The “Flaws on the Moral Balance Sheet” of the Thyssen Bornemisza Group
In 2021, Professor Boris Gehlen – as a Fritz Thyssen Foundation funded academic – bravely described our 2007 Thyssen biography (available in English, Spanish, German and Italian) thus:
“Researched thoroughly”… “A particular usefulness is derived from the fact that Litchfield was able to conduct interviews with Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, which are not accessible anywhere else”…“He describes the Thyssen dynasty as people denying their own past and therefore their responsibility”.
And Gehlen acknowledged in his own book, available in German only, and part of an otherwise somewhat uncritical 10-book series:
“The Erlenhof transaction [stud farm ‘aryanisation’ from Moritz James Oppenheimer], together with the transnational tax evasion via the ‘Dutch Levy’, and the use of forced labour [under the Nazi regime] belong without a doubt to the flaws on the moral balance sheet of the Thyssen Bornemisza Group”.
It is the closest anyone from the Thyssens and their entourage has ever come to acknowledging the gravity of the unsavoury parts of the Thyssen dynasty’s history.
Tags: aryanisation, Boris Gehlen, Dutch Levy, Erlenhof, Forced Labour, Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, history, Moral balance sheet, Moritz James Oppenheimer, Nazi regime, stud farm, tax evasion, Thyssen Bornemisza Group, Thyssen Dynasty
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