Copyright 2023 Spiegel Verlag Rudolf Augstein GMBH & CO KG All rights reserved, by Dietmar Palan
Manager Magazin 21 July 2023 “Die unbekannte Nazivergangenheit des Prothesenkönigs Ottobock”
Hans Georg Näder often tells tales about the illustrious history of his company. However, publicly accessible documents from federal and state archives suggest that he conveniently omits significant gaps and dark chapters from the Nazi era. The 61-year-old executive works tirelessly to uphold an image of a quirky entrepreneurial genius. With his deliberately dishevelled hair and impressive stature, often adorned with a long, vibrant silk scarf, he rules the world’s leading prosthetics manufacturer Ottobock (approximately 9000 employees, €1.3 billion turnover) with almost unlimited authority, extravagance, and eccentricity.
Näder proudly claims that entrepreneurship is in his blood, inherited from his grandfather Otto Bock, who, according to Näder’s heroic tale, founded the company after World War I, navigated it through the turbulence of the 1920s and 1930s, and eventually turned it into the dominant provider in Germany. His father, Max Näder, rebuilt the company after it was expropriated by the Russian occupiers, and propelled it into the global market.
The then German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the grandfather, son-in-law and founding grandson as a “role model for German medium-sized businesses” at the company’s centenary celebrations in February 2019.
Näder has relentlessly repeated the narrative of a squeaky-clean success story over the years. It’s featured on the company’s website and is part of his fundamental narrative for wooing potential investors and financiers.
However, documents from the Federal Archives in Berlin and the Thuringia State Archives in Weimar, which the manager magazine has accessed, suggest that Näder deliberately excludes dark chapters of his family and company history. Instead, a disturbing image of an opportunistic entrepreneurial family emerges, adept at adapting to the prevailing political power, with no apparent qualms about engaging with the representatives of the ruling regime, be it during the Nazi dictatorship or the early years of Russian occupation.
Näder doesn’t even seem to be entirely accurate in his depiction of the company’s earliest years. His grandfather was indeed among the founders but didn’t initially hold any shares, according to documents available in the Federal Archives. The startup capital of one million marks likely came predominantly from a manufacturer from Krefeld, who ran the company for its first few years. Otto Bock served as production manager and didn’t join the management team until 1924. He took over as the sole managing director in 1927, and only after he had liquidated the old company and bought out the other shareholders at the end of October 1933, did the company bear his name: Orthopedic Industry Otto Bock in Königsee.
Supporting Member of the SS
In 1933, the year Nazis seized power, the timing to assume control and rename the company seemed opportune. The Nazi Party was suspicious of corporations due to the anonymity of their owners and viewed them as detrimental to the Volksgemeinschaft (the People’s Community).
Indeed, the Nazi-dominated Reichstag passed a law in 1934 to transform corporations, which led to the liquidation and conversion of half of the existing corporations into partnerships in the following years.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Otto Bock adapted comfortably and swiftly to the new conditions. On May 1, 1933, he joined the Nazi Party. He was among the tens of thousands who flocked to join Hitler’s party apparatus in the weeks following the seizure of power, later mocked as ‘March Victims’. After this surge, a halt was put on new admissions, which was partially lifted in 1937 and then completely in 1939.
Over the 1930s, Otto Bock appeared as a supporting member of the SS, contributing, as he later stated in documents, a monthly fee of six Reichsmark. He claimed to have stopped these payments during 1938.
Part of the Hitler Youth
His future son-in-law, Max Näder, whom Otto Bock hired initially as an intern in 1935, proved equally adaptable. Näder was a member of the Hitler Youth, despite being too old at 19. While studying in Berlin, he was part of the National Socialist German Student League (NSDStB), which was notable because it was an elite organization that required an entrance exam.
During the Africa campaign, Näder was awarded the Iron Cross II Class. He spent the last months of the war as a welfare officer in the hospital, where he was responsible for reporting on the military and, within certain limits, the political situation - a task delegated mostly to politically reliable officers.
Like many other entrepreneurs, Otto Bock relied on forced laborers during the war years. The company later participated in the “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” foundation, which from 2000 onwards provided compensation payments to former forced laborers. The company acknowledges their employment but does not provide any numbers.
The only indication of the extent of this is in the three-volume company history “Moving Times”, commissioned by the company and the family. It quotes former employees who recall that from 1942 onwards, about 100 Russian women aged 18 to 22 were employed in the bandages, sewing and wood departments. If these memories are accurate, forced laborers would have made up about a fifth of the workforce.
Interestingly, they seem to have been employed not only in the company but also in the family’s household. This conclusion can be drawn from letters that Marie Näder wrote to her husband, quoted in the work. It seems that in recruiting foreign workers, the owner family wasn’t just trying to fill the vacancies created by the conscription of a large part of the male workforce into the Wehrmacht.
A Servant of Two Masters
Until 1948, Bock held onto the company’s headquarters in Königsee, Thuringia, and during this time he also had to face the denazification commission for the Rudolstadt district, which was responsible for the company headquarters. The committee classified him as a war profiteer and supporter of the Nazi regime and placed him among the former fascists and militarists who should be removed from their posts in private industry.
However, it didn’t happen because Bock declared himself indispensable to the occupiers, as evident from the archive documents. “After the collapse, I immediately gathered my people together and rebuilt the business,” he stated in a protocol note, which had nothing to do with the actual accusations: “I have now taken on a large order from the Red Army and have already got many thousands of Russian soldiers back on their feet.”
Unlike many other companies, Hans Georg Näder has not commissioned or conducted an independent, scientifically based investigation into the company’s history to this day. He left an extensive list of questions from the manager magazine unanswered.
The scarcely processed past of his company could catch up with him and his family in the coming months. The private equity firm EQT, which acquired a 20 percent stake in 2017, wants to sell, and Näder and his two daughters also want to give up 10 percent of their shares – preferably to one of the big, globally operating entities. Several Anglo-Saxon funds may not qualify as interested parties. Their policy is: money is only available if a company demonstrably comes to terms with its past in a scientifically verifiable manner, not just through self-regulated history marketing.