This is the story of a murder that was never solved. And it is the story of a man who became a victim when he was one of the most influential people in German society. We’re talking about Alfred Herrhausenspokesman for the board of Deutsche Bank until the day of his murder on November 30, 1989. Herrhausen, the name no longer means anything to many people, but his thinking still leaves its mark.
Die ARD transforms this story into a contemporary historical thriller, in four parts from life to death. Herrhausen – The Lord of Money is a fiction production that is exceptionally worth seeing for German television, a major feature film in multiple parts.
Herrhausen – The Lord of Money is vaguely reminiscent of the ZDF series Bad
Banks from 2017 and 2020 about a fictitious major bank in Frankfurt am Main. It also had an excellent cast (with Désirée Nosbusch in the lead role), stood out for its fast narration and precisely captured the banking milieu. Content-related Herrhausen – The Lord of Money However, to the great contemporary historical productions that were produced by the early Federal Republic (Bonn – Old friends, new enemies) tell and the GDR (Weißensee) as well as German-German history (Deutschland
83, Deutschland 86, Deutschland 89) negotiate.
So who was Alfred Herrhausen? A bank manager born in 1930, says Wikipedia, a conservative anarchist, says Thomas Schreiber, who is responsible for the multi-part series on ARD. A friend wrote his goddaughter, the journalist Carolin Emcke. A companion, said the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the funeral service for Herrhausen.
He apparently lived according to the principles “standstill means death” and “money that is not designed is wasted.” There are also crucial sentences in the ARD multi-part series. As spokesman for the board of directors Deutsche Bank Herrhausen organized loans for reform-minded regimes in Eastern Europe towards the end of the Cold War. During this historic threshold period, he contributed to ensuring that the change in Eastern Europe after 1985 was largely peaceful. Above all, he helped Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, which still existed at the time.
Herrhausen never acted selflessly, but always with the benefit of his bank in mind, but he was at least as much a political powerhouse who had experienced the Second World War and wanted to help shape a peaceful Europe. In a speech that he was no longer able to give and that appeared in ZEIT after his death, Herrhausen sketched out the image of a European internal market, a common European currency and a world that would work together to combat the impending “ecological catastrophe”.
At the same time, Herrhausen was a key player in the so-called Deutschland AG – on the left they called it the political-industrial complex. This conservative elite was very closely connected and made far-reaching decisions in changing constellations. As part of this network, and as head of Deutsche Bank, its largest financier, Herrhausen made industrial policy, traded company investments and thereby decided who could take over a company – and who was taken over.
Among other things, Herrhausen pushed forward the formation of a leading German arms company through the merger of Daimler with MBB. This armaments division now forms the German half of Airbus. In Deutsche Bank itself, that will be in Herrhausen – The Lord of Money Excellently described and staged, he fought to transform the financial institution into a modern, digitalized bank driven by investment banking. His successors have continued this strategy, some with moderate success.
The multi-part series is based on historical circumstances. But in order to turn it into a big story, the script (Thomas Wendrich), director (Pia Strietmann) and producer (Gabriela Sperl) took the liberty of including dialogues and scenes such as in the Herrhausens’ house or in the bank or on trips to invent the chauffeur.
