Axel Koehler-Schnura

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Axel Köhler-Schnura (born April 30, 1949 in Hof as Axel Köhler ) is a German environmental and socio-political activist and corporate critic. He became known for his commitment to the coordination against Bayer dangers and to the umbrella organization of critical shareholders .

Life

Education, job, family

Axel Köhler-Schnura has been involved in the DKP since early childhood . He studied business administration (business administration), sociology and computer science at the University of Regensburg as well as various languages and graduated in 1976 with a degree in business administration . He then worked in a project of the German Research Foundation on the subject of “Workers' Consciousness” and completed his sociology studies in 1978 with a preliminary diploma. He then worked in several companies until 1988, most recently in the management of a large printing company . Since 1988 he has been working as an independent entrepreneur with two of his own ecologically oriented companies. He also publishes on environmental and economic topics.

Köhler-Schnura lives in Düsseldorf . He is married and has four children, one of whom died early.

Corporate critic

When Köhler-Schnura lived in Wuppertal , in 1978 he was one of the founders of the residents 'initiative Wuppertal Citizens' Initiative against Bayer Environmental Hazards, which arose as a response to incidents at the Bayer plant there. Since then he has been active as a critic of Bayer AG . After an explosion in the Bayer plant in Dormagen in 1979, the initiative began to network first nationally in Germany and from 1980 also internationally. In 1983 Köhler-Schnura played a key role in founding the Coordination against Bayer Risks (CBG), which he has since represented on a voluntary basis as a member of the board .

The initiative or CBG has been present at Bayer AG's annual general meetings since 1982 . In this context, Köhler-Schnura regularly criticized the group and accused it of “greed for profit”. Since 1983, the CGB has published the quarterly magazine, Keyword BAYER , for which Köhler-Schnura is a volunteer editor .

In 1986, together with Henry Mathews , Heinrich Pachl and Helmut Paschlau, he set up the umbrella association of critical shareholders. This association, in which Köhler-Schnura was active on the board from 1986 to 1991 and from 1997 to 2000, used the provisions of stock corporation law to indict social, ecological and human rights misconduct by corporations and banks .

From 1985 Köhler-Schnura was also active with regard to IG Farben . Together with victim associations and anti-fascist organizations, Köhler-Schnura founded an action alliance and regularly attended the IG Farben shareholders' meetings, where he campaigned for their immediate dissolution and for compensation for the slave laborers who were employed there during the Nazi era .

Other voluntary work

Since the late 1970s, Köhler-Schnura has been involved in the environmental movement and other social movements on a voluntary basis . He was involved in the founding of the left-wing daily taz in 1978 and was one of the co-founders of the Ökobank in the 1980s . He was significantly involved in the establishment and development of the Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives Environmental Protection (BBU) and the Pesticide Action Network (PAN). He was also involved in the board of the edition “Art against Corporations”, the international foundation ethecon - Ethics & Economics (2004 founding donor), the association Mensch-Tier-Umwelt e. V., the Luxemburg-Liebknecht-Fonds (2005 co-founder) and the bank-independent Solidar-Sparfonds ProSolidar e. V. (formerly Umweltfonds e.V . ; 1994 co-founder).

He was a member of the German coordination group of the European Social Forum (ESF) and from 1999 to 2003 was responsible for the "Multinational Corporations" division at the first ESF in 2002 in Florence and at the second ESF in 2003 in Paris .

Awards

Publications

Editorial editing

Editing

  • Alternative annual report for the BAYER Group. Critical BAYER shareholders. 1st edition. Ed .: International Coordination Office - Active against BAYER environmental risk e. V., Weltkreis-Verlag, Dortmund 1985, ISBN 3-88142-355-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Short biography of Axel Köhler-Schnura ( Memento from May 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) OekoGeno eG; Retrieved December 20, 2010.
  2. ↑ a b c Short biography of Axel Köhler-Schnura Sparfonds ProSolidar e. V .; Retrieved December 20, 2010.
  3. ↑ a b Vita Axel Köhler-Schnura at the ethecon - Ethik & Ökonomie, accessed December 20, 2010.
  4. ↑ 20 years of the CGB . In: Keyword BAYER, issue 02/1998, accessed December 20, 2010.
  5. ↑ a b Coordination against BAYER dangers (CBG) . Interview with Axel Köhler-Schnura in the NRhZ-Online - Neue Rheinische Zeitung , August 25, 2005, accessed December 20, 2010.
  6. ↑ Andrea Hösch: Bayer Watch . In: greenpeace magazine , issue 6.09, accessed January 6, 2011.
  7. ↑ BAYER general meetings . Coordination against BAYER dangers , accessed December 20, 2010.
  8. ↑ Michael Schmidt-Klingenberg: You want to destroy our home . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1988, pp. 100-103 ( online ).
  9. ↑ Put under pressure . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1992, pp. 107, 110, 112 ( online ).
  10. ↑ a b Appendix to the 2000 annual report of the umbrella association of critical shareholders (PDF; 48 kB); Retrieved December 20, 2010
  11. ↑ a b Appendix to the 2001 annual report of the umbrella association of critical shareholders (PDF; 63 kB); Retrieved December 20, 2010.
  12. ↑ Current website of the umbrella association of critical shareholders; Retrieved December 20, 2010.
  13. ↑ Old website of the umbrella association of critical shareholders; Retrieved December 20, 2010.
  14. ↑ Peter Nowak : No end for IG Farben . In: the daily newspaper , December 19, 2002.
  15. ↑ Critical shareholders award Henry Mathews Prize to Axel Köhler-Schnura and the coordination against BAYER dangers . leverkusen.com. September 22, 2011. Retrieved October 23, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Koehler-Schnura, Axel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Köhler, Axel (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German environmental and socio-political activist and group critic
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Hof (Saale)