Hugo Ferdinand Boss was the founder of clothing company
Hugo BossHugo Ferdinand Boss was the founder of clothing company Hugo Boss.-Early life:Boss was born in Metzingen, Germany. After completing his apprenticeship and one year of employment, he founded his own company in Metzingen in 1923.-Support of Nazism:Boss joined the Nazi Party in 1931, two years before...
.
Early life
Boss was born in
MetzingenMetzingen is a Swabian city with about 22,000 inhabitants, in the state of Baden-Württemberg in the southwest of Germany, south of Stuttgart.-History:The city is mentioned for the first time in documents from 1075...
, Germany. After completing his
apprenticeshipApprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...
and one year of employment, he founded his own company in Metzingen in 1923.
Support of Nazism
Boss joined the Nazi Party in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power. By the third quarter of 1932, the all-black
SSThe Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
uniform (to replace the
SAThe Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...
brown shirts) was designed by
SS-Oberführer Prof.
Karl DiebitschProfessor Karl Diebitsch was an artist and soldier responsible for much of the Third Reich SS regalia, including the Chained SS Officer's dagger scabbard. Diebitsch worked with graphic designer Walter Heck to design the all-black SS uniform...
and Walter Heck (graphic designer).
Hugo BossHugo Ferdinand Boss was the founder of clothing company Hugo Boss.-Early life:Boss was born in Metzingen, Germany. After completing his apprenticeship and one year of employment, he founded his own company in Metzingen in 1923.-Support of Nazism:Boss joined the Nazi Party in 1931, two years before...
company produced these black uniforms along with the brown
SAThe Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...
shirts and the black-and-brown uniforms of the
Hitler YouthThe Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
. Some workers are acknowledged to have been
FrenchThe French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
and Polish prisoners of war forced into labour. In 1999, US lawyers acting on behalf of Holocaust survivors started legal proceedings against the Hugo Boss company over the use of slave labour during the war
After
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Boss was fined for his support of Nazism and was not allowed to vote — he died of a
tooth abscessA tooth abscess or root abscess is pus enclosed in the tissues of the jaw bone at the apex of an infected tooth's root. Usually the abscess originates from a bacterial infection that has accumulated in the soft, often dead, pulp of the tooth. This can be caused by untreated tooth decay, cracked...
in 1948.