Video: Was the founder of Hugo Boss Hitler's personal stylist, and for which the famous fashion house apologized
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Several years ago, the public was shocked by the facts of cooperation of the famous fashion brand with the Nazis during the Second World War. Hugo Boss sponsored historical research to clarify this sensitive issue. The result was a book describing the company's activities from 1924 to 1945. Despite the fact that she refuted many of the popularized myths, at the same time as her publication, the apology of the German Fashion House sounded.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the name of a simple worker of a garment factory, Hugo Boss, was not at all known to the whole world. In 1908 he inherited from his parents a small shop selling textiles, and in 1923 he founded a sewing production. In a small workshop, they sewed overalls, windbreakers and overalls for workers. For several years, this enterprise managed to go bankrupt - after paying off the debts, the hapless businessman had only six sewing machines left, but then politics came to the rescue. In 1931, Hugo Boss organized a new enterprise and also joined the NSDAP. I must say that he really shared the ideas of National Socialism, hoping for promises to save the Germans from unemployment. In 2007, the industrialist's son Siegfried Boss publicly admitted that his father was a member of the Nazi Party and commented on this fact:
Beginning in 1931, the business of the new sewing company went uphill thanks to large party orders - Hugo Boss began sewing uniforms for the SA, SS and Hitler Youth. In 1934 Boss bought a weaving factory and moved his sewing workshops to its territory. In 1937, almost a hundred people worked there. When the war broke out, the factory in which the uniform was sewn was declared an important military enterprise. However, one cannot say that Hugo Boss was Hitler's personal designer - this exaggerated myth was born recently in the wake of the company's loss of credibility. The clothes that were sewn in factories in those years were developed by other people: the designer of the black SS uniform was Karl Diebitsch, a German artist and SS officer, and the SS emblem in the form of two runes "Sieg" was developed by graphic artist Walter Heck. By the way, the factories of Hugo Boss were not the only ones where this uniform was sewn.
In today's discussions, many are of the opinion that such "sins" should not be recalled to companies that have survived from those times. Indeed, almost all production in Germany was then focused on the front and worked for the Nazis, but, nevertheless, the fashion house Hugo Boss has something to apologize for to the world community. From April 1940, Hugo Boss began to use forced labor, mainly women, in his factory. About 150 people from Poland and Ukraine worked tirelessly at a sewing enterprise for the benefit of Nazi Germany until 1945. 30 French prisoners of war also worked there.
Roman Kester, author of the book "Hugo Boss, 1924-1945", having collected archival documents, came to the conclusion that. All the "free workers" of the garment factory lived in a specially built camp. Probably, their fate was somewhat easier than that of the prisoners of the "death camps", but, nevertheless, these people were undoubtedly slaves. The historian notes that towards the end of the war, Hugo Boss began to treat women workers much better, somewhat improved their living conditions and diet.
In 2000, when these facts were first made public and the image of the then famous brand began to fall sharply, the company joined the "Memory, Responsibility, Future" fund, created by large German firms to pay compensation to former forced laborers. A few years later, the German fashion house Hugo Boss apologized for the mistreatment of those who were forced to work in their factory during the Second World War - a statement appeared on the website in which the corporation expressed
At the end of the war, the owner of the factory was tried, but the case ended for him simply with a large fine of 100 thousand marks - Hugo Boss was not included in the list of Nazi criminals. He was later partially rehabilitated, but the famous founder of the brand passed away in 1948 at the age of 63 due to dental disease. The firm was headed by his son-in-law Eugen Holi. For several more years, the factory sewed clothes for railway workers and postmen, but in 1953 Hugo Boss released the first men's suit and began its journey to the heights of fashionable Olympus.
Sewing military uniforms for the "top officials of the state" at all times was a very responsible matter. In the Russian army, for example, it was specially created female version - Uniform dresses of Russian imperial families.
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