In the hope that my request will meet with your valuable consideration, I remain, yours faithfully,
He was swiftly rejected by Ludwig Topf Sr, but this did not deter him from applying again only four months later. In his second application he stated that although he had now completed a fourth term in a building construction course and was working for Erfurt architect Gustav Leithold, ‘a post in your honoured institute… would correspond more to my wishes’. Again Prüfer was rejected. He worked another year as a foreman and engineer in the construction industry for the A. Dehne building company before making a third application to Topf and Sons in the summer of 1911. This time he was successful and, after a four-week probation period, he was given a full-time job at Topf and Sons on 16 June 1911. Prüfer’s determination to join Topf and Sons seems all the more remarkable given that his starting salary of ninety marks a month was significantly lower than what he had been earning before, and he had less responsibility – working not as a foreman but on construction drawings and structural calculations.
Prüfer was employed at Topf and Sons for more than a year, until October 1912 when he was called up to do military service. Enlisted into the 71st Erfurt Regiment, he remained in the army until the end of the First World War. The 71st Erfurt Regiment first saw battle on the Eastern Front in the first Battle of the Maurasian Lakes, but was then transferred to the Western Front in October 1915 and fought at Verdun, the Somme, Arras and Passchendaele.
Historian Annegret Schüle speculates on the impact of these experiences on Prüfer’s character: ‘The significance of Prüfer’s wartime experiences for his later actions should not be underestimated. As a soldier on the Western Front he learned that human life is worthless and he was confronted with mass death. The fact that he himself survived can only have intensified his ambition and pride.’[15]
In truth, though millions of other men were also scarred by the horror and mass casualties of First World War, very few went on to inflict suffering on others in their later lives with such cold calculation.
On 21 December 1918 Kurt Prüfer was discharged from the army and returned to Erfurt to work for the city council as a structural engineer where, for five months, he helped with the clearance of war damage. Prüfer then went back to the Building Trades School and spent another two terms studying civil engineering. He passed his exam on 15 March 1920 and then reverted to his original pre-war ambitions – he returned to work at Topf and Sons.
More than ten years had passed since Prüfer sought to join the company as a teenager. He was now a 29-year-old qualified engineer working in Division D, Furnace Construction. To round out his life, Prüfer also got married at this time, to his wife Frieda, who was a year older than him, but the couple would never have children.
Working in furnace construction, an offshoot of the company’s main activities and such a small part of Topf and Sons’ income, seems like an odd choice for an ambitious man – but Prüfer had foresight. In 1920, the furnace construction division worked mainly on building industrial furnaces, but Prüfer saw and understood the rising movement for human cremation and anticipated a growing area of business. Annegret Schüle prescribes his interest in cremation as a ‘way of working through his encounter with mass death at the Front and of finding a way of dealing with death, within ordered, technical parameters’.[16] It was just as likely, however, to have been a shrewd career move by a man always looking for the next step ahead.
Like most German workers, Prüfer’s fortunes fluctuated in the early 1920s and the years of the Weimar Republic. His salary rose dramatically in line with the rampant inflation of the times, but in 1924 he wrote about being dismissed from his job. By mid-1924, however, the situation had stabilised and Prüfer began to receive pay rises that mirrored the growing importance of his work. On 1 March 1924, his wage rose to 290 Goldmarks (the German currency that preceded the Reichsmark) then to 345 on 1 April, before reaching 380 on 1 November. Six months later, he began to receive a commission of 1 per cent gross profit for sales of cremation furnaces and fixtures.
Yet, despite his pay rises, and his seeming determination to work for Topf and Sons against all odds, Prüfer would always feel that he was being treated unfairly at the company and that his ‘loyalty’ went unrecognised. His personnel file contains none of the warm notes written by the Topf brothers to other employees upon hearing of the birth of babies or death of relatives – and Prüfer himself sends Ludwig Topf only a brief, curtly written Christmas card, which he posts on Christmas Eve, too late to reach his boss on time.
This sense of grievance would be inflamed over the years by a series of tense working relationships – none more strained than that between Prüfer and his soon-to-be manager, Fritz Sander.
Sander was fifteen years older than Prüfer, and came from a more middle-class family, with a father who was an office worker in Leipzig. Like Prüfer, however, Fritz Sander had studied for only an intermediate technical qualification, and had not attended university, nor had he fought in the First World War. But if Prüfer believed that the two men should have been equals, the reality was that Sander was Prüfer’s boss as the most senior man in the furnace construction division, and in charge of overseeing all of Prüfer’s designs. Sander was also bestowed with a rank and series of responsibilities that demonstrated he was held in a regard by the Topf family never extended to Kurt Prüfer.
After ten years with the company, Sander was promoted to senior engineer. In 1928 he was given joint powers of attorney, meaning that he could represent the company legally with two other company officers. In 1939 this was extended, and Sander was given power of attorney alongside only one other company representative. Despite the crucial role he would play in mediating between the company and the SS, Kurt Prüfer was never awarded this privilege – and the slight rankled. (The Topf brothers note in Prüfer’s file that he must never be given the right to oversee business dealings alone, as he is not to be trusted.)
The animosity between the two men was visceral – and ran both ways. Sander often commented on Prüfer’s absence record, changing ‘due to illness’ to ‘supposedly due to illness’ – or specifically ‘supposedly due to gall bladder trouble’ on various occasions. His suspicions were perhaps well founded, as Prüfer’s absence record totalled more than twenty-four days in 1944 – and he petitioned the company on many other petty matters, including the right to leave work ten minutes early to catch his train:
Erfurt, 2 October 1943
To the company directors
RE. WORKING HOURS
Dear Herr and Herr Topf
The new working hours mean I often have to catch the 17:30 train which, to make matters worse, regularly runs fifteen minutes late. You may not be aware that, due to my wife’s illness, I also have to take care of all the food shopping. I am therefore requesting permission to leave ten minutes before the official close of business, so that I can catch the train at 17:12 (which, incidentally, runs on time).
Since my official start time is still 7.30 a.m. but the train gets me here at 7 a.m., I would still be working my full hours.
Hoping you will grant my request.
14
Kurt Prüfer’s letter of application to Topf and Sons, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
15
Schüle, op. cit., p. 48.
AS footnote 154: Kurt Prüfer personnel file, ThHStAW, J.A. Topf & Söhne, no. 14, p. 398.
16
Schüle, op. cit., p. 49. Prüfer finds a way of dealing with death within ordered parameters.