Dieter Bührle

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Dietrich "Dieter" Bührle , born Ernst Joseph Sylvester Dietrich Bührle (born December 31, 1921 in Ilsenburg , German Empire ; † November 9, 2012 in Zollikon ; resident in Zurich ) was a Swiss entrepreneur .

Life

Dieter Bührle was born as the son of Emil Georg Bührle and his wife Wilhelmine Charlotte, née Schalk, in Ilsenburg, Prussia. In 1924 the family moved to Zurich, where the father became managing director of the machine tool factory Oerlikon, which was taken over by the Magdeburg machine tool factory in 1923 . Five years after Dieter Bührle, his sister Hortense was born, with whom he later headed his art foundation. In 1937 the Bührle family was naturalized in Zurich.

He studied law at the University of Zurich and joined the company, now known as Oerlikon-Bührle , in 1953 . There he became head of the "International Planning Group", responsible for factories in India and Egypt . The company's best-known product was the 20-mm Oerlikon cannon , one of the most widely used anti - aircraft cannons of the Second World War . When the father Emil Georg Bührle died in 1956, the then 35-year-old son took over Oerlikon-Bührle, which employed 37,000 people at peak times. Bührle ran a private holding together with his sister , which in turn owned 42 percent of Oerlikon-Bührle. He ran the company for the next 37 years, even though he would have liked to study art history . After the Biafra War in 1970 he was sentenced to probation and a fine for unauthorized export of war material to crisis areas. One consequence of the condemnation was that he had to leave the Swiss General Staff as a colonel .

Dieter Bührle tried to expand the armaments company to include production and services in the civil sector. In 1977 he acquired the Bally shoe group , Balzers Vakuumtechnik in the Principality of Liechtenstein , Limmat Insurance and the Hotel Zurich in Zurich. With the development of the Adats guided missile defense system , the company ran into financial difficulties. In 1990 Bührle resigned from the management of the company, which later changed its name to Unaxis . From then on he devoted himself mainly to the family holding company, the Storchen Hotels in Zurich, “Castello del Sole” in Ascona , the experimental farm in the Maggia Delta and a winery in Tuscany . In 2010 he sold his 50 percent stake in the operating company of the Altenrhein airport to Markus Kopf.

Bührle was married and had a son and a daughter. He died on November 9, 2012 at the age of 90.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Documents by and about Bührle, Dieter in the Dodis database of Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland
  2. ^ Vorarlberg Online: Altenrhein Airport: Vorarlberg is now sole owner. News from June 3, 2010, accessed on November 14, 2012.
  3. ^ Entrepreneur Dieter Bührle is dead. ( Memento from November 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: Swiss television from November 12, 2012.
  4. ↑ Dieter Bührle died. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of November 12, 2012, accessed on November 14, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Bührle, Dieter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bührle, Ernst Joseph Sylvester Dietrich (full name); Bührle Dietrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Ilsenburg (Harz) , Germany
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 2012
Place of death Zollikon