Der Tod

Not since Kaisers, Hindenburgs, Ludendorffs, Von Tirpitzes and Bethmann-Hollwegs ceased to shake the Fatherland has Germany been so profoundly moved by an individual. The death of Hugo Stinnes in Berlin following an operation for gallstones which was complicated by pleural pneumonia, stirred the whole country to the complete exclusion of all else.

Hugo Stinnes, 54 years of age, was an emperor of finance, a tsar of industry, a king of business. His minions were princes and grand-dukes, his serving men were lords. His interests were as far-flung as the seven seas. His business was no one thing in particular, but everything in general. He dealt in trusts of super-trusts or trusts of trusts of trusts. It has been said that "when you were in Germany the trains and ships on which you travelled, the hotels you lived at, the shops you bought from, the newspapers you read, the banks where you cashed your drafts, the food you received to eat and innumerable other things knew the Stinnes ownership or control."

His wealth is inestimable. Conservative calculations place his fortune at $250,000,000, but it might just as well be $250,000,000,000. No one knows how rich he was. In death as in life he still remains a man of mystery, with a fortune that would outrival the wildest dreams of a fairy prince.

When the end came Hugo Stinnes was fully conscious. During the afternoon he had indulged in a series of business and family chats with his family, had asked for the experts' (reparations) reports and was said to have been gratified "as he professed to see his own ideas among their recommendations." At nine o'clock in the evening he expired: next day Stinnes stocks on the Boerse fell 25% and the name of Hugo Stinnes was on the tongue of every Deutschlander.

The success of Hugo Stinnes was due to chance and hard work. It was said of him that he "always invested his funds and hated men and money which remained idle." Herr Stinnes did not hate himself--he was busy, eternally busy. The bulk of his fortune was made during the War in supplying munitions to the Army, in exploiting Belgium during the long German occupation and in taking advantage of Germany's financial ruin. Before the War he was worth about $7,500,000 and some believe that he increased his wealth 100-fold during the past decade.

His grandfather, Mathias Stinnes, was a rich man. His father, Gustav Stinnes, was also rich. At 20 years of age Hugo inherited a steamboat business and a mine in Westphalia from his father. From that time on he began his scheme of creating vertical trusts founded upon the broad basis of raw materials. As years passed his millions increased, during the War they grew rapidly, and after the War they simply swelled up to grotesque proportions and in 1924 the man, Hugo Stinnes, had won a prestige by the force of cold cash greater than any other man in history.

With all his power and money, Hugo was a simple man delighting in simple things. "He would be captivated in the street," a writer said, "by the sight of a peddler's pack, and if he discovered a new kind of fountain pen or safety razor among the man's wares his excitement was almost boundless." He delighted in pulling huge rolls of bills out of his pocket with the gleeful remark: "See mine." It was the same when he walked into one of his hotels, read one of his newspapers, pointed to one of his banks. Yet there was never anything offensive in his manner.

Temperamentally, Herr Stinnes was homely, usually quiet and genial but often a hidden temper would explode with volcanic force. He never owned a dress suit until 1917 and was usually sloppily dressed. Asked what he would say when the French occupied his Ruhr house, he remarked: "They will say Stinnes' home is as shabby as his clothes."

Another view of the inflexible, indurate "King of Coke" was given by Dr. Ludwig Stein, an intimate acquaintance: "At the time of the death of Albert Ballin, the all-powerful director of the Hamburg-American Line, I had the opportunity to gauge the feelings of Stinnes. The telephone rang, and Stinnes was summoned to answer. Suddenly I saw him change color and reel. With tears in his eyes he returned and said: 'I have just received a message from Hamburg that my good friend Albert Ballin is dead. He was the surest and truest friend I had, not only in the commercial way but also personally.'"

Stinnes politico-industrial philosophy is shown with startling clarity by his own words:

"The German Government, no matter who leads it, always does stupid things."

"Frankly, I worship on the altar of big business."

"Gott sei dank! [God be thanked!] My children are interested only in business. Art and the theatre are as distasteful to them as they are to me."

"If the so-called rich people of Germany are dispossessed, the German people will starve to death. Immediate cheap production is absolutely necessary. Every strike is a murder of the people."

"Do the German people want to survive? Then the German people must work at least as much and as long as before the War. If they want to pay reparations also, then they must work longer. Whoever tells Germany that taxation of the so-called property class has a chance in the present situation, lies and deceives the people."

Herr Stinnes leaves a wife and five children to mourn him. The eldest, Dr. Edmund Hugo Stinnes, "a youth of engaging personality and winning urbanity," will share with his brother, Hugo Herman Stinnes, the control of the great Stinnes interests. The latter is known to the family as "Junior" and his father once remarked: "Junior is much more efficient and gifted than his father--he will succeed me."