed to engage in any trade or business here, no one else is allowed to enter the city by post or by carriage, The rest, however, if they have not received a permit for a longer or shorter stay from the police office, are to be removed from the city by the police station.”
Not until the 19th century were Jews able to settle legally in Ravensburg again and, even by then, their number remained so small that a synagogue was not rebuilt.
In 1858, there were only 3 Jews recorded in Ravensburg and, in 1895, this number peaked at 57. From the turn of the century until 1933, the numbers of Jews living in Ravensburg had steadily decreased until the community was only made up of 23 people.
By the start of the 1930s, there were seven main Jewish families living in Ravensburg, including the Adler, Erlanger, Harburger, Herrmann, Landauer, Rose and Sondermann families.
After the National Socialists seized power, some of the Ravensburg Jews were initially forced to emigrate, while others would later be murdered in Nazi concentration camps. Leading up to World War II, there were many public displays of hatred towards the small community of Jews in and around Ravensburg.
As early as March 13, 1933, about three weeks before the nationwide Nazi boycott of all Jewish shops in Germany, SA guards posted themselves in front of two of the five Jewish shops in Ravensburg and tried to prevent potential buyers from entering, putting up signs on one shop stating “Wohlwert closed until Aryanization”. Wohlwert’s would soon become
“Aryanised” and would be the only Jewish-owned shop to survive the Nazi pogrom. The other owners of the four large Jewish department stores in Ravensburg; Knopf; Merkur; Landauer and Wallersteiner were all forced to sell their properties to non-Jewish merchants between 1935 and 1938.
During this period, many of the Ravensburg Jews were able to flee abroad before the worst of the National Socialist persecution began. While at least eight died violently, it was reported that three Jewish citizens who lived in Ravensburg survived because of their “Aryan” spouses.
Some of the Jews who were arrested in Ravensburg during Kristallnacht were forced to march through the streets of Baden-Baden under SS guard supervision the following day and were later deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
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