Wizard from Westphalia

When Germany surrendered in 1945, no top-ranking Nazi industrialist was hit harder than foxy Friedrich Flick, who owned a coal and steel empire second only to the four-generation Krupp kingdom. Hustled off to Landsberg Prison as a war criminal. Multimillionaire Flick, once known as "Frederick the Great," served five years of a seven-year sentence for using slave labor to make steel for Hitler's legions. In East Germany the Communists confiscated 75% of Flick's entire cartel; U.S. and British trustbusters made him break up its bomb-shattered remnants in West Germany. Yet even in prison, with the same steely determination that had helped him rise from Westphalian farm boy to steel baron, Flick planned to put his economic Humpty Dumpty together again.

Last week, fewer than six years after he walked out of jail, white-haired Friedrich Flick 72, completed a coup that put him well along the road to a new empire and a new reputation. For $5,500,000 he bought the largest single block of shares in the Hainaut-Sambre combine, Belgium's No. 2 steelmaker and biggest private company, thereby became the first German to own a significant stake in Belgian industry since before World War I. Last year, when he bought a 25% to 30% controlling interest in Chatillon-Neuves-Maisons steelworks, one of France's big five, he was also the first German to buy into French industry in half a century. In two strokes the onetime German nationalist thus singlehanded made solid progress toward the ideal of pooling Western Europe's heavy industry.

Lesson Learned. Though Flick's associates like to picture him as a kindly old codger who was conned by the Nazis and framed by the Allies, none claim that his expansion outside Germany is motivated by anything but razor-sharp financial judgment. Said one: "He made a virtue out of necessity." Flick's resurgence is a direct result of Allied decartelization. Forced to sell his 60% holdings in the Harpener Bergbau, one of the Ruhr's biggest coal combines, Flick could find no buyer in capital-starved Western Germany. Reluctantly, he sold his stock to France's giant De Wendel steel concern (TIME, May 18, 1953), which paid him $26 million outright, plus $19 million in blocked funds that could only be reinvested in France or areas linked to the French economy. Thus he was forced to spend much of his money outside Germany. The transaction gave Flick the capital he needed to start buying industrial bargains from Belgium to Brazil.

In West Germany Flick now owns a steel mill in Bavaria and a metal-refining plant in Liibeck, has a large interest in the Ruhr's Bergkamen chemical works, Stuttgart's big Daimler-Benz auto plant, a boxcar factory in Nuernberg, Duessel-dorf's Feldmuehle paper mill, one of Europe's largest. Besides his French and Belgian holdings, he has a steel mill in South Africa and varied interests in Brazil. However many millions roll in, Flick resolved in jail to invest in industry but never to build again. Says an associate: "He's a badly burned child who has learned his lesson."

Solid Gold Mercedes. Flick runs his combine today from a lavishly furnished office '(dominated by a portrait of Bismarck) in Duesseldorf's newest skyscraper. A notorious pfennig-pincher, he is never seen at the swank restaurants frequented by his subordinates, ducks out of his office for solitary meals at cheap cafes.

Haunted by the idea that his hard-won fortune will slip through the fingers of his two sober-minded sons, Flick rewrites his will each time he sees a Hollywood movie about playboys. Yet he can be a daring gambler. When his empire was crumbling around his prison cell, Flick was warned by geologists that his big Bavarian ore mine was played out. Flick refused to b lieve them, told his men to keep drilling.

"Other rich men go to Monte Carlo and spend their money on women," he said.

"But I'm in the steel business. Drill!" His engineers found an ore body that will last another 100 years.

Flick is once-again West Germany's No. 2 industrialist (after Krupp). His e timated worth: $250 million v. $119 mil lion in 1950 and close to $1 billion pre war. Refusing to discuss his wealth, he shrugs: "If one man offered me 100 marks for my car and another offered me 1,000 marks, what would you say that car was worth?" Mindful of Flick's raid on the Daimler auto company, whose stock shot from 125 to a steady 350 after Flick bought in. German bankers agree that any car Flick bought would automatically turn into a solid gold Mercedes.

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