Persilschein is a German idiom and literally means "Persil ticket" ("Persil" refers to a brand of laundry detergent). To own or have a Persilschein is akin to having "a clean bill of health" and may refer to the granting of a wide-ranging permission or "carte blanche" to pursue a business or a previously morally or legally suspect interest.
The term Persilschein dates back to the denazification period in Germany. For a German to be given a Persilschein meant to be given a certificate that they had a clean political past. [1] Suspected Nazi offenders could be exonerated by statements from others, ideally victims or former enemies of the Nazi regime, and thus accepted as having a good reputation.
Colloquially the affected person was said to be "washed clean" of accusations of Nazi sympathies; "cleanliness" in this context meaning "innocent". They were attested as having a so-called "white vest" (innocence) and were now allowed to apply for a house or open a business again. During 1948, the interest of the Americans in systematic denazification waned markedly as the Cold War and the threat from the Soviet bloc hove increasingly into view. Faster processes were introduced to bring denazification to a swift conclusion, however, that led to West Germany being run entirely by nazis.
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by removing those who had been Nazi Party or SS members from positions of power and influence, by disbanding or rendering impotent the organizations associated with Nazism, and by trying prominent Nazis for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials of 1946. The program of denazification was launched after the end of the war and was solidified by the Potsdam Agreement in August 1945. The term denazification was first coined as a legal term in 1943 by the Pentagon, intended to be applied in a narrow sense with reference to the post-war German legal system. However, it later took on a broader meaning.
Friedrich "Fritz" Thyssen was a German businessman, born into one of Germany's leading industrial families. He was an early supporter of the Nazi Party but later broke with it.
Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, known as the Uranium Club, where he contributed to the separation of uranium isotopes. After the war, Jensen was a professor at the University of Heidelberg. He was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Institute for Advanced Study, University of California, Berkeley, Indiana University, and the California Institute of Technology.
Max Amann was a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party, a German politician, businessman and art collector, including of looted art. He was the first business manager of the Nazi Party and later became the head of Eher Verlag, the official Nazi Party publishing house. He was also the Reichsleiter for the press. After the war ended, Amann was arrested by U.S. military occupation authorities. A denazification court deemed him a Hauptschuldiger. Amann was sentenced to ten years in a labour camp, stripped of his property, pension rights, and virtually all of his fortune.
The pursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of the Third Reich at the outbreak of World War II but collaborated with the Nazi regime during the war. Hence, this article does not cover former members of the NSDAP and their fates after the war.
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group is a privately held German company headquartered in Stuttgart, that owns publishing companies worldwide. Through Macmillan Publishers, it is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies.
Ernst Klee was a German journalist and author. As a writer on Germany's history, he was best known for his exposure and documentation of medical crimes in Nazi Germany, much of which was concerned with the Action T4 or involuntary euthanasia program. He is the author of "The Good Old Days": The Holocaust Through the Eyes of the Perpetrators and Bystanders first published in the English translation in 1991.
Persil is a German brand of laundry detergent manufactured and marketed by Henkel around the world except in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Latin America, China, Australia and New Zealand, where it is manufactured and marketed by Unilever. Persil was introduced in 1907 by Henkel. It was the first commercially available laundry detergent that combined bleach with the detergent. The name was derived from two of its original ingredients, sodium perborate and sodium silicate.
Persil Power was a laundry detergent product developed and sold in the mid-1990s by Unilever.
Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, commonly known as Henkel, is a German multinational chemical and consumer goods company headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany. Founded in 1876, the DAX company is organized into two globally operating business units and is known for brands such as Loctite, Persil, Fa, Pritt, Dial and Purex.
Johann Heinrich "Hans" Hinkel was a journalist, Nazi Party official and politician in Nazi Germany. He mainly worked in the Reich Chamber of Culture and the Reich Ministry of Propaganda. He was involved in executing the policy of excluding Jews from German cultural life, and headed the Ministry's film division. He was also an SS-Gruppenführer, and was imprisoned in Poland for several years after the end of the Second World War.
Anton Malloth was a supervisor in the "Kleine Festung" part of the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Die Stille Hilfe für Kriegsgefangene und Internierte, abbreviated Stille Hilfe, is a relief organization for arrested, condemned and fugitive SS members, similar to the veterans' association HIAG, set up by Helene Elisabeth Princess von Isenburg (1900–1974) in 1951. The organization has come under criticism for its encouragement and support of neo-Nazis. It has also garnered a reputation for being shrouded in secrecy and thus remains a source of speculation.
Ulenspiegel was a bi-weekly German satirical magazine published in Berlin after World War II. The magazine was an important cultural outlet in the new era of democracy and freedom following the fall of the Third Reich. Its first issue was published on 24 December 1945. The publishers were Herbert Sandberg and Günther Weisenborn; editors included Wolfgang Weyrauch, with Karl Schnog becoming editor-in-chief in 1947. Its success was stymied by politics, as the editors first clashed with the American authorities in occupied Germany in 1948, accused of being too "left-wing", and then after the magazine moved to the Soviet sector of Berlin, ran afoul of the Communists in 1950. The remaining publisher, Sandberg, lost his license to publish in 1950.
Since its emergence in the 1970s, Neopaganism in German-speaking Europe has diversified into a wide array of traditions, particularly during the New Age boom of the 1980s.
German collective guilt refers to the notion of a collective guilt attributed to Germany and its people for perpetrating the Holocaust and other atrocities in World War II.
Gerhardine "Gerdy" Troost, was a German architect, interior designer, interior decorator, and the wife of Paul Ludwig Troost.
A Mitläufer is a person tied to or passively sympathising with certain social movements, often to those that are prevalent, controversial or radical. In English, the term was most commonly used after World War II, during the denazification hearings in West Germany, to refer to people who were not charged with Nazi crimes but whose involvement with the Nazi Party was considered so significant that they could not be exonerated for the crimes of the Nazi regime.
Margarete Himmler, also known as Marga Himmler, was the wife of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler.
Wolfram Wette is a German military historian and peace researcher. He is an author or editor of over 40 books on the history of Nazi Germany, including the seminal Germany and the Second World War series from the German Military History Research Office (MGFA).