 |
Q. What functions did the Working Committee have?
A. It was,
so to speak, the executive committee of the Vorstand.
Q. Was that the
top board of Farben?
A. No. The top boards of Farben were the
Verwaltungsrat — I would call it the executive committee of the
supervisory board — and the Central Committee; but the significance of the
latter was different at various times.
Q. In your capacity as a member
of the Vorstand, did you have any other Vorstand member over you as your
superior?
A. Again the answer is legally not, but actually I did.
Q. Would you explain that, please?
A. While I was a deputy
Vorstand member, that is until the summer of 1938, Geheimrat Schmitz, of
course, was my superior. After 1938, that is after I had become a regular
Vorstand member, the procedure was a little different, but of course even then
Geheimrat Schmitz was still the decisive person if I had anything to submit to
him.
Q. How about the voting in the Vorstand? A. This has already been
discussed repeatedly here; I want to add that not only was there no voting in
the Vorstand, but we never had the idea of holding any vote in the Vorstand.
Q. Why was that?
A. My impression is that in this trial one has
a completely wrong picture of the meaning of the Vorstand of Farben. We were
de facto not one single stock corporation; we were a number of stock
corporations. In my opinion, the corporation law didn't fit Farben any more; we
had become too large for that. There were only two possibilities for us. Either
to split up Farben — and Mr. von Knieriem has already said here that a
definite plan to this end existed — or a new corporation law had to be
introduced in Germany, a law for Konzerns; but the Nazis would not have done
this because they wanted to nationalize us, as can be seen from point 13 of the
Party Program, or they wanted to dissolve us altogether after the war.
Q. What was the character of the Vorstand meetings?
A. I am not
a lawyer; for that reason I want to explain this according to my common sense.
It is hard to define. I would say that they were a mixture of Aufsichtsrat
meetings, with the character of reporting to a committee, and at the same time
had the function of a clearing agency. Anybody who had anything of fundamental
significance to report or who believed that he needed approval for some
important matter, put this on the agenda.
Q. Did the Vorstand discuss
the most important things, besides routine matters? |
391 |
. 
