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Time magazine, March 17, 1923

Hugo Stinnes (February 12, 1870 - April 10, 1924) was a German industrialist and politician born in Mülheim, in the Ruhr Valley, North German Confederation. In 1890 he inherited his father's coal mining and other financial enterprises. At the age of 23 Stinnes invested heavily in the steel industry, and as a result of World War I and a strategy of vertical integration his companies flourished.

Stinnes, a prominent capitalist, and conservative became a founding member of the DVP. Following World War I, he was elected to parliament in Berlin. He acted as spokesman for German industry towards trade-unions and laid the foundation of today's system of cooperation between the unions and employers in Germany, for example, the introduction of the 8-hour work day.

By the early 1920s Stinnes, not only owned his own shipping line, but had become a newspaper magnate, and thus he used his influence in the press used to attack the Versailles Treaty. Stinnes leveraged his access to hard foreign currency during the period of German hyper-inflation by borrowing vast sums in Reichmarks, and repaying the loans with nearly worthless currency later. This earned him the title of "Inflationskönig" (Inflation King). In 1923 the American magazine Time called him "The New Emperor of Germany" to describe his far-reaching political influence and unimaginable wealth.

In the 1920s, Stinnes was embroiled in a legal dispute^[1] with Mayer Wilderman. Wilderman, who had been born in Bessarabia (then part of Russia), had set up a series of chemical factories in Germany in 1912. However, on the outbreak of World War I, Stinnes seized the factories and deprived Wilderman of his assets using the excuse that Wilderman was an 'enemy alien'. Bessarabia became part of Romania in 1918 and Wilderman tried to recover his assets. However, Stinnes stalled by disputing the facts surrounding Wilderman's birth (eg accusing Wilderman of forging his birth certificate) and used financial sleight of hand to pretend the assets had in fact been disspiated and therefore there was nothing that could be restored.

Stinnes died in Berlin. Although his financial empire held some 4500 companies and 3000 manufacturing plants, it collapsed within a year of his death.

1. ^ Causes célèbres du droit des gens: Tribunal arbitral mixte Roumano-Allemand. Affaire Wilderman c/ Stinnes et autres; Lapradelle, Albert Geouffre de; Paris, Les Éditions Internationales, 1931

• The History of Stinnes AG