Led by Heinrich Himmler, the Ahnenerbe and Lebensborn organizations, both created in 1935, had complementary objectives.
The Ahnenerbe was the Society for the Research and Teaching of the German Ancestral Heritage, a pseudo-scientific organization that tried to gather proof and evidence, as well as formulate theories based on it, about the history of the Aryan race.
The objective was to demonstrate its supremacy throughout history, and for this it financed archaeological, ethnological and anthropological expeditions, which even took it to Tibet.
The Lebensborn, whose name means source of life , had as its objective to expand the Aryan race throughout the world. To do this, it ran orphanages, maternity homes, organized adoptions, and offered financial support to single German mothers. It also had a selective breeding program, in order to maintain the purity of the breed.
During World War II, it extended its activities to the occupied countries, mainly those around Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.
The fact is that all this obviously cost money and this was not exactly abundant for everything that was not defense expenses. As state funds did not cover Himmler's ambitions, he had to seek other sources of funding. And this is where a character named Anton Loibl comes into play. .
Loibl had been Hitler's chauffeur, but by the mid-1930s he was working what we might now equate to a driving school teacher, teaching young Germans how to drive. At the same time he invented things in his spare time, and from his previous job he knew Himmler, with whom he seemed to get along quite well.
The fact is that Loibl invented some reflectors with glass splinters that were placed on the pedals of bicycles and thus improve the safety of cyclists in conditions of poor visibility. He presented his invention to Himmler, and Himmler saw the opportunity for a new source of income for his organizations.
A company was quickly created under the name Anton Loibl GmbH , where the inventor participated in 50 percent (although it was normal for the time that the inventors took only 5 percent), while the other 50 was for the SS. Himmler made sure they were granted a patent for the searchlights (although there was apparently a very similar earlier application from another inventor), and by September 1936 they were in production, employing, like all other SS companies, slave labor.
For a year they did not do too well. But as Himmler was de facto the police chief of the Third Reich, on November 13, 1937 the German highway code incorporated a new order:all new bicycles manufactured and sold in Germany had to incorporate the reflectors of Anton Loibl GmbH. . For this, each manufacturer had to buy an annual license, which brought them an income of about 600,000 Reichsmarks for 1939. Brilliant, isn't it?.
Initially not everyone agreed, some manufacturers refused to pay the licenses, although as Heather Pringle says in her book The Master Plan:Fantastic Archeology in the Service of the Nazi Regime, they soon saw that it was wiser to do so. Usually it took no more than a simple letter signed by Himmler personally to force them to obey the new law.
In early 1940 Himmler got tired of Loibl taking half the profits, so he was kicked out of the company for incompetence (according to Michael T. Allen in his book on Nazi business, Loibl was not very good at managing), and his part was devoted entirely to the Ahnenerbe and the Lebensborn. Each received around 100,000 Reichsmarks a year from the sale of bicycle reflectors.
The end of the company came, along with the Ahnenerbe and Lebensborn, in 1945 with the Nuremberg trials. However, even today the section that Himmler introduced in the highway code is still valid:all German bicycles must have two yellow reflectors on each pedal, as well as a white one at the front and a red one at the rear.