“GOLD KING" OF GERMANY

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160731, 18 August 1920, Page 7

“GOLD KING" OF GERMANY

The Berlin correspondent of the Daily Chronicle gives an interesting story of Hugo Stinnes, Germany’s newspaper king and multi-millionaire, owner of coal and iron mines and ships and steel works and paper factories and hotels. He is the man who, though remaining himself in the background, raised the '‘National Liberal Party” from the grave in which it was buried when the monarchy collapsed. It was he who mainly supplied the fighting funds, who moulded the public opinion,, by quietly buying up journal after journal!—so quietly that hardly anybody knew anything about it until there came the startling announcement that he had purchased the Deutsche Allgameinc Zeitung, for long years the semi-official mouthpiece of the German Government. Then curiosity prompted inquiry, and it was discovered that Stinnes controls no' fewer than 62 newspapers. And rumour has it that he is going to found a new daily in Berlin. Now everybody in Germany is talking about Hugo Stinnes, and not a few are asking if he is not “The Man” for whom a distracted nation has been crying, the destined saviour of his country. Perhaps the exact extent of his worldly possessions is unknown to himself, so varied and involved are they. But one thing certain is that he is far and away the richest man in Germany—richer, too, than any woman. That has to be added, because before the war, at any rate, it was Bertha Ivrupp who sat on the biggest pile of German gold.

Oue milliard marks is tire figure at which some Berlin bankers assess the value of Hugo Stinnes’s properties. “Oh, marks are not money,’’ some cynic may comment; hut still a milliard marks represents nominally 50 millions sterlingjust the amount which the other day the German Government thought of suggesting as the whole country's indemnity tribute to the Allies. Of his thousand million marts he has made all but nine millions himself —at least the latter was the value of the estate which he inherited from his father in 1897.

I lie growth of Stinnes’s fortunes at various periods has been traced by some enterprising person, who has examined the States Income Tax records. These show that in 1901 his yearly income was between 400,000 and 500,000 marks, and four years later it had run up to 900,000. But the biggest jump was made during the war.

Stinnes enjoyed enormous contracts fof war material, especially iron and steel wares, and he also did big- business in Belgium during the German occupation. Known as the “I’ockfeller of Germany,” Sti lines, in his industrial scope, goes far wider than that of the American oil king. In addition to such trifles as the 62 newspapers and the largest hotel in Berlin, he controls—either alone or in combination with a handful of other great leaders of industry—the whole of Germany’s inland shipping, most of its iron and steel, and practically all the Rhineland coal.