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Thereupon the meeting was closed, I believe it was already after
midnight. Aside from this incident, which was due to exhaustion, the
negotiations were carried out in quite correct and objective tone, and on the
next morning when we were able to go to work refreshed, not a word was said
about this midnight quarrel.
Q. Mr. Haefliger, I want to come back to
the purchase price of 280,000,000 Czech crowns. Do you perhaps recall whether
this sum which you finally agreed on was suggested by the Prager Verein at the
end or was this suggestion made by IG?
A. I cannot remember that. There
were some intermediate stages. We went to 310, and then the titanium white
plant was discussed and all kinds of questions were considered. I don't know
how we came to agree on 280.
Q. Now, Mr. Haefliger, did you have the
impression during all these negotiations that Farben exerted any pressure on
the Czechs?
A. No, I did not have this impression.
Q. Do you
perhaps know whether the German authorities in any form, acting on or without
Farben's suggestion, exerted any pressure on the Prager Verein in order to have
the Aussig and Falkenau plants turned over to Farben?
A. No. I did not
know anything of that and I cannot remember the representatives of the Prager
Verein during the negotiations having made any such remark or hint even. I
don't believe that the German authorities intervened in any way. I have no
knowledge of such a thing.
Q. But, Mr. Haefliger, you did say that the
Prager Verein, after the Sudetenland was ceded, realized a certain necessity,
let us say, of selling the Aussig and Falkenau plants. Was that not a certain
compulsion under which the Prager Verein was negotiating in this case?
A. One has to state most emphatically that in international business it
is a well-known fact that if an enterprise is obliged to give up a working
plant it is generally because of political circumstances or because of the
economic situation, and this usually constitutes some pressure.
Q. Can
you not give an example of this from your own activity with Farben — for
such compulsion in which you were, of course, again in international business
dealings?
A. Certainly. Not long before that I personally was in such a
position. It was a question of the Farben's option participation in the
American Magnesium Corporation in the United States, in the fall of 1937. It
might have been the middle of the year. At that time, Farben was obliged to
give up this very promising holding, since, on one hand, the anti-German
attitude which pre- […vailed] |
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