Billy and the Joels--The American rock star and his German family story

by Steffen Radlmaier

  Neckermann was obviously very disappointed, writing: “I talked with Wilkens (who was in the process of literally rebuilding his textile factory out of the rubble) about how, together with Joel, I would whip the company in Berlin into shape again. We would have to be quick because we could then use the time before the upcoming currency reform happened. In his letters to Wilkens, Joel often mentioned that he didn’t have a desire for revenge; however, he didn’t respond to my concrete proposition.”32

  Was Neckermann so naïve or so callous as to think he could now just turn around and do business with the man who, thanks to historical circumstances, he was able to simply kick out. Neckermann had cheated Joel out of his life’s work and had him banished from his home; some of his family had died at the hands of the Nazis.

  Neckermann’s attitude, his clinical pragmatism, was typical for post-war years, when many Germans were fighting for survival and trying to get back to normal as quickly as possible. Many of what were once Hitler’s enforcers felt they were now the victims of history.

  And the real victims, those who had just about managed to save their skins, often had to suffer long, complicated court proceedings in their fight to get some kind of material compensation. Germany’s bureaucracy was still functioning, its red tape had survived the gloomy days of the war without a scratch and did its best possible to fob off the applicants. For most of these, the difficulty was in trying to prove their entitlement.

  Karl and his sister Litti, who were in financial difficulties, were in New York trying to get their justice and compensation with the help of attorneys.

  Initially, it was a matter of the missing inheritance of their mother, who had died in 1939. After that came the claim for compensation due to loss of the linen company.

  The proceedings were relatively complicated and usually started by attempting to determine who was responsible. Three different government agencies were responsible for what they called Wiedergutmachung (reparations or, literally, ‘making good again’): the Central Receiving Office in Bad Nauheim, the Bavarian State Reparation Office in Munich, and the Wiedergutmachung authority in Fürth. The ‘Joel file’ alone filled volumes and extended over a period of some 20 years. Approximately 175,000 civil reparation claims had to be processed in Bavaria alone.

  This legal obstacle course is a prime example of the difficulties that arose during the complicated proceedings that were underway after the war. One thing was clear for the Jewish victims: the emotional damage and pain could never be atoned for. But they wanted at least adequate compensation for their confiscated, stolen and missing possessions.

  But who was to pay for the damage? This was not easy to determine, even in a relatively simple proceeding. For example, in the case of Karl and Litti Joel, who were suing to get the equivalent value of their mother’s furniture and jewelry – the amount involved was 20,000 marks – there were no longer any witnesses.

  They knew that their mother had been living with her sister in Ansbach. But the town authorities in Ansbach didn’t feel responsible and nor did the State of Bavaria. Things got more and more complicated as the proceedings went on. And the statements, letters, enquiries, assessments and applications reveal the details of a tragedy written in dry, matter-of-fact officialese.

  It emerged that their elderly mother had hurriedly left the small town of Ansbach for Nuremberg in October 1938 – shortly before the ‘Crystal Night’ – because she was afraid of the increasing reprisals. The furnishings, which included silverware, Biedermeier furniture and oriental carpets, had been transported to Frankfurt where they were confiscated by the Gestapo and later auctioned off. Auctions that sold off household goods belonging to Jews were very popular among the Germans. Many profited from the plight of their Jewish fellow citizens, and were able to snap up furniture, carpets and other furnishings for a pittance.

  Sara Joel’s jewelry probably ended up at the Nuremberg pawn shop, which was the Reich’s purchasing agency. However, during the proceedings Nuremberg’s city authorities were unable to find the required receipts, and thus didn’t feel themselves responsible. Years later, Karl and Litti found out that they weren’t entitled to inherit their mother’s belongings at all, as she had bequeathed them to her sister, Flora Schwab. But Flora had been gassed by the Nazis and had no offspring. It was uncertain whether there were any other heirs and, if so, whether they would still be alive. Whatever the case, the Joels retracted their claim and in 1953, after five years litigation, proceedings were closed.

  The lawsuit between Karl Joel and Josef Neckermann, in which millions were at stake, took a lot longer. The plaintiff was living penniless in the land of the victors and was fighting for his life’s work; the accused was carrying on where he left off in the land of the defeated, and completely unaware of any wrongdoing. The trial was all about legal hair-splitting. Morals, humanity and responsibility were not in the picture. This phenomenon was widespread in post-war Germany, which was at rock bottom and wanted to get back on its feet as quickly as possible. Guilt feelings and self-doubt were forgotten shortly after the war ended. And the currency reform in 1948 caused large parts of the population to resent the perpetual de-nazification and compensation payments.

  But the past wasn’t so easy to shake off. In 1949, Josef Neckermann once more received a summons by the American military court in Würzburg. He had contravened military law in that “between April 1, 1945 and March 1, 1946, in his capacity as owner of the Josef Neckermann Linen Goods Company of Berlin – the aforesaid company was forcibly transferred from Karl Joel to the aforesaid Josef Neckermann – he had illegally partaken of the liquidation of the aforesaid company in the U.S. zone in Germany.”

  Neckermann wrote the following in his memoirs: “After reading the indictment documents, it was obvious the prosecution was going to accuse me of ‘forcibly taking’ the linen factory from its former owner, Joel…but I was completely convinced that the acquisition of Joel’s company could in no way be seen as robbery, just like my purchase of the Ruschkewitz store.” However, he was generous enough to add that “since the catastrophe, due to moral deliberations I did, of course, come to the conclusion that one has to give the Jews their companies back, or compensate them accordingly.”33

  Although he was convinced of his innocence, Neckermann felt Joel was hounding him, and was afraid of the trial: “In particular, my previous experience of American military courts was what made me so afraid.” On March 3, 1949, Karl Joel, who now signed his name ‘Carl Joel’, had submitted an affidavit to the reparation authorities, stating that he had not received a penny of the purchase price of his company, and that Neckermann had wanted to cheat him of his money from the very beginning.

  Joel had engaged American attorneys and the Bavarian state compensation authorities in Munich, led by Advocate-General Philipp Auerbach, State Commissioner for persons persecuted for racial, religious and political reasons. In reparation matters, the American occupying forces in Bavaria abided by their own laws after the Conference of Jewish Material Claims against Germany had begun to register claims as early as 1939. Auerbach was much feared as an independent and uncompromising ‘Caesar of Reparation’. He was to be the one to prevent Neckermann eluding prosecution by the Americans.

  The first thing to be disputed was the compensation amount: Joel’s attorneys wanted eight million German marks; Neckermann anticipated no more than two million. By the end of the war, the linen factory, the mail-order premises and the villa in Berlin had been bombed to the ground by American aircraft. Even so, Neckermann had managed to save his list of customers with 850,000 addresses, and bring it to safety in Würzburg and Ochsenfurt. After the American military administration had confiscated Neckermann’s assets, the customer list went into the hands of a trustee, who sold it to Neckermann’s old rival, Gustav Schickedanz.

  Joel’s attorneys reckoned in the appreciation value of Neckermann’s new company and increased their demand. In the en
d it was a matter of 26 million marks. In turn, Neckermann’s attorneys tried to prove that his new company had nothing to do with the company he’d acquired from Joel in 1938.

  On June 8, 1949 Josef Neckermann was able to breathe a sigh of relief, for the time being at least: The reparation authorities of Upper and Middle Franconia decided upon a settlement deal ‘for the sake of an amicable compromise without prejudicing either one of the sides’ legal viewpoint […] the parties have decided that, when vesting Joel’s ownership, [Neckermann] did not deliberately act in a dishonorable manner.”

  On June 13th, Joel flew back to New York completely frustrated even before the main trial before the U.S. military court had even begun.

  Neckermann, who had to endure numerous cross-examinations in English, wrote the following: “I will never forget that trial. It lasted two months. 43 witnesses were called and 72 exhibits dealt with. The verdict was announced on August 12, 1949.”34 It turned out to be a nightmare for the defendant: he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 German marks (or, alternatively, additional prison). “I got probation for the first 12 months of the sentence. The other three years were put on hold until December 15, 1949, under the condition that I paid the settlement that I had agreed with Joel by then. For me that was a scandalous intermingling of criminal procedures and civil proceedings. My attorneys immediately lodged an objection against the verdict.”35

  Neckermann felt he was being victimized and was in a fix: He was in the middle of preparations for the opening of his new Neckermann Textil-Versand KG. mail-order company. If the verdict remained as it was, he had two choices: either he would have to settle with Joel, or he would have to spend several years in prison.

  Joel wasn’t accusing Neckermann of being a war criminal; he simply wanted Neckermann to abide by the conditions of the sales contract he’d signed in 1938. One important question remained unanswered: where was the money that should have been paid to Karl Joel for the sale of his linen company? Neckermann claimed to have duly transferred the purchase price to the Hardy Bank account (to which Joel in any case never had access). Had the Nazis confiscated it? Was it still in the bank? Or had Neckermann kept at least some of it for himself?

  Philipp Auerbach, who himself had survived the holocaust, was a passionate attorney for the cause of Jewish victims, and he was sure that the Neckermann case was to become one of his biggest successes.

  However, six months later, in February 1950, when the appeal proceedings got underway in the U.S. military Supreme Appeal Court in Nuremberg, the parameters had changed decisively. Time was working for Neckermann. The Cold War between East and West was looming on the horizon and saw to it that the investigations into Germany’s Nazi past were starting to take a back seat. The newly appointed Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, was requesting rearmament for Germany and, due to the increasing tension with the Soviet Union, the Americans knew that a strong Germany would be advantageous to the West.

  So things were starting to look a bit better in the courtroom for Neckermann: his keenest accuser, Philipp Auerbach, was unable to carry on his work on the case, as he himself was now under investigation by the Munich state prosecutor for, among other things, bribery and attempted perjury. The ‘Auerbach affair’ created a stir and bought with it political consequences: Many Germans saw their suspicions vindicated, that there was a good deal of monkey business going on where matters of reparation were concerned. Auerbach, who had a number of political enemies, was finally found guilty and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. He committed suicide in his cell. It wasn’t until after his death that his name was cleared. And even the judges in Würzburg who had convicted Neckermann were meanwhile under investigation: they were taken to court in the USA accused of taking bribes in return for awarding reparation to plaintiffs.

  Neckermann’s new company Neckermann Textil-Versand KG opened on April 1, 1950 and, on November 1st the soon-to-be department-store king was notified of the redeeming verdict: not guilty on all counts. Neckermann was relieved and wrote the following in his memoirs: “Now I was free again to come to an agreement with Joel about his reparation claims, without the risk of going to prison in case I didn’t agree to all of his demands.”36 In other words, Joel would once more have to wait for his money.

  Another five years went by. Karl Amson Joel was by now a pensioner, and still hadn’t seen a penny of the money owed to him for the sale of his linen goods company. Like numerous Germans at the time, Josef Neckermann did his best to suppress that dark chapter of his life, and was soon celebrating his burgeoning career in the economic miracle of Germany’s recovery. His new company was already celebrating five years of success. Between 1950 and 1955, Joel waited in vain for a settlement offer, but didn’t give up the fight. He once again filed a suit for compensation before the reparation chamber of the Nuremberg-Fürth district court. On January 15, 1955, the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau carried the following headline: “Neckermann charged – American demands reparations”.

  Josef Neckermann issued an official statement claiming he was unaware of any wrongdoing as he had transferred the money for the purchase of Karl Joel’s business to an account at the Hardy Bank: “However, Joel only received a part of this money because he had already migrated to Switzerland by the time the takeover negotiations had been finalized. According to the laws at that time, this meant he was a ‘non-resident’, which in turn meant his assets had to be confiscated by the German exchange authorities,”37 wrote Neckermann in his memoirs.

  On January 24, 1955, the two adversaries met again in the courthouse in Nuremberg where the Nazi war crimes trials had taken place.

  It took six hours of negotiations to reach a settlement.

  By this time hardly anyone was still interested in the case, not even in Karl Joel’s former home town. Nuremberg’s local newspaper, the Nürnberger Nachrichten devoted just a mere 20 lines to the “Joel vs. Neckermann trial” on January 26, 1955: “After almost seven hours of negotiations before the reparations court of Upper and Middle Franconia, a provisional settlement has been reached in the reparations trial between former Nuremberg businessman Carl A. Joel and Frankfurt businessman Josef Neckermann, the Neckermann mail-order company of Frankfurt and three further defendants. The trial was closed to the public. The result of the settlement is that Neckermann’s company will pay a specified amount as compensation for all demands made by the plaintiff. Both parties requested that the amount not be disclosed publicly.”

  Despite attempts at non-disclosure, the amount agreed (two million German marks) became known just a few months later through a reader’s letter that Carl Joel wrote to the German Spiegel magazine. He was reacting to a Spiegel article written in October, in which the balance sheets of Neckermann’s new company were revealed: “At the trial in January of this year I agreed to a settlement sum of two million marks, because Mr. Neckermann claimed and attested that his assets totaled only a few hundred thousand marks. I was, therefore, very surprised to read that now – just nine months later – his private assets are estimated to be ‘several million marks’. Once again, Joel felt he had been short-changed.

  Neckermann’s biographer Thomas Veszelits wrote: “Joel felt that the two million marks that he had received as compensation were poor consolation for the suffering and defeat Neckermann and the Nazis had caused him. The money came much too late for him. Joel was already 65 years old in 1955. He didn’t have the strength to start a new business. The only thing he wanted and the only thing he could get was justice. Being a businessman, he was very aware of the many still outstanding payments.”38

  The never-ending whodunit went into the next round. Whilst Neckermann saw the case as finally closed, Joel disputed the settlement of January 24, 1955, and pressed charges for trial fraud. The rationale was that Neckermann had willfully deceived Joel during the out-of-court settlement. In November 1957 Neckermann, who was increasingly under the impressi
on that Joel was getting him into a corner, was once again summoned to appear in front of the Munich Higher Regional Court.

  The aim was to get Neckermann convicted of perjury. One of the questions to be answered was: who had power of disposition over the bank account at the Hardy & Co. bank, into which the money had allegedly been paid by Neckermann, on buying Joel’s company?

  Joel also sued the Hardy Bank. He wanted 69,550 marks in interest for the one million marks that Neckermann had supposedly paid into Joel’s account. Neckermann repeatedly claimed to be unable to remember the exact name of the account. Then a new piece of evidence hit like a bomb. Joel’s attorney, Reinhard Freiherr von Godin, read out a letter that Josef Neckermann had written to the Hardy Bank on September 15, 1938: “Alongside my own current account and, as already discussed personally, I would like you to open a second account for me, to be called ‘Special account Joel’. I will have right of disposal over this account until I give further notice.”

  Neckermann was now exposed to the Higher Regional Court as a liar. He argued that he’d only set up the special account in order to keep the money out of the hands of the Nazi state for Joel, who was at that time classified as a ‘non-resident’ person.

  Alongside the letter, bank statements had been found in the long-lost archives of the Hardy Bank. This raised new questions: Neckermann had transferred one million Reichsmarks to the special account, but was unable to explain why – after only three months – just 400,000 Reichsmarks were on the account. As proceedings continued, Neckermann’s attorneys produced new information about the ‘Special account Joel’: according to them, Joel’s representative, Tillmann, had used 600,000 Reichsmarks to pay off taxes, wages and commissions. The remaining 400,000 Reichsmarks had been confiscated by the Berlin-Moabit Customs Investigations Office in January 1939.