Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
EMIL HOFFMAN AND HIS CIRCLES - Nazis reloaded
FABULOUS SPY GAMES not guided by humanitarian considerations, but the realization that bourgeois Jews brought in more profits alive than dead.65 His highly developed sense of business did not let him down after the war, either. He was out of prison as early as 1948 and contacted his old business partners, including Karl Bickenbach. After joining forces, they soon became the exclusive representatives of the Hungarian Agrimpex66 and Monimpex67 companies in West Germany.68 Becher became a successful businessman, the owner of the powerful Oppenheim Bank, whom Becher also saved during the War by appropriating the Oppenheim stud farm and stables on Hitler s orders for arranging protected status for the family in return, played a role in Becher s rise, and even married a close friend of the financier sometime later.69 65 See also: Arendt 2000 66 Agrimpex was engaged in the foreign trade of agricultural produce. 67 Monimpex was engaged in the monopoly trade of commodities, mainly of raw tobacco, spirits, brandies and cognacs, sweetened and distilled alcoholic beverages, rum, arrack, fruit brandy, food grace vinegar, beer, grapevine must, wine, champagne, yeast, all kinds of tobacco products, grape marc, all varieties of rock salt and food-grade salt, flint, nicotine and saccharine products. 68 Máthé 2014, p. 61-62 69 ÁBTL 3.2.3. Mt-425/1. 90. Report, no date indicated. According to state security, during the war Bickenbach sold assets stolen from Hungary in Vienna, in close cooperation with Becher. Bickenbach founded his first business in 1947 in the American Zone in Germany with a man named Bruno Doner, who died soon afterwards to leave Bickenbach with his own company. This entity was in regular business relations with the newly established Hungarian state foreign trade companies from 1948 onwards. Bickenbach primarily had the head of the Hungarian foreign trade office in Frankfurt, István Brody, to thank for his connections. Although Brody emigrated in 1949, his successors, as we shall see, nurtured these new economic relations that were to grow steadily in the years to come. While Becher transported mainly paprika and honey to West Germany through Monimpex, Bickenbach became the exclusive representative of Agrimpex. Before long, several companies were distributing their produce through him. Bickenbach pocketed mind-boggling sums in commissions from Hungarian companies, giving him the opportunity 30
