Along the outer ring road around the medieval center of Cologne lies a stately villa with a footprint of 1,300 square meters and an additional 300 square meters of garden. People pass by daily in the thousands by car and on foot. The nearby municipal forest welcomes visitor with its artificial lakes and forests, the green lung of the city. It is peaceful, and the stately homes demonstrate the wealth of the established patrician families. Doctors live here, attorneys, and many consulting companies which have displaced families who could no longer afford the maintenance of the large houses with gardens large enough to need professional care.
The villa has a dark history. In 1933, on 4 January, a remarkable meeting took place within its walls. Banker Kurt Freiherr von Schröder hosted a meeting of fellow investment professionals, politicians and industrialists. He had promised them a celebrity guest: a certain Adolf Hitler. Until then, most of the business elites had stayed aloof from the radical orator and right-wing party leader. They preferred the more traditional conservative politicians. But apparently, a window of opportunity had opened in late 1932, and conservatives were getting more used to giving Hitler the chance to lead a government. Schröder greased the wheels to bring together the rabble-rousing anti-semite and the well-dressed money crowd. Franz von Papen, the former Chancellor, played the political director of this play. It was not the first time Papen and Hitler had met, and the historic significance of this meeting has often been exaggerated.
Hitler passed the test. German industry and banking signed off on the new coalition government where two Nazis (Hitler and Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick) were surrounded by established conservative stalwarts. This way, the unpredictable bohemian ”artist” would be tamed. His role was to be limited to that of “drummer boy” to win votes.
Today, a plaque commemorates the meeting as a dark episode in German history. Banker Schröder, by the way, went on to head the Cologne Chamber of Commerce during the Third Reich. As the commemorative plaque explains, he busied himself with collecting money from German industry for the SS. For his role in making Hitler happen, Schröder served a brief three-month prison sentence after 1945. He moved to the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, where he died in 1966.
