Friedrich Baur (entrepreneur)

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Friedrich Baur (born May 11, 1890 in Stadtsteinach ; † October 30, 1965 in Kulmbach ) was a German entrepreneur and patron. He founded Baur Versand , the fourth largest mail order company in Germany when Baur died.

Life

Youth, military service, training and initial work experience

Baur was one of several children of Arthur Baur, a royal Bavarian notary, and Annelies Baur, née. Trumpler, daughter of a commercial councilor in Worms . One of his sisters was Klara Amanda Anna Baur, with the stage name Claire Bauroff . Influenced by his father's career, Baur attended elementary school in Neu-Ulm, the humanistic grammar school in Munich and the old grammar school in Bamberg. He was considered a gifted student, even a primus.

In 1908 Baur volunteered for military service. In 1910 he was made a lieutenant and in 1911 a reserve officer. Before the First World War, Baur stayed in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to gain experience in foreign trade. On August 14, 1914, he and numerous businessmen were arrested and on January 17, 1916, they were transported to Australia to the Holsworthy internment camp near Sydney . He was released in May 1919 and arrived in Rotterdam on July 18, 1919 with the prison ship "Willochra".

From 1920 he worked briefly for the Püls shoe factory, Burgkunstadt, then a Bamberg shoe factory and later for the Hühnlein, Burgkunstadt company, which sells agricultural and shoe supplies. In 1921 he made himself a. a. Self-employed as a shoe wholesaler in Bamberg together with the Hühnlein sons. It failed, however, in the years of inflation.

Entrepreneurship and Founding

In 1925, together with his future wife Kathi, he founded his own company, today's Baur-Versand and thus Germany's first shoe mail order company. Baur adopted the concept of income orientation in pricing from C&A. He was the first to introduce the sales concepts of collective orders and partial payments ("10 interest-free installments") into the trade. With the "seizure of power", Baur's company suffered from controls and restrictions, the mail-order business and he became victims of a smear campaign in the Bamberger Tagblatt. In 1945, Baur's warehouse was looted. There was a loss of 0.4 million RM, which corresponded to sales for the same year. Baur was able to start the mail-order business again in 1948 after he had received approval from the military government and was considered to be "exonerated". The first catalog was printed in 1949 and sales of DM 5 million were achieved. The company's innovation in these years was the “guaranteed right of return”.

In the same year, the Baur couple signed a joint will to ensure the continued existence of the company. The Friedrich Baur Foundation was set up in 1953 with the same goal, to which the company shares should be transferred after the death of the shareholders. The aim of the foundation was to preserve the life's work “forever”. According to the statutes, 80% of the foundation's income should go to the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, for research into neuromuscular diseases and 10% to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. As part of the foundation's activities, the Friedrich Baur Institute at LMU was opened in 1955 for research into spinal polio and has since been expanded and renovated several times; Since 2008, part of the LMU funds have also been used to fund research at the Chair of Biomaterials at the University of Bayreuth. For this patronage, Rheinische Merkur celebrated Baur on December 11, 1953 as a “German Nobel”. Until Kathi Baur's death, the foundation saw additional payments of 9.2 million DM.

In 1953, Baur brought Anton Sattler into the company, himself childless. He had studied law in Vienna and Prague and obtained his doctorate in political science in Innsbruck in 1927, and gained extensive experience in management positions in various industries. Baur appointed Sattler, who, according to the Baur siblings' biographer, had "a pronounced instinct for economic developments", as his successor in 1964. According to the agreement, Sattler held the office until Kathi Baur's death; on December 31, 1985, he moved to the supervisory board.

Baur's mail order company lives on today in Baur Versand GmbH & Co. KG, which was dominated by its former competitor, the Otto Group , which was founded in 1949 . Economic development has stagnated since the mid-1980s at the latest, with the management following Sattler being said to have too few ideas and too little courage, especially in the reunification process, which not only interrupted the prosperous development, but reversed it. The executive committee of the Baur Foundation did not formally do justice to Baur's idea of ​​"never letting foreign capital interests dominate the company and thereby suppressing customer service in favor of inadequate profit-making" through the partial sale to the Otto Group. Informed circles claim that the Baur company saw the feared migration of customers and know-how to Otto mail order with the partial sale. On the other hand, it is said that 2,100 jobs were at risk at Baur.

Further commitment

In 1922 Baur joined the Kulmbach Freemason Lodge "Friedrich zur Frankentreue", which developed into the center of the intellectual life of the city of Kulmbach. Baur became master of the lodge in 1932 , but decided in the years after the re-establishment in 1947 to leave in order to avoid the conflict with the Catholic official church.

The Baur couple supported their local poet friend Kuni Tremel-Eggert in her denazification process. In 1947 they put on oath for the record, u. a .: "We believe with a clear conscience that we can vouch for their public and political harmlessness."

Private

In 1934 Baur married Kathi Schuh, who had suffered from poliomyelitis (spinal paralysis) since 1919 , and who had been to his fiancée and business partner since the 1920s. The couple lived with Kathi's sister, the unmarried Kunigunde who was closely related to her sister. Baur lived frugally; B. by having no objection to making coffee with the immersion heater again. He maintained close contacts with his employees and ensured good, above-standard pay. Baur was a passionate hunter. In an anonymous letter dated June 7, 1963, the couple was blackmailed into paying DM 0.5 million. The money was not paid and the perpetrator was not caught.

death

Friedrich Baur died on October 30, 1965 in Kulmbach. He had been hospitalized there since June 1962. On November 3rd, he was buried in Burgkunstadt with great sympathy from the workforce, the public and representatives from politics, business, church and culture. The funeral procession was described by contemporaries with a “solemn procession” and a “statesman”.

Awards

In 1953, Baur was awarded an honorary doctorate by the LMU medical faculty. In 1960, Federal President Lübke gave Baur the large Cross of Merit with a star and shoulder ribbon.

Baur was also an honorary citizen of Burgkunstadt and Altenkunstadt, honorary senator of the University of Munich, holder of the Bavarian Order of Merit. In Burgkunstadt and Altenkunstadt streets were named after him, but also his wife.

Charitable commitment at home

The Baur couple saw themselves as socially responsible entrepreneurs who wanted to create secure, cross-generational jobs for many people. With a view to the social prerequisites for the further economic development of the company, Baur significantly promoted the construction of social, but also cultural and church infrastructure in Burgkunstadt. In 1952 54 apartments were built in what would later become the "Dr. Friedrich Baur Estate". In 1954 the new Theresien children's home was completed. In 1956 the renovation of the parish church was completed. In 1957 the newly built Catholic youth home was inaugurated. In 1958 the extensive renovation of the Five Wound Chapel was completed. In 1964 - while Baur was still alive - the groundbreaking ceremony for the Kathi-Baur retirement home “St. Heinrich". In addition, the construction of municipal sports facilities including an indoor swimming pool and the renovation of the church in Kirchlein were financed. A total of around DM 37 million was donated between 1953 and 1984.

In 2002 the Friedrich-Baur senior center "St. Kunigund" was opened in Altenkunstadt and expanded in 2010. In contrast to the Kathi-Baur-Altenheim Burgkunstadt, the Baur company remained the owner in the form of a foundation and leased it (with the intention of making a profit) to the home operator Caritas. In 2013 the area was supplemented by the "Living in the home" old people's center.

The execution phase

In the joint will of 1957, Baur and his wife made "down to the last detail" dispositions. With a view to the foundation, among other things, the executors to be appointed in the event of their own death should also become members of the foundation's board of trustees. The foundation itself was to be headed by a six-person board of trustees, from 1960 onwards by seven people, including the Bavarian Prime Minister. Provisions were also made for conflicts of interest among politically active persons: They should work on a voluntary basis if they were unable to take any fees due to their office. The executors should each be remunerated with 0.25 per thousand of the annual turnover. Due to the extremely positive sales development, Kathi Baur corrected the remuneration in her will in 1977 to 60,000 DM per executor and thus limited it. After the death of Kathi Baur in 1984, the executors, including the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss and the CEO of Daimler-Benz Joachim Zahn , became members of the foundation's board of trustees as planned. The foundation's headquarters were relocated to Munich, with the administrative functions of the foundation being taken over by a specially established company based in Munich. The will of Kathi Baur was checked and deemed not legally effective, "because a jointly closed will cannot be unilaterally changed". So the work of the executor was remunerated with the originally planned, significantly higher amount. Since the difference was several million DM, the legacy of the childless entrepreneur Friedrich Baur after the resignation of Prime Minister Max Streibl in 1993 was also the subject of the investigative committee in the Bavarian state parliament in the so-called Amigo affair . Only Streibl's successor, Edmund Stoiber , waived the 300,000 DM annually, according to a report by the magazine “Stern”. Of the three other executors besides the Bavarian Prime Minister (Prof. Dr. Joachim Zahn, Christian Schnicke / KPMG , Günter Kadner) is one no known waiver. The initiative of Baur's nephew Dr. Wolf Stripeeder for the final legal clarification of Kathi Baur's will was not taken up by the executors in 1994. The execution of the will ended on October 31, 1995.

Quotes from Friedrich Baur, judgments about Friedrich Baur

"People should always be the focus of thought and action."

"Yes, Mr. Otto, earning money is not difficult, but investing money is a headache."

"Friedrich Baur was an impressive entrepreneur with an attitude and a code of honor that is seldom encountered."

- [Werner Otto (entrepreneur)]

“Baur had a special principle: when he bought goods, he didn't lower the purchase price, but aimed for a special quality. [...] His strength was never to disappoint the customer. "

- [Werner Otto (entrepreneur)]

Movie

In 2019 a film portrait of Friedrich Baur was made with the title "A life full of life: Friedrich Baur - A German Macher" Aspects of the written Baur biography are compiled in multimedia and with aerial photographs of today's Baur operating facilities, (a few) moving images of Friedrich Baur and Contemporary witness statements added. The documentation, for which the Otto Group's press spokesman is editorially responsible, was criticized for idealizing the role of the Baur company in the Otto group, the problematic execution of wills and the loss of added value at Baur due to the expansion of precarious employment relationships.

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Winkler, p. 123
  2. ↑ Winkler, p. 115
  3. ↑ Czapla, p. 19 f.
  4. ↑ Czapla, p. 25 f.
  5. ↑ Czapla, p. 26 ff.
  6. ↑ Czapla, p. 70; Winkler, p. 116
  7. ↑ Czapla, p. 109
  8. ↑ Czapla, p. 112
  9. ↑ Czapla, p. 239
  10. ↑ [Streifender, p. 39]
  11. ↑ Winkler, p. 120
  12. ↑ Winkler, p. 123
  13. ↑ Sattler had received his doctorate in political science at the University of Innsbruck in December 1927 (subject: "The Elbe and its shipping"). The z. The archives of the German University in Prague, for example, do not confirm Sattler's further doctorate “one year later in Prague” mentioned in the files of the Bavarian Order of Merit or in the archives of the city of Burgkunstadt: they only record earlier enrollment in Vienna and the first state examination passed in 1926 in law and political science; Since 1927, however, no enrollment Sattler is more documented ( https://is.cuni.cz/webapps/archiv/public/person/se/1121778722116235/?_______MG___search_name=Anton+Sattler&_______MG___search_birth_date=1904&_______MG___search_birth_place=&_______MG___search_faculty=&_______MG___search_year_from=&_______MG___search_year_to=&lang=en&PSarcPublicPersonSearchList = 10 & SOarcPublicPersonSearchList = 0order_prijmeni% 7C0order_jmeno & _sessionId = 896461 & __ binding = 1 & _______ BG ___ OK = Search & search_name = Anton + Sattler & search_birth_place = & search_faculty = ) At the time, the German University of Prague existed parallel to Charles University in Prague.
  14. ↑ Czapla, p. 287
  15. ↑ Czapla, p. 322
  16. ↑ Czapla, p. 322
  17. ↑ Winkler, p. 120
  18. ↑ Czapla p. 329 f
  19. ↑ streifeder, p. 30 f.
  20. ↑ Winkler p. 124
  21. ↑ Czapla, pp. 53-58
  22. ↑ Czapla, p. 248
  23. ↑ Czapla, p. 182
  24. ↑ Czapla, p. 182 ff .; Czapla also conjectures - without publishing sources - about Baur's intimate private life, including the thesis of illegitimate children. (see Czapla, p. 187)
  25. ↑ Czapla, p. 311
  26. ↑ Czapla, p. 304
  27. ↑ Czapla p. 307
  28. ↑ Winkler, p. 121
  29. ↑ Winkler, p. 118 f.
  30. ↑ Winkler, pp. 119 and 123
  31. ↑ cf. also Winkler, p. 125
  32. ↑ Winkler, p. 120
  33. ↑ streifeder, p. 16 f.
  34. ↑ Winkler p. 124; Quote from Czapla, p. 275
  35. ↑ Stripeseder, p. 25
  36. Jump up stripeseder, pp. 17-22 ("Chapter III. The disregard of the will of Kathi Baur")
  37. ^ Stripeseder, p. 22
  38. ↑ Winkler p. 124
  39. ↑ Czapla, p. 329
  40. ↑ The statement comes from 1959, cf. Otto, p. 87
  41. ↑ The statement comes from 1982, cf. Otto, p. 86
  42. ↑ The statement comes from 1982, cf. Otto, p. 86
  43. ↑ Editing: Hatzold / Ströhl / Klein / Gawlas, Production: Langer / Häggberg, 45 minutes, 2019
  44. ↑ Herrmann, G., Das Wirtschaftswunder am Obermain, Obermain-Tagblatt, September 21, 2019
  45. ↑ Mayer, T. Comment: Das Wirtschaftswunder, Obermain-Tagblatt, September 22, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Baur, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Stadtsteinach
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1965
Place of death Kulmbach