IG Farben, owner of gas makers for Nazis, files for bankruptcy

[Aidoneus]

Last Update: 10/11/2003 12:41
IG Farben, owner of gas makers for Nazis, files for bankruptcy
By The Associated Press

FRANKFURT - IG Farben, the former German chemical giant that used thousands of slave laborers at Auschwitz and part-owned the producer of poison gas for the Nazi death camps, announced Monday that it will file for bankruptcy.

Once the world's largest chemical company, the Allies broke up IG Farben in 1952 and ordered the company into liquidation. It has remained as a trust to settle claims and lawsuits from the Nazi era. Administrator Volker Pollehn told a news conference that the firm planned to file for bankruptcy later Monday.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/359105.html

[emad]

1. Guess it's Enron business subsidies ran out a while ago...

?

[HFishbine]

2. It's amazing

they stayed in business this long. I would think that the market for gas for Nazis would have dried up long ago.

[OldSoldier]

3. They weren't actually in business to do business

They were in "business" to settle claims against Farben arising from the war.

Think of Farben as one of the old trusts. In the United States, we had a steel trust, an oil trust and so on--groups of companies that banded together to force rival companies out of business. IG Farben was a synthetic-dyestuff trust, made up of the three biggest dye works: Bayer, BASF and Hoechst.

After the war, the Allies forced Farben to divest itself of its component companies.

[Kellanved]

4. to clear it up

IGFarben means "Interessen Gruppe Farben" It was the German lobby group for the pharmaceutical and chemical industry ; it turned itself into a conglomerate (Monopolist).
After the war it split up again - the six companies that had made up IGFarben became independent again. (as did the American I.G. - the sister organization for the American subsidies).

A picture of the IGFarben HQ (now part of the University): one wing for each company (Hoechst, BASF, Bayer, agfa, Weile-ter-Meer, Griesheim-Elektron):



The organization is "in Abwicklung" (Liquidation) since the end of the war - it took 50 years to liquidate the assets.