Friedrich Baur Foundation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Friedrich Baur Foundation (Friedrich-Baur-GmbH)
founding 1953
founder Friedrich Baur
Seat Burgkunstadt
Chair Georg Freiherr von Waldenfels
Managing directors Otmar Fugmann
Foundation capital 206 million EUR (2018, FB-GmbH)
Employees 10 (2018, FB-GmbH)
Website www.baur-stiftung.de

The Friedrich-Baur-Stiftung is a non-profit public foundation with legal capacity established in 1953 under civil law with its seat in Burgkunstadt . The purpose of the foundation is to promote research and improvement of patient treatment in the medical faculty of the University of Munich , in particular research into hospital polio and the promotion of the tasks of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts . The foundation was the sole heir to Friedrich Baur's assets . The foundation holds 51% of the shares in Baur Versand GmbH & Co. KG as an essential asset .

History and structural changes

Structural changes since 1953

With a certificate dated February 14, 1953, the Baur couple and Ms. Baur's sister Kunigunde Schuh began to regulate their estate in terms of charitable status. They founded the foundation and provided it with a capital of 10,000 DM and a free grant of 250,000 DM - already with the foundation purpose mentioned above. According to the founders, the interests of the company Baur Versand GmbH should always be in the foreground, jobs should be preserved and the operational mail order business should take precedence over the foundation's claims; also "should [never] be the interests of foreign capital dominating the company and thereby pushing back customer service in favor of inadequate pursuit of profit". In the years up to 1957 the foundation received DM 915,000.

With their will of November 20, 1957, the couple Baur and Mrs. Baur's sister made last wills. Among other things, a 6-member foundation board of trustees should be created, three of which should also be executors with a view to the “good of the company”. For these people, “economic ability” was named as a prerequisite and the remuneration for the execution of the wills was set at 0.1% of the “annual turnover minus returns”. The other three curators should be appointed as rector of the LMU, dean of the LMU medical faculty and president of the Academy of Fine Arts. The regulations should come into force after the death of the last of the three testators. In 1960 an amendment was made to the foundation statutes, according to which the Bavarian Prime Minister was to act as an additional executor.

With the deaths of Friedrich Baur (1965, 51.7% of the company shares), Kuni Schuh (1970, 10%) and Kathi Baur (1984, 38.3%), the foundation gradually became the sole heir of the company. At the end of 1965 the foundation's capital was also increased by DM 15,500. In 1977 Kathi Baur wrote her personal will, which also affected the foundation statutes and the remuneration of the executors to the amount of 240,000 DM p. a. limited. Up until 1984, a total of almost DM 9 million in foundation funds were made available.

Foundation curators accompanied the foundation, the executors with a focus on the entrepreneurial success of the operational mail order business. Between 1984 and 1994, the executors ran the mail order business through the newly founded company called Kontor-, Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs-GmbH (KBV) - based in the offices of the executor Dr. Zahn in Munich's Romanstrasse. The participation of employees in the company's success was, among other things, a. guaranteed by a supervisory board of the mail-order company with equal representation.

The success of the foundation's work has been disputed since 1997 at the latest: On the one hand, Baur was the 4th largest mail order company in Germany and, according to the Baur supervisory board Wolfgang Winkler, was still in good health in July 1997; on the other hand, the future of the foundation's purpose, especially jobs, no longer seemed secure .

Simultaneously with the end of the scandalous so-called Amigo affair around Prime Minister Streibl and the withdrawal of the new bay. Prime Minister Stoiber, the execution of wills ended on October 31, 1995 and the KBV was dissolved. The remuneration to the executors was scrutinized by the public. The question of the legality or the moral justifiability of the remuneration and the performance of the executor was also raised. On the one hand, the legality was confirmed. On the other hand, it was judged that several million DM had flowed to lawyers, auditors and consultants as a result of the numerous restructurings, that the executors or the foundation disregarded the effectiveness of the Kathi Baur will of 1977, which was decisive for them, and that this disregard also resulted in excessive remuneration of the Bavarian Prime Minister. The possibly overpaid remuneration, which was not available for company investments, can be roughly calculated at at least EUR 5 million. - Under the foundation supervision of the regional president of Upper Franconia, Wolfgang Winkler2001, the foundation statutes were changed in 1995, u. a. without the seat of the Board of Trustees of the Bavarian Prime Minister.

On August 1, 1997, the foundation's core assets, the mail order business, were spun off into the new company Baur Versand GmbH & Co. KG and 49% of the company shares were sold to Otto Versand, Hamburg , for an estimated 250 to 300 million DM. The management of the new company was completely taken over by Otto - in the form of the 100% Otto subsidiary and general partner, Verwaltungsgesellschaft Baur Versand GmbH. In addition to the members of the Board of Trustees and former executors of wills, Kadner, Zahn, Schnicke, and the other employer representatives on the supervisory board of the operational mail order business, Dazert, Köstler and Winkler were decisive for the decision. - The participation and participation structures have been more complex since then. The employee’s right of co-determination in the operative mail order business at Baur also no longer applies, i. H. only the shareholders are represented on the advisory board of the general partner.

The success of the foundation's management since 1984 was documented in 2015 in a book by the Baur godchild and former managing director of the company, Dr. Wolf Streifender, fundamentally doubted. A "betrayal of the life's work of Friedrich Baur" had been committed and a "flourishing medium-sized company was smashed and ruined by questionable transactions". The Baur management gave up their independence without need. The new direction of the foundation's work was also questioned; it is doubtful whether the various activities, the geographical reach as far as Austria, the complex architecture of the foundation's assets and the "several 100 precarious jobs" as well as the "forced" work in the mail order company since 1997 reflect the "spirit of Friedrich Baur" and thus correspond to its foundation intention.

Foundation Board

  • Bernhard Betz *, 1984 - 2017
  • Dr. Ottmar Fugmann *, since 2018

(* each as managing director of Friedrich-Baur GmbH)

Executor (and members of the Foundation's Board of Trustees)

  • Dr. Franz-Josef Strauss, Prime Minister, Munich, 1984 - 1988, replaced by Dr. Max Streibl, Prime Minister, 1988 - 1993, replaced by Dr. Edmund Stoiber, Prime Minister, 1993-1994
  • Dr. Hans Günter Hauffe, lawyer, Lichtenfels, 1984 - 1985, replaced after death by: Dr. Güner Kadner, 1985-1995
  • Dr. Joachim Zahn, former Daimler-Benz CEO, Redenfelden, 1984 - 1995
  • Dr. Gerhard Joos, Steuerberger, Stuttgart, designated in the will; replaced after death by: Dipl.-Ing. Christian Schnicke, Munich, auditor, 1984 - 1995

Members of the Board of Trustees

  • Dr. Georg von Waldenfels *, formerly bay. Finance Minister / Lawyer, Munich - Chairman
  • Dipl.-Kfr. Gerti Moll-Möhrstedt *, entrepreneur, Bad Staffelstein - deputy. Chairperson
  • Christian Klose *, lawyer / auditor, Freising
  • Christian Meißner *, district administrator / lawyer, Lichtenfels
  • each Rector of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • each Dean of the Medical Faculty of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • each President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts

(* also members of the advisory board of Friedrich-Baur-GmbH; other advisory board members: Dr. Otto Beierl, Chairman LfA Förderbank Bayern / lawyer (former Ministerialdirektor), Munich; Dr. Hans-Peter Friedrich Member of the Bundestag / lawyer (former Federal Minister) .), Hof; Dr. Stefan Vogg, lawyer (retired government councilor), Munich

Focus of the current work

The aim of the foundation was expanded by a decision of the board of trustees from research into polio to research into inflammatory nervous diseases., In 2001, the "proceeds from capital assets" went to LMU research about 3 million DM and to the art academy about 740,000 DM In 2002, the foundation statutes were changed again, so that only income from the foundation capital of 40 million EUR flows to the main LMU and academy. The "current income" from the shipping company Friedrich-Baur-GmbH is used for charitable medical and cultural purposes in the region. [Streifender, p. 39] For example, in the newly established Altenkunstadt senior citizens' center, "preferably former employees of the Baur company" are cared for and the " Friedrich Baur Prize " is awarded to artists from Northern Bavaria. The newly founded Friedrich Baur Research Institute for Biomaterials has also been supported at the University of Bayreuth since 1998, with BioCer GmbH, Bayreuth, as a medical research company u. a. Manufactures a "tissue" product for the treatment of hernias.

At least since the financial crisis and the ECB's policy of low interest rates, the foundation has been under enormous pressure to invest the funds profitably on the one hand without taking too much risk and realizing the assets - as prescribed in the Bavarian Foundation Act - i.e. H. adjusted for the cost of living development. Those responsible currently see a remedy in real estate investments; The facilities of the central holding company Friedrich-Baur-GmbH in this area grew by more than 40% between 2013 and 2018 to almost 49 million most recently. To what extent the planned measures of Baur Versand GmbH & Co. KG in the area of ​​expansion of a logistics location in North Rhine-Westphalia or the IT marketing campaign “Our goal is to know what our customer needs” in the sense of the foundation's down-to-earth intention is questionable. It will also be observed to what extent - after 1997 - further reallocations of the basic assets will be carried out; here the foundation law allows “redeployment (s) in a profitable system”.

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Foundation directory - Friedrich Baur Foundation. Retrieved March 16, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Winkler 2001, pp. 119/120
  3. ↑ In number 1 of the will it is stated, quoted from Winkler2001, p. 123: "The execution of the will is primarily arranged to ensure the continuation of Friedrich Bur GmbH Burgkunstadt in the long term."
  4. ↑ quoted from Winkler 2001, p. 120
  5. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 120
  6. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 120
  7. ^ Paragraph 23 of the will, quoted from Winkler 2001, p. 123
  8. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 120
  9. ↑ Winkler 2001, pp. 122, 124
  10. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 122
  11. ↑ Streifender, pp. 13, 17 ff.
  12. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 123
  13. ↑ quoted from Stripeeder, p. 26
  14. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 124
  15. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 124
  16. ↑ Winkler 2003
  17. ↑ Streifender, p. 43
  18. ↑ streifeder, p. 21 f.
  19. ↑ Assumptions: average sales of EUR 650 million over approx. 10 years; Average inflation adjustment of the maximum remuneration by 25%: 300,000 DM
  20. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 124
  21. ↑ Streifender, p. 26
  22. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 125
  23. ↑ Streifender, p. 26
  24. ↑ Streifender, p. 48
  25. ↑ Streifender, p. 27
  26. ^ Stripeseder, pp. 28, 41, 14
  27. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 121
  28. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 125
  29. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 125
  30. ↑ Winkler 2001, p. 125
  31. ↑ cf. Art. 6 para. 2 and para. 3 sentence 2 BayStG
  32. ↑ cf. Company register: annual accounts 2018 and 2013
  33. ↑ Obermain-Tagblatt v. April 18, 2018
  34. ↑ cf. Leaflet for setting up a foundation (www.innenministerium.bayern.de/buerger/staat/stiftungen, as of October 1, 2009)