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Alfred Nyssen

Alfred Nyssen was a German businessman and an associate of the national conservative Black Reichswehr movement during the Weimar era.

Biography[]

Alfred Nyssen was the son of Annemarie Nyssen, and he came from a family of wealthy industrialists. During the Weimar era, Nyssen and his mother actively supported far-right paramilitary groups opposed to the democratic regime, especially Major-General Wilhelm Seegers' Black Reichswehr. In 1929, Nyssen was arrested by the Berlin Police for illegally importing poison gas from the USSR with the intent of supplying the gas to the Black Reichswehr for the Operation Prangertag coup plot. While he was released due to his mother's influential contacts, he was fired from his company's board of directors for the embarassment he brought to his family with his arrest, and he was demoted to head of the Nyssen AG Foundation. While he suffered from manic depression and bipolarism, he was able to foresee the Great Depression and persuaded the leaders of the Black Reichswehr to speculate with sums in the millions on collapsing prices, numbering among the few winners of the Black Tuesday stock market crash. However, his uneasy relations with the Black Reichswehr led to a failed suicide attempt, foiled by his lover Helga Rath.

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