No redeeming features

Until fairly recently, the name Thyssen-Bornemisza held generally positive associations — with vibrant German industrialism, responsible capitalism, pan-European cosmopolitanism, artistic connoisseurship and philanthropy, all tinged with a pleasant whiff of Hungarian nobility. Just how deeply erroneous these are revealed to have been is staggering.

August Thyssen, who created the family fortune in the second half of the 19th century, was neither an inventive manufacturer, nor an adventurous entrepreneur, nor a creative capitalist. He made his money by marrying sensibly, associating with the right people and taking advantage of opportunities. He was a careful, thrifty, cost-cutting, cheese-paring and exploitative industrialist, more of a quartermaster than a captain of industry.

His descendants were no more interested in the source of their wealth than he was, only in its extent, and while they remained largely aloof from the factory floor, they displayed nothing of the paternalism that often accompanies such distance. Indeed, the only matters that did engage their attention were the repression of their workers and lucrative sell-offs.

The Thyssen concern, which embraced coal, steel and arms production, flourished during the Great War, propelling August Thyssen’s heirs to new heights of wealth. They did not use this to alleviate the sufferings of the German people in the aftermath of 1918, only to increase the extent of their empire and, later, to finance the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. They bankrolled them throughout the 1930s, and while one of August’s sons, Heinrich, took care to distance himself from them, relocating to Switzerland and posing as a Hungarian during the war, his brother Fritz continued to collaborate with and support the Nazis, acquired Jewish assets on the cheap and profited from slave labour in his factories. Other members of the family would, from this account, even appear to have taken part in atrocities against the Jews.