Familienbiographie
Das Stiftungsvermögen wurde von dem Industriellen Hermann C. Starck begründet. Dieser befasste sich von 1920 bis in die späten Siebziger Jahre mit Metallhandel. Die Geschichte Hermann C. Starcks und seiner Unternehmungen lässt sich einer jüngeren Veröffentlichung von Dr. Rolf Froböse, The Story of Refractory and Ceramic Materials, 1995, entnehmen.
Zum persönlichen Hintergrund von Hermann C. Starck, der ein Zögling und Freund des 1922 ermordeten Reichsaußenministers Walther Rathenau war, mag ein Zitat aus dem angegebenen Werk (p. 96) genügen:
" (…) The era of the Third Reich and the years immedi-ately after World War II were an extremely difficult time for Hermann C. Starck personally. Following the seizure of power by the Nazis, many of Starck's friends had to flee Germany. He was left with a permanent sense of fear for his family. Like many of his contemporaries, Starck had to fight to protect his two children, Barbara and Gerhard, be-cause his wife, Klara, was Jewish.
These circumstances did not, however, prevent Hermann C. Starck from hiring other people who were oppressed by the Nazi regime. In October 1936 Dr. Hans Adelung joined the company because he was not able to continue his education as a lawyer for political reasons. Another exam-ple was the 20-year-old Hellwarth Lahusen, who began his career at H.C. Starck as commercial clerk in February 1940. Lahusen was lucky that he was largely able to es-cape persecution by the Gestapo through his constant travels between Berlin and Goslar. (…)"