Alexander Knorr (entrepreneur)

Gutenbergstrasse 39/1 in Heilbronn

Tomb of the industrialist family Knorr in Heilbronn

Knorr family grave (left panel)

Alexander Walter Eduard Knorr (born May 6, 1889 in Heilbronn ; † January 24, 1978 ) was a German entrepreneur who ran the Knorr food company .

biography

Alexander Knorr's father was Kommerzienrat Carl Heinrich Eduard Knorr (born June 27, 1843 in Heilbronn; † May 8, 1921 in Heilbronn), his mother was his second wife Antonie Clementine Krust (born March 12, 1867 in Heilbronn; † July 14, 1947 in Bad Tölz). From this marriage two more children were born: Toni Knorr (1887–1947), who married Lothar von Weltzien , and Hans Albrecht Knorr (1894–1896).

Alexander Knorr completed a commercial apprenticeship with the Georg Schepeler company in Frankfurt am Main and with the colonial goods wholesaler Friedrich Obenauer GmbH in Saarbrücken. After his military service he went to Antwerp, Bordeaux and London for further training. After four and a half years of military service on the Western Front, he joined his father's food company in Heilbronn on January 2, 1919. On July 1st of the same year he was appointed authorized signatory, in August he moved to the Austrian plant in Wels to represent the managing director who was ill. At the end of January 1920 he moved back to Heilbronn. In 1923 he became a deputy and in 1929 a full member of the board, to which he was a member for a total of 35 years. In March 1940, Alexander Knorr, together with the chairman of the supervisory board Gustav Pielenz (1862–1944), fended off the NSDAP district leader Richard Drauz's request for a post on the Knorr supervisory board, which the latter responded with abusive letters. In the years after 1945, Alexander Knorr made a significant contribution to rebuilding the company. When Maizena, a subsidiary of the American CPC group, became the majority shareholder in 1958/59 and implemented the conversion of CH Knorr AG into a GmbH, Alexander Knorr, the last Knorr, left the company's executive board in 1958. In 1958 and 1959 he was still a member of the supervisory board. He then wrote the four-volume Knorr Chronicle, completed in March 1965, which describes the company's history from its founding in 1838 to its takeover by Maizena in 1959.

Alexander Knorr was with Ella Knorr, geb. Hesse (* May 24, 1891; † March 12, 1964) married. The two had a son, Joachim Alexander Knorr (* July 18, 1927, † October 28, 2004), and a daughter, Alix Knorr (1921-1949).

Alexander Knorr lived in the house at Gutenbergstrasse 39/1, which was initially the car garage of his father's Villa Carl Knorr and was later expanded into a stately single-family home. He died on January 24, 1978 and was buried in the family grave in the Heilbronn main cemetery.

literature

• Alexander Knorr: Knorr Chronicle 1838 to 1959. Volumes I - IV . Deutsche Maizena Werke GmbH, Hamburg 1959
• Uwe Jacobi: 150 years of Knorr: 1838–1988 . Maizena Gesellschaft mbH, Heilbronn 1988
• Julius Fekete, Simon Haag, Adelheid Hanke, Daniela Naumann with contributions by Gerhard Bauer, Martina Berner-vom Feld, Jörg Biel, Ulrich Frey, Wolfgang Hansch, Joachim Hennze , Markus Numberger, Ulrike Plate, Christhard Schrenk: Monument Topography Baden-Württemberg Volume I. .5 Heilbronn district. Edition Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1988-3 , p. 141