Bodo Lafferentz ( 27 of July of 1897 , Kiel - 17 of January of 1974 ) was member of Nazi Party from 1933 and high official of the SS with the rank Lieutenant Colonel ( SS-Obersturmbannführer ) from 1939 . He organized the “Festivals of War”, as Hitler called the editions of the Bayreuth Festival from 1941 .
Trajectory
He fought in World War I and was awarded the Iron Cross in 1916 . Graduated in 1928 at the University of Kiel in economic planning worked in the German Employees Organization and in 1933 he joined the National Socialist Party .
In 1937 he was appointed head of the “Company for the Manufacture of the German People’s Automobile” ( Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens ) with Jacob Werlin and Ferdinand Porsche and in 1938 was appointed director of the Volkswagen .
Hitler laid the foundation stone of the Volkswagen factory, renaming it KdFwagen (in honor of the trade union of the Labor Front called Kraft durch Freude , or ‘Force for Joy’), the car was called KdF wagen and Wolfsburg Became KdF Stadt (City KdF). The Kraft durch Freude had a cultural entertainment program ( Amt für Reisen, Wandern und Urlaub ) that ran Lafferentz depending on the German Labor Front ( Deutsche Arbeitfront ) created by Robert Ley .
He married Verena Wagner (* 1920 ), the youngest daughter of Siegfried Wagner and Winifred Wagner . 1
Trusted person Hitler had commissioned some of his favorite projects, administered and obtained funds for the festival after marrying in 1943 with Verena with whom he had five children.
He also devoted himself to energy research on windmills and the development of weapons such as the V-1 and V-2 missiles at an institute and factory near Bayreuth. In 1990 it was learned that the factory used as workers prisoners of a camp that depended on the Flossenburg concentration camp . 2
At the end of the war he was imprisoned, passed the denazification process and in 1949 he was released.
References
- Back to top↑ Norman Lebrecht. ” Those wicked old Wagners ” - La Scena Musicale .
- Back to top↑ Ivan Hewett. ” The Dark Heart of German Culture ” - Daily Telegtraph .
- Hans Mommsen, Manfred Grieger: Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich , ECON, Düsseldorf 1996, ISBN 3-430-16785-X .