With some satisfaction, Ernst Wolfgang noted: ‘Herr Kleinhans’s starting point here was that Prüfer is abusing his position in the company!’ Rather than dismissing the call as a piece of overheated nonsense, Topf told Kleinhans that he would make a note of the call and look into the matter. For Ernst Wolfgang Topf, no piece of office gossip was too trivial to meddle in, and, usually, he loved to think the worst of his employees – and Kurt Prüfer in particular.[51]
Yet, on one crucial occasion, the Topf company was offered the chance to rid themselves of Kurt Prüfer: on 28 February 1941, he resigned.
Prüfer’s main complaint was, as ever, money. Between November 1939 and February 1941, a period when Topf and Sons were supplying the SS, Prüfer’s salary was 360 RM per month, with 2 per cent commission on the gross profit of his sales. On average this commission amounted to 66 RM per month, bringing his total pay to 426 RM. In comparison, Prüfer’s colleague Paul Erdmann, who had worked longer for Topf and Sons, but who had less technical expertise, earned 900 RM per month.
In his resignation letter, Prüfer claimed to be in dire financial straits, and had been reportedly raiding his savings to make ends meet in order to look after his sick wife. The Topf brothers had promised to increase his salary at the time that they took over the company, Prüfer states, yet ‘so far this has only happened to a very small degree’.[52] Although Prüfer had been promoted to the role of senior engineer in December 1935, he was given only a 10 per cent pay rise at the end of 1936, from then on he had been forced to actively request any further pay increases, which were granted rather grudgingly.
In 1937, the company argued with Prüfer over his sales calculations, pointing out that in four years his work in crematorium construction had not brought in any net profit. When Prüfer again requested a pay rise of 20 RM per month in June 1938, the company agreed to pay two-thirds straightaway, but the remaining third only at the end of the year. Prüfer asserted that he no longer wanted to be a ‘“supplicant” begging for money’, so he used his resignation letter as an opportunity to remind the Topf brothers that ‘I have my pride, after all’. He threatened to take up a job with another company.
The explanation for Prüfer’s reward, or lack of it, lay less with his work, however, and more with his fraught relationship with Ernst Wolfgang Topf. After years of chilly formal relations, they had a serious falling out at Christmas 1939 over a dispute with a colleague in Prüfer’s department, Herr Van Der Loo. The man had been summarily dismissed after allegedly insulting the company management, but, in an act of what Ernst Wolfgang Topf would term ‘mutiny’, Prüfer stuck up for his colleague, thus ensuring that he would never be deemed ‘worthy’ of legally representing the company as Fritz Sander and Paul Erdmann were able to do.
In two long and emotional memos, Ernst Wolfgang Topf lays out the full details of the complaint, and his frustration with Prüfer, who accused the Topf brother of acting ‘rashly’ in dismissing his friend. Enraged, Ernst Wolfgang responded that Prüfer ‘would never be able to become someone who planned and acted in the best interests of the company’.[53]
Given this exchange of hostility, the Topf brothers might have been expected to jump at the chance to get rid of Prüfer. Not only was he a demanding ‘troublemaker’, running a seemingly unprofitable department that was only a tiny offshoot of the main part of the Topf and Sons’ business, but the company itself was facing liquidity problems. The war had led to a shortage of materials, which made it impossible to complete orders, added to which some clients were increasingly late in paying their bills. As a result, Topf and Sons was facing mounting debts with Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank and could justifiably refuse demands for a pay rise. In negotiations with Prüfer, Topf and Sons should have held the upper hand – due to rules regulating the war economy, employees could not change jobs at will; a company had to approve an employee’s request to leave – and Topf and Sons appeared to have every reason to turn down Prüfer’s demands for more money, and accept his resignation.
Yet only a day after receiving his letter, the Topf brothers wrote back to Prüfer to tell him that they would not be accepting his resignation. ‘You know better than anyone that you are working on essential tasks,’ the brothers wrote, adding that, while normally the company would not consider a request for a pay rise, under these ‘particular circumstances’ it would make an exception. With mediation from the Trustee of Labour, the Topfs agree to pay Prüfer a fixed rate of 450 RM per month, with no added commission, bringing him an extra 24 RM per month. (This offer still amounted to less than half of what Paul Erdmann was earning.) A company restructuring also worked in Prüfer’s favour; his Department D became a separate department for Cremation and Waste Incinerator ovens.
If they had allowed Prüfer to leave, Ludwig and Ernst Wolfgang could have rid themselves of two problems: a difficult employee; and the issue of manufacturing ovens for concentration camps, the horrors of which had not escaped them. In letting Prüfer go, the brothers could have said, with justification, that they no longer had the technical expertise to continue working in the area, which accounted for only the smallest percentage of their firm’s business.
Instead, the Topfs chose not to free themselves of their ties to the SS, but to use Prüfer as a conduit to deepening their association.
Looming over both brothers was the prospect of being called up to serve in the army. Although Ernst Wolfgang appears to have avoided a call-up due to his claims of ill-health, Ludwig’s notice arrived on 19 September 1941, a few days after his thirty-eighth birthday. (The same month that Prüfer insulted the brothers again, by claiming that they had done nothing to help Topf employees sent to the Front – ‘In the context of a discussion about parcels to be sent to the [called-up Topf workers],’ Ernst Wolfgang writes, ‘Herr Prüfer took the liberty of commenting that so far the company had done and paid nothing whatsoever for these people. I immediately set the record straight in the strongest terms.’)[54]
Ludwig’s great fear must have been that he would be sent straight into action on the Eastern Front – a likely death sentence. Instead he received a relatively soft posting, and was assigned to a construction regiment about 35 miles from Erfurt near Gotha. Despite this stroke of luck (no doubt secured by much manoeuvring behind the scenes), both brothers dedicated themselves to getting Ludwig out of the army altogether, applying after a month for him to receive Uk status, which meant he was needed for vital war work at Topf and Sons. This first request was denied outright and Ludwig was not even allowed the fourteen-day ‘working holiday’ the brothers had requested. Despite this, Ludwig persuaded his military superior to get Weimar Military Command to grant him one week’s special absence on 10 November. During this week the brothers applied themselves earnestly to making a second attempt at getting Ludwig out of the army. On 13 November the Topfs applied again for Uk status, sending a letter to the President of Industry and Trade stating:
It is our view that the military command is under the impression that the war work carried out by J. A. Topf and Sons is limited to the manufacture of grenades and repair of steering gear for the ‘He III’. For this reason we are writing to you again to draw your attention to the war essential task we currently have in hand, i.e. orders with priority status S and SS, as well as construction priority O, which we are required to fulfil within the next few months.[55]
54
Memo regarding a company meeting; Kurt Prüfer’s comments, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
55
Topf and Sons application for Uk status, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.