21 Facts About Hugo Stinnes

Hugo Adolf Eugen Victor Stinnes commonly known as Hugo Stinnes was a German industrialist and politician who served as a member of Reichstag from 1920 to 1924.

Hugo Stinnes next organized an extensive international business in coal, and had 13 steamers trading to and from North Sea, Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Sea ports.

Hugo Stinnes imported great quantities of English coal and had an agency at Newcastle as well as an interest in some English mines.

Since its founding in 1898, Hugo Stinnes had been on the Board of Directors of the Rheinisch-Westfalisches Elektrizitatswerk Aktiengesellschaft.

Hugo Stinnes envisioned using the steam from his mines to drive turbines for electricity production.

Hugo Stinnes was a director of many of the largest industrial and mining companies of Westphalia, the Rhineland and Luxembourg.

Hugo Stinnes was always engaged in founding new companies or amalgamating existing ones.

Hugo 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.

When World War I broke out, Hugo Stinnes secured an enormous share in the war profits which enlarged the fortunes of the great industrialists.

Hugo Stinnes purchased half a dozen landed estates in Saxony to supply timber for pit props.

On his initiative, on January 10,1919, Hugo Stinnes conducted a meeting of top representatives of the German economy in revolutionary Berlin and funded Antibolschewistenfonds of the Anti-Bolshevist League, which distributed anti-communist propaganda and financed right wing groups such as the Freikorps.

In June 1920, after the German Revolution, Hugo Stinnes was elected to the Reichstag.

Hugo Stinnes acted as spokesman for German industry towards trade unions and laid the foundation of today's system of cooperation between the unions and employers in Germany.

Hugo Stinnes denounced the Kapp Putsch as a senseless adventure, but at the same time made friendly gestures towards Wolfgang Kapp personally.

About the time of his election to the Reichstag, Hugo 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.

Ancillary to these acquisitions, Hugo Stinnes secured large interests in paper mills in order to make his newspapers independent of the paper market.

However, at the outbreak of World War I, Hugo Stinnes seized the factories and deprived Wilderman of his assets, using the excuse that Wilderman was an "enemy alien".

However, Hugo Stinnes delayed the process by disputing the facts surrounding Wilderman's birth, such as accusing Wilderman of forging his birth certificate, and used financial sleight of hand to pretend the assets had in fact been dissipated and, therefore, there was nothing that could be restored.

Hugo Stinnes died in Berlin as a result of a gall bladder operation.

In 1895, Hugo Stinnes married Clare Wagenknecht; the couple had seven children: Edmund Hugo, Hugo Hermann, Clarenore, Otto, Hilde, Ernst, and Else.

Hugo Stinnes's son Edmund Stinnes was a financier who left Germany and gave his home for the Secret Surrender negotiations in 1945 which brought WW2 to an end in Italy.