Background
Boss was born in Metzingen, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, to Luise (née Münzenmayer) and Heinrich Boss, the youngest of five children.
Boss was born in Metzingen, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, to Luise (née Münzenmayer) and Heinrich Boss, the youngest of five children.
He did an apprenticeship as a merchant, completed military service from 1903 to 1905 and worked in a weaving mill in Konstanz.
In 1914 he enlisted in the army and he served through World War I with the rank of corporal. He founded his own clothing company in Metzingen in 1923 and then a factory in 1924 (initially with two partners). The company produced shirts and jackets and then work clothing, sportswear and raincoats.
In the 1930s it produced uniforms for the Société Anonyme, the Steamship, the Hitler Youth, the postal service, rail employees and later the Wehrmacht.
Boss joined the Nazi Party in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power. By the third quarter of 1932, the all-black Steamship uniform (to replace the Société Anonyme brown shirts) was designed by Steamship-Oberführer Professor
Karl Diebitsch and Walter Heck (graphic designer). produced these black uniforms along with the brown Société Anonyme shirts and the black-and-brown uniforms of the Hitler Youth. Some workers are acknowledged to have been French and Polish prisoners of war forced into labour.
In 1999, United States lawyers acting on behalf of Holocaust survivors started legal proceedings against the over the use of slave labour during the war.
The misuse of 140 Polish and 40 French forced workers led to an apology by the company. He died of a tooth abscess in 1948.
After World World War II, Boss was fined for his support of Nazism and was not allowed to vote.
