Bernd Tönnies
Bernd Tönnies (born April 11, 1952 in Rheda ; † July 1, 1994 in Münster ), [ ˈtœnjəs ], was a German entrepreneur and sports official . Together with his brother Clemens Tönnies he was the managing director of the Tönnies Fleisch group and in 1994 he was president of FC Schalke 04 .
Origin and occupation
Bernd Tönnies was the eldest son of six children of a butcher in Rheda. In 1971 he founded his first company, a meat and sausage wholesaler in Rheda-Wiedenbrück . His business idea was not just to slaughter animals, but to offer the meat directly as finished products for the food retail trade . To this end, slaughtering and deboning with a high level of machine use have been bundled centrally. In 1975 Bernd Tönnies founded a new location in neighboring Herzebrock . In 1982 his brother Clemens Tönnies took a 40% stake in the company. In 1992 he started up the new meat factory in Rheda-Wiedenbrück with 400 jobs. In 1994 the group of companies employed around 4,000 people at the locations in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Sögel (Lower Saxony) and Weißenfels (Saxony-Anhalt), Groenloh (Netherlands) and St. Petersburg (Russia). Other locations are Otto Bauer (Wethau) with 500 employees and Westfalenkrone (Herzebrock).
On February 7, 1994, Bernd Tönnies was elected the new President of FC Schalke 04 at an extraordinary general meeting. Before the election, the association's statutes had to be changed because Bernd Tönnies had not been a member of the association for a full year.
Death in 1994
Bernd Tönnies died on July 1, 1994 of the consequences of a lung infection after a kidney transplant . He left his two sons, Robert and Clemens jun., A million dollar fortune and 60% of the property rights of his company. His younger brother Clemens has been running the meat company since 1994.
The Tönnies Group has been awarding the Bernd Tönnies Prize since 2011 . The namesake of the award dealt with future-oriented questions of slaughtering and cutting early on. In 1988, for example, he patented an innovative “method for anaesthetizing lung-breathing animals for slaughter” (decompression) . The 10,000 euro award is presented every two years. With this, the company recognizes scientific and journalistic work that deals with animal welfare in livestock husbandry.
Web links
- Birgit Dengel: Monday portrait: Clemens Tönnies: The little brother ( Memento from February 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ); Financial Times Deutschland, August 13, 2006
- Died: Bernd Tönnies ; Obituary in Spiegel 27/1994 of July 4, 1994
- Description of the process for stunning lung-breathing animals for slaughter at patent-de.com
- FC Schalke 04: July 6th, 2004: President Bernd Tönnies was buried ten years ago ; Article on 100-schalker-jahre.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Image: Schalker Kotlett Kaiser , accessed on April 24, 2017.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Tönnies, Bernd |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur and sports official |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 11, 1952 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Rheda |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 1, 1994 |
| Place of death | Muenster |