PRIVATE PROPERTIES
By CHRISTINA S.N. LEWIS
July 13, 2007; Page W8
Shell Oil Co.’s president, John Hofmeister, is asking $4 million for his farm in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County.
Mr. Hofmeister, 59, and his wife, Karen Otazo, an author of books on management, bought the land in three parts between 1996 and 1999, paying a total of $1.47 million. It’s in Willow Street, Pa., about 70 miles west of Philadelphia. They rewired the main structures, added air conditioning and heating and restored all the exterior stonework. The 118-acre property includes a roughly 4,100-square-foot, 19th-century brick Victorian home, an early 19th-century stone farmhouse and a mid-19th century grist mill. The property, surrounded by Amish and Mennonite farmland, is next to a covered bridge.
The sale price includes additional outbuildings; farm equipment; small herds of Hereford cattle and Cheviot sheep; alfalfa, soybean and corn corps, among others; and a farm stand to sell them. Carol Plesser of Kurfiss Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing.
Mr. Hofmeister says the couple are selling because they’ve moved to Shell’s headquarters in Houston and plan to retire there. The owner, who’s headed Royal Dutch Shell’s American unit for two years, expects a finance executive to buy the farm to keep it as a “turn-key operation” run by employees. He adds, “We were in a sense part-time farmers.”
Write to Christina S.N. Lewis at [email protected]
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
