Flick family

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The Flick family is a wealthy German industrial and political dynasty, heir to an industrial empire embracing coal, steel and the DaimlerChrysler company.

Friedrich Flick was the founder of the dynasty after establishing a major industrial conglomerate during the Weimar Republic. He became a member and funder of the Nazi party, profited from the liquidation of Jewish property, and became one of Hitler's major armaments producers. His factories became notorious for using slave labour from concentration camp inmates.

He was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and served three years of a seven year prison sentence. He went on to rebuild his business empire, becoming one of the world's wealthiest people by the time of his death in 1972.

In the process of the 1983 Flick Affair it became public that politicians in Germany had been bribed to allow his son, Friedrich Karl Flick, reduce his tax liabilities. He later became an Austrian citizen to further reduce his tax obligations.

In 1986 the Flick family sold most of its industrial holdings to Deutsche Bank for $2.5 billion (£1.4 billion).

The Flick family later branched off to the United States in Philadelphia. Dr Lawrence Flick, who developed the first cure for tuberculosis is a direct descendant of Friedrich Flick.

[edit] Controversy

The Flick family has courted controversy for its Nazi legacy and a refusal to pay compensation to wartime victims.

In 1997 Oxford University rejected a £350,000 donation from Gert Rudolph Flick to endow a professorship in Human Thought at Balliol College, Oxford, after a campaign by university staff and the Jewish community.

The attempt by Friedrich Christian Flick to display his art collection in Zurich in a museum to be built by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, was rejected by the Swiss authorities. In September 2004 the collection was exhibited in Berlin at the Hamburger Bahnhof gallery against the protest of Jewish groups.

[edit] Notable members of the Flick family

• Friedrich Flick (10 July 1883 - 20 July 1972) - founder of the dynasty and member and funder of the Nazi party

Children of Friedrich Flick:

• Otto-Ernst Flick (1916-74), his children:
  • Dagmar Gräfin Vitzthum
  • Gert Rudolph Flick "Muck Flick"
  • Friedrich Christian Flick "Mick Flick",
• Rudolf Flick (born 1919, died during WW II)
• Friedrich Karl Flick (February 3, 1927 - October 5, 2006)- industrialist, involved in a German political scandal; married with first wife: no children; with Ursula Kloiber née Reuther: Alexandra, Elisabeth; with Ingrid Ragger: Victoria-Katharina, Karl-Friedrich

Other Flick family members:

• Donatella Flick - socialite and philanthropist, former wife of Gert Rudolph Flick