Hugo Adolf Eugen Victor Stinnes colloquially Hugo Stinnes (; 12 February 1870 – 10 April 1924) was a German industrialist, philanthropist and politician who served as Member of the Reichstag from 1920 to 1924 (his death).
He was often dubbed Inflation King or Czar of New Germany being one of the most influential entrepreneurs during the late era of the German Empire and early Weimar Republic. His conglomerate controlled approximately 15 to 20 percent of the German economy at its peak.
Early life and education
Stinnes was born 12 February 1870 in Mülheim, North German Confederation (presently Germany), the third of four children, to Hermann Hugo Stinnes (1842–1887) and Catherine Sophie "Adeline" Stinnes (née Coupienne; 1844–1925), into an affluent family. His siblings were; Heinrich Stinnes (1867–1932), Christine Adeline Fischer (née Stinnes; 1868–1948) and Gustav Ernst Stinnes (1878–1943).
His paternal family belonged to the well established bourgeois families of Mülheim that became wealthy in the early 19th century through merchant and mining activities in the Ruhr valley. His paternal great-grandfather, Jean Baptiste Coupienne (1768–1825), was a Walloon emigrant from Dinant, who became a pioneer of the leather industry in Mülheim, a free mason and official.
Stinnes completed schooling in Mülheim passing his graduation examination from secondary school (Realschule) followed by a commercial apprenticeship at the firm of Carl Spaeter in Koblenz. In order to familiarize with the family investments in mining, Stinnes briefly worked as a miner himself at the Wiethe colliery. In 1889, he attended some studies of instruction at Bergakademie Berlin (merged with Technische Hochschule in 1916).
Professional Career
In 1890, he inherited his father's coal mining and other financial enterprises.
During the First World War
Before World War I, he was a director of many of the largest industrial and mining companies of Westphalia, the Rhineland and Luxembourg. Business interests of this magnitude were constantly expanding, and he became interested in numerous subsidiary enterprises, such as tramways and the supply of electric power and light. He was always engaged in founding new companies or amalgamating existing ones. Stinnes managed to maintain an extensive and even a detailed knowledge of the working of all the companies in which he was engaged and, in all of them, to exact zealous and conscientious work from his business subordinates. The secret of his success was vertical integration and an essential unity of direction and coordination of aims in all branches of his enterprises.
In June 1920, after the German Revolution, Stinnes was elected to the Reichstag.
About the time of his election to the Reichstag, Stinnes began to buy up leading German newspapers, one of his main objects being to organize a solid and powerful bloc of opinion in Germany in support of law and order and the promotion of the highest industrial and commercial efficiency. His newspaper purchases included the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung in Berlin, formerly the organ of Otto von Bismarck and then of all the succeeding German governments, the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten and the München-Augsburger Zeitung, the latter being one of the oldest newspapers in Germany. Both of the Munich journals were previously exponents of a very much more democratic trend of opinion than that which came to characterize them under his proprietorship. Ancillary to these acquisitions, Stinnes secured large interests in paper mills in order to make his newspapers independent of the paper market.
thumb|The coffin of Stinnes being carried during his funeral
Stinnes died in Berlin as a result of a gall bladder operation. Although his financial empire held some 4500 companies and 3000 manufacturing plants, it collapsed within a year of his death. Parts of his empire continued as Stinnes AG (now DB Mobility Logistics), Hugo Stinnes Schiffahrt and RWE, the second-largest energy supplier in Germany.
Personal life
In 1895, Stinnes married Clara Eleonore Hermine Henriette Wagenknecht, colloquially Clara "Cläre" Wagenknecht (1872–1973), daughter of Edmund Karl Wagenknecht (1838–1921), a merchant and consul, and Clementina Wagenknecht (née von Eicken; 1848–1922). They had seven children;
- Edmund Hugo Stinnes (1896–1980), a financier who gave his home for Operation Sunrise in 1945, married firstly Emilie Margarete Herrmann (1899–1953), secondly Margiana von Schultze-Gaevernitz (1904–1989) with whom he had one daughter Veronica Stinnes Petersen (1933–2021), thirdly married to Bolivian-born Maria Emma Isabel Girardière (born 1906).
- Hugo Hermann Stinnes, colloquially Hermann Stinnes (1897–1982), married firstly to Tilda Will (born 1893), had one son, Dieter Hugo Stinnes (1920–2002), secondly to Birte Jensen (born 1913).
- Clara Eleonore Stinnes, colloquially Clärenore Stinnes (1901–1990), married Swedish-born photographer and filmmaker Carl-Axel Söderström, with whom she had daughter Cläre Söderström-Svensson (1931–2020).
- Otto Hugo Stinnes (1903–1983), married firstly Irene von Laffert (1920–1989), secondly to Hilde Bernau (1908–2000).
- Hildegard Kläre Stinnes (1904–1975), married firstly Max Georg Fiedler (1898–1977) with whom she had one son Hugo Max Fiedler (born 1928), secondly to Wilhelm Max Fiedler (1891–1964), with whom she had daughter Delia Fiedler (1933–2007).
- Ernst Hugo Stinnes (1911–1986), married Danish-born Anne Sophie Jensen (born 1912).
- Else Stinnes (1913–1997), never married.
Stinnes died 10 April 1924 aged 54 in Berlin, Weimar Republic.