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Q. Professor —
A. I am not a professor.
Q. If in
a conversation among artists one points to a picture and says, “This
picture belongs to you,” would you then get excited?
A. That
depends on the situation.
Q. Where is the difference? When an artist
points to a picture and when an industrialist points to a factory?
A.
As I told you, it depends on the situation and probably it also depends on the
momentary state of mind.
Q. I don’t understand where the
difference is supposed to be, but I want to formulate the question this way.
From the beginning, did you not assume that none of the factories actually
belonged to any of these industrialists?
A. If a man — I
don’t know who said that — but when a man says, “this,”
let’s call him Mayer, “this Mayer in Leyden has two factories,
let’s have him arrested.” Then I know exactly that this factory
belongs neither to Mr. Krupp nor Mr. Luebs, nor Mr. Kevenaar, but that it
belongs to Mr. Mayer, after all I roughly knew the practice of those times.
Q. I didn’t ask you about the arrests. I asked you about the words
“This factory is yours,” and you said that each one of them said it
at least once, that is, altogether about at least three different factories. On
what do you base your opinion or assertion that the factory did not belong to
the person by whom it was said?
A. From the whole atmosphere. From this
lust for booty with which these gentlemen sat there and negotiated and pointed
with their fingers to the map and described the ways which they would take
afterwards. As a sensitive person I feel such things, that there is something
not quite right with this. Neither do I think that these businessmen or
industrialists owned so many factories in Holland at that time. And I heard
later that the firm of Luebs or rather the firm of Henkel finally had 3,500
properties abroad. That was mentioned at some time in a gathering. I don’t
think that that was the original state of affairs of the firm. |
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505 |
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