Alfred Kuehne

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Alfred Kühne (born April 14, 1895 in Bremen ; † October 16, 1981 in Lenzerheide , Switzerland ) was a German freight forwarder, son of the co-founder of today's transport and logistics group Kuehne + Nagel and co-founder of the Kuehne Foundation .

biography

Kühne was the son of August Kühne (1855–1932); he originally wanted to be a painter , but after Alfred's older brother died, he learned the business from 1910 in the KN branch in Hamburg, received power of attorney in 1923 and became a partner in Kuehne + Nagel in 1928 at the age of 33. From April 1933, shortly after the death of his father and after Adolf Maass (* 1875 in Borgholzhausen , deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 , † in Auschwitz ), shareholders - with 45 percent the largest shareholder in Kuehne + Nagel - was driven out of the company Alfred and his brother Werner Kühne (* 1898, last mentioned 1951) run the company alone. On May 1, 1933, Alfred and his brother joined the NSDAP with membership numbers 3.001.238 and 2.829.501 and were both also members of the German Labor Front (DAF). Your company received a Gaudiplom in 1937 as a "National Socialist model company". In July 1948 the Kühne Brothers were denazified - classified in Category IV as fellow travelers - and each was fined 2,000 DM.

According to the historian Wolfgang Dressen the transport company Kuehne + Nagel has during the Nazism of the " Aryanization programs " of the Nazis by benefits that looted Jewish property was transported on behalf of the Nazi state. Including for the task force Reichsleiter Rosenberg "from Paris alone [...] between 1941 and 1944 29 art transports". These circumstances were apparently never dealt with by the company.

The company headquarters in Bremen, which was destroyed in 1944 and located in the so-called von Kapff'sche Burg on the Wilhelm-Kaisen-Brücke , which was newly built between 1958 and 1960 , was relocated. Kühne commissioned the architect Caesar Pinnau to build a new six-storey building on a larger site, which was inaugurated as the August Kühne House in March 1962 and added three storeys in the early 1970s.

His brother Werner Kühne left the company in December 1951, founded Africana Traansport GmbH in Bremen and took over the existing Kuehne + Nagel agency in Johannesburg / South Africa on his own account .

In the 1950s, Kuehne opened branches in Buenos Aires / Argentina (1950), in Montreal and Toronto, Canada with a branch in Vancouver (1957) and in Holland (1955) and in 1957 in Baghdad / Iraq via Kuehne + Nagel the Orient Transport Company Ltd. . and in 1960 a 75 percent stake in Société de Transit Oriental SAL in Beirut / Lebanon .

From 1954 Kühne was on the board of the Association for the Near and Middle East (NUMOV), Bremen / Hamburg.

In 1955 he was appointed Cuban Honorary Consul in Bremen by President Fulgencio Batista due to his long-standing close ties with Cuba . In 1956 he became Chilean Honorary Consul, opened a consulate in Bremen in September 1956, and was appointed Consul General of Chile in October 1957 by General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo . His son Klaus-Michael took over the office in 1967.

Today's administrative headquarters of the Kuehne Foundation and Kuehne + Nagel AG in Schindellegi (CH)

In April 1959, he set up a branch in Switzerland with Kuehne + Nagel AG (capital CHF 500,000) in Zurich.

In 1963, Kühne made his son Klaus-Michael Kühne a personally liable partner ( general partner ) and partner at the age of 26 . After he and his deputy Ludwig Rössinger (* 1898), who was also a partner in the company from 1954, retired from the Board of Directors in 1975 for reasons of age, Klaus-Michael Kühne and his deputy Rudolf Lück († 1987) took over these positions and Kühne became honorary president of the Board of Directors.

In 1969, at the age of 74, Kühne moved to Switzerland and also relocated the headquarters of Kühne + Nagel to Schindellegi in the municipality of Feusisberg in the Swiss canton of Schwyz . With his wife Mercedes (1908–2001 in Hamburg, nee Greef) and their son Klaus-Michael Kühne, he founded the charitable Kühne Foundation in 1976 , a foundation under Swiss law that is supposed to support the company's assets.

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adolf Maass: page 59-79 , accessed on April 3, 2015
  2. ↑ Kuehne + Nagel masonry, exploitation without "relevance" daily newspaper of February 6, 2015, accessed on April 5, 2015
  3. ^ Kühne, Werner German Biography (1982)
  4. ↑ Nazi legacy of a transport company, encumbrances of the past, dated March 31, 2015, accessed on April 5, 2015
  5. ↑ Hamburg State Archive, call number 371-8 II_SXXI A15 a 133
  6. ↑ Hamburg State Archive, Kuehne & Nagel trust file 1946–1949
  7. ↑ "Looting of Jewish Property - Accepting Acceptance" . In: taz.de , November 29, 2010
  8. ↑ Kuehne + Nagel masonry - utilization without "relevance" . In: taz.de , February 6, 2015
  9. ^ Radiobremen.de Knowledge history: 125 years of Kühne and Nagel. World company from Bremen ( Memento from April 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Handelsblatt of March 9, 1962 / HWWA
  11. ↑ architecture guide bremen: August Kühne-Haus, accessed on April 5, 2015
  12. ↑ www.architekturfuehrer-bremen.de
  13. ↑ Company service VWD (FfM) no. 247, HWWA A_10_K489 from December 21, 1951
  14. ↑ VWD (Ffm), No. 238 of October 12, 1950
  15. ↑ Hamburger Echo, No. 103 from May 4, 1957
  16. ↑ Hamburg State Archives 371-19_2368
  17. ↑ Hamburger Anzeiger, No. 83 of April 9, 1955
  18. ↑ Wirtschafts-Correspondent (Hamburg), No. 52 of December 30, 1955 and Hamburger Hafen-Nachrichten, No. 8 of April 15, 1955
  19. ^ Record loans , Hamburger Abendblatt, September 1, 1956
  20. ↑ Wirtschafts-Correspondent (Hamburg), October 24, 1957
  21. ↑ Press release from K & N, dated March 24, 1959 (blocking period April 1, 1959), HWWA A 10 K 489
  22. ↑ German Economic Archives, Society for Company History, Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, edited by Klara van Eyll and Renate Schwärzel, page 165
  23. ^ Personnel reorganization at Kuehne & Nagel , Hamburger Abendblatt dated September 5, 1975, read in on April 3, 2015
  24. ↑ Mercedes Kühne, b. Greef ( Memento from April 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ^ Two high honors, Hamburger Abendblatt of October 12, 1960, page 3
  26. ^ Alfred-Kuehne-Blvd-Brampton-ON , accessed April 5, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Kühne, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1981
Place of death Lenzerheide