Engelberg, Alexander von

entrepreneur

Born: 20.06.1894 in Mannheim

Died: 07.01.1960 in Grindelwald (Switzerland)

His father was the lawyer Friedrich von Engelberg, who, as a civil servant in Baden, served as director of the Mannheim State Prison from 1892 to 1909, among other posts, and subsequently worked as a senior administrative official in the Baden Ministry of the Interior. Alexander von Engelberg’s mother, Karoline, came from the Dyckerhoff family of entrepreneurs. Her father was Rudolf Dyckerhoff, who, together with his father Wilhelm Gustav Dyckerhoff and his brother Gustav Dyckerhoff, founded the Dyckerhoff & Söhne Portland cement factory in Mainz-Amöneburg in 1864.

Alexander von Engelberg attended the humanistic high school in Mannheim from 1903 to 1909. After his father became a senior administrative officer in the Baden Ministry of the Interior in 1909, he transferred to the humanistic high school in Karlsruhe, where he earned his high school diploma in July 1912. On October 1, 1912, he enlisted as a cadet in the 12th Baden Leibdragoner Regiment.

In 1914, von Engelberg passed the officer’s examination at the War College in Metz and was promoted to second lieutenant. During World War I, he was wounded in his right hand during a cavalry charge near Landres in eastern France. During his recovery, von Engelberg completed pilot training at the Freiburg im Breisgau Flight School. During a training flight in which he was participating as an observer, his aircraft crashed. He suffered a spinal injury and broke both feet. Due to these injuries, von Engelberg could no longer be deployed to the front. While convalescing, he began studying history, literary history, and dramaturgy in Munich in 1916.

However, due to a general shortage of officers, von Engelberg returned to the army that same year and was assigned a command position with the political police of the military administration in Bucharest. Due to his health, von Engelberg transferred to the position of courier in the office of the German military attaché in Bern, where he remained until the end of the war in 1918. For his military service during World War I, Alexander von Engelberg was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, and the Order of the Zähringer Lion, a Baden Order of Merit. In 1918, he received the Baden Wound Badge. In 1935, he was also awarded the Honorary Cross for Front-Line Combatants of World War I.

After the end of World War I, von Engelberg began a career in business. After temporary employment in the banking sector and in paper manufacturing, he joined his grandfather’s company, the Portland Cement Factory Dyckerhoff & Söhne GmbH, in 1922, amid the turmoil of inflation. In 1928, he was appointed managing director. In 1931, the company merged with Wicking’sche Portland-Cement- und Wasserkalkwerke AG to form Portland-Zementwerke Dyckerhoff-Wicking AG, which operated under the name Dyckerhoff Portland-Zementwerke AG beginning in 1936. In this newly founded corporation, Alexander von Engelberg was a full member of the executive board.

In addition to von Engelberg, the board of directors of the newly formed corporation included his brother Fritz von Engelberg as chairman of the board, as well as Dr. Walter Dyckerhoff as another full member, responsible for production and technical matters. In 1936, Josef Kellerwessel and Hans Dyckerhoff joined as deputy members of the Executive Board. Alexander von Engelberg was responsible for finance and association affairs within the Executive Board. The work of the board was characterized by close contact and collaboration with colleagues. In addition, Alexander von Engelberg held a significant stake in the company.

After the National Socialists “seized power,” Alexander von Engelberg became a member of various Nazi organizations. As a former military pilot and private aviator, he was a member of the National Socialist Aviation Corps from 1933 to 1942. From 1934 to 1945, the entrepreneur was a member of the German Labor Front, the unified association of employees and employers in the Nazi state, and, beginning in 1935, also a member of the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization. In addition, between 1935 and 1939, he was a member of the Opferring of the NSDAP Gau Leadership of Hesse-Nassau. The Nazi Opferring was a party institution that served to collect donations and other contributions for the NSDAP. Party membership was not required. The amount of the payments Engelberg made to the Nazi Victims’ Fund is unknown. Alexander von Engelberg became a Supporting Member of the SS in 1933. The Supporting Members of the SS formed a sub-organization of the SS that was open to non-NSDAP members and served to collect donations for the establishment and expansion of the SS. These financial contributions, which were generally paid monthly, did not entail any formal service in the SS. The amount of the payments Alexander von Engelberg made to the SS is also unknown.

Despite his numerous memberships, Alexander von Engelberg found himself in conflict with the Nazi state due to the Nazi racial laws, as his wife Hedwig was considered by the Nazis to be a “half-Jew” or a “first-degree Jewish mixed-race person.”

In 1938, von Engelberg sought to enlist as a reserve officer in the newly founded Luftwaffe. This request was denied because of his “non-Aryan” wife.

“Jewish mixed-bloods” living in the German Reich were affected to a lesser extent by Nazi persecution of Jews than so-called “full Jews”; in particular, the systematic deportation and murder in the SS extermination camps beginning in 1941 did not apply to them. Nor were they required to identify themselves as Jews, for example by wearing a “Jewish star.” Nevertheless, they faced increasingly severe discrimination, for instance in their choice of occupation. This also affected Hedwig von Engelberg and her children.

Alexander von Engelberg also encountered Nazi persecution of Jews in another context. From 1932 to 1945, he served as honorary Royal Swedish Vice Consul. The duties and influence of the Swedish Vice Consulate in Wiesbaden were, by their very nature, limited. The Swedish consulate was housed in von Engelberg’s residence in Wiesbaden-Biebrich and was not responsible for actual consular matters, such as entry visas to Sweden. That responsibility lay with the Swedish consulate in Frankfurt am Main. Furthermore, there was no “entry visa requirement” for “Reich Germans” traveling to Sweden.

After the outbreak of World War II, Alexander von Engelberg had reported on the arrest of “Polish-Jewish” citizens in Wiesbaden. He was asked to seek support and advocacy for the Jews from the neutral state. He attempted to improve the situation by appealing to the Wiesbaden Gestapo. He received a message from Sweden stating that nothing could be done for the Jews.

During World War II, Dyckerhoff Portland-Zementwerke AG employed forced laborers to maintain its production in the face of increasing labor shortages caused by conscription into the Wehrmacht. Between 1939 and 1945, there were at least 63 forced laborers from Italy, 38 from Belgium, four from the Netherlands, 24 from Poland, two from Czechoslovakia, and 59 so-called “Eastern workers”—that is, workers from the occupied territories of the Soviet Union and the Baltic states—were employed at Dyckerhoff. These people were housed, among other places, at the Kalle camp. In 1943, the Dyckerhoff company submitted a building permit application to the city of Mainz to construct two barracks on the company grounds to house so-called “Eastern workers.” The requested barracks, of TYPE RL IV/2, could accommodate a maximum of 70 so-called “Eastern workers.” One of the requested barracks was built but was destroyed during an air raid in the summer of 1944.

Forced laborers were not only employed in concrete and cement production but also in agriculture at the Hessler-Hof estate in Mainz-Amöneburg, which belonged to the company and the Dyckerhoff family.

The allocation and deployment of forced laborers, like all central processes within the company, were brought to the attention of the Executive Board—and thus also to Alexander von Engelberg—and ultimately decided by them. The labor shortage remained the central problem in production until the first major bombing damage occurred at Plant 1 in 1944. It remains unclear who was responsible for recruiting forced laborers within the corporate group, or whether—and to what extent—Alexander von Engelberg, as the board member in charge of finance and association affairs, had any influence in this matter.

As a member of the company’s top management and a significant shareholder, Alexander von Engelberg bore indirect responsibility—through his position—for the war-driven increase in production to record levels and the associated use of forced laborers.

After Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945, Alexander von Engelberg distanced himself from the Nazi regime both within the company and vis-à-vis the American occupying forces. In his denazification proceedings as well, Alexander von Engelberg positioned himself as distanced from the Nazi regime and emphasized, above all, the situation of his wife and children.

Von Engelberg’s references to his diplomatic work for neutral Sweden and his family situation were not without effect; from the perspective of the U.S. occupation administration, they put his Nazi memberships and his leading position in a key arms manufacturing plant into perspective. No denazification proceedings were initiated against him.

In the postwar period, Alexander von Engelberg served on the board of directors of Dyckerhoff Portland-Zementwerke AG until his retirement in 1959. He was one of the most important figures in the German construction industry during the postwar era. At his initiative, the cement industry united in 1948 to form the Cologne Cement Trade Association, of which he was also a board member.
Between 1948 and 1959, he served as chairman of the Federal Association of Stone and Earth. In addition, von Engelberg was a member of the advisory committee of the European Coal and Steel Community in Luxembourg and chairman of the supervisory boards of the Bonn Portland Cement Factory and Chemische Werke Albert (opens in a new tab) in Wiesbaden.

He also served on the supervisory boards of Dresdner Bank, DAMCO Scheepvaart-Maatschappij NV Rotterdam, and Kraftwerke Mainz-Wiesbaden AG (opens in a new tab). Alexander von Engelberg was honorary president of the Cologne Cement Trade Association and the German-Dutch Chamber of Commerce in Frankfurt am Main. He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 and the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany with Star in 1959. In 1959, the DAMCO shipping company named one of its ships after him.

In the Mainz-Amöneburg district, a street was named after the business leader following a resolution by the City Council on February 24, 1966.

The Historical Expert Commission, appointed by a resolution of the City Council in 2020 to review public spaces, buildings, and facilities in the state capital of Wiesbaden named after individuals, recommended renaming Alexander von Engelberg Street due to von Engelberg’s memberships in various National Socialist organizations (NSFK, supporting member of the SS, DAF, NSV, NS-Opferring). As a member of the executive board of the Dyckerhoff company, von Engelberg bore responsibility for the use of forced laborers within the company. Between 1939 and 1945, forced laborers from Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and so-called “Eastern workers” were employed at the company’s sites. Von Engelberg was thus complicit in the deliberate harm caused to others between 1933 and 1945.

On November 26, 2024, the responsible Mainz-Amöneburg Local Council decided not to follow the recommendation of the Historical Expert Commission and instead to provide contextual information regarding the naming. This was confirmed by a resolution of the City Council on March 24, 2026.

[This text was written by Dr. Rolf Faber for the 2017 printed edition of the Wiesbaden City Encyclopedia and revised and expanded by Dr. Katherine Lukat in 2024.]