Glamorous and in the style of a late-night queen, Anja Reschke stepped up to her studio desk shortly before midnight last Thursday (March 13, 2025). As usual, her program Reschke Fernsehen was dedicated to a single topic. The presentation of the research follows a gripping dramaturgy: from the initially nameless richest man in Germany to the letter from Adolf Maass, the former shareholder of what is now the world’s largest logistics group, to his son Gerhart, who lives in exile. Read by Michel Friedman. It quickly became clear that this evening was about the darkest chapter in German history – the intertwining of wealth and Nazi history. It was about the dark secret behind the wealth of Klaus-Michael Kühne, the logistics billionaire and honorary chairman of Kühne + Nagel, and about his company’s unresolved Nazi past.
Anja Reschke lets two bundles of files crash onto her desk: the denazification verdicts of the Kühne brothers, father and uncle of Klaus-Michael Kühne. Two cities, two verdicts: Hamburg classified the brothers as beneficiaries in the general sense and imposed a fine of 2,000 Reichsmarks. Bremen, on the other hand, saw them as active profiteers and promoters of National Socialist racial madness.
Action M: the great state mission
Kühne + Nagel received lucrative contracts for the transportation of emigrant removal goods. A Nazi euphemism, because they actually transported the belongings of dispossessed and murdered Jews from Western Europe. Kühne + Nagel were awarded the Gaudiplom several times for their work, an honorary title for model companies under National Socialism. The program reveals that the Bremen verdict comes to the conclusion that without the brothers Alfred and Werner Kühne, the NSDAP would not have become so strong. Bremen judges: Big Nazis and imposes a professional ban. But this did not happen. Why? Anja Reschke tells us. The comprehensive investigation is available in the ARD media library.
Here follows the transition to another persistent investigation on the same topic. After eight years, it finally led to the erection of a memorial. It is, you guessed it, in Bremen and not in Hamburg.
Bremen remembers: the Aryanization memorial
Bremen journalist and cultural scientist Henning Bleyl was the driving force behind the research that led to the erection of the Aryanization memorial in Bremen in 2023. Bleyl, a former editor at taz, has been intensively researching the role of companies such as Kühne + Nagel during the Nazi era since 2015. He researched the logistics company’s involvement in the M-Aktion and published numerous articles on this topic. His work helped to initiate the public debate on the economic dimension of the Holocaust and the responsibility of profiteers.
A shaft against forgetting
The staircase to the Weser promenade leads directly to one of three windows that provide a view into a shaft. With his design, the artist Evin Oettingshausen addresses the systematic dispossession of the Jewish population during the Nazi era. The memorial consists of a six-meter-deep shaft that can be seen from the promenade through three windows. The view into the shaft symbolizes the gaps in memory and historiography that still exist today. On the walls of the shaft, shadowy outlines of furniture can be seen – a chair, a wing chair, a table, a coffee pot. Oettingshausen calls them “empty spaces embedded in concrete”. Everyday objects that embody stolen property and destroyed lives.
And Klaus-Michael Kühne? For years, he has refused to come to terms with the company’s history. Although he commissioned a study on the company’s Nazi past, it has not been published. Kühne defends the actions of his father and uncle during the Second World War and emphasizes that the company archives were destroyed during the war. The Aryanization memorial on Bremen’s Weserpromenade stands within sight of Kühne + Nagel’s company headquarters. Kühne prevented the memorial from being built directly in front of the entrance to the company headquarters. It was financed by public funds, private donations and the Bremen Freight Forwarders Association, of which Kühne + Nagel is also a member and was therefore indirectly involved to an unknown extent. In Hamburg, Klaus-Michael Kühne is a major supporter of culture. His foundation sponsors the Elbphilharmonie concert hall, and he plans to invest over 300 million euros in the construction of a new, controversial opera house. The memorial in Bremen, supported by many, cost 500,000 euros. This is how remembrance culture works.
In Bremen you can eat excellent seafood. Bremen is also known as the coffee city and has the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, the world’s first museum dedicated to a female painter. In Whale watching, we explain why a life-size painting of a whale hangs in the Old Town Hall. Bremen also has a culture of remembrance: since 2023, the Arisierungs-Mahnmal on the Weser Promenade has commemorated the systematic dispossession of the Jewish population during the Nazi era.
The research was supported by Bremen Tourismus
