Georg Gries

Georg Gries (* 1900 in Bremen ; † December 1977 in Crete ) was a German businessman and long-time director of Martinshof in Bremen.

biography

Gries was the second of nine children of a businessman. He learned the trade of a businessman in the tobacco wholesale trade. He lived temporarily in the Neustadt district of Bremen . After the First World War , he worked for a short time in a bank. In 1920 he was back in the tobacco industry. He then became secretary to the writer Wilhelm Uhde and worked in Berlin and Dresden. In 1925 he joined his father's company, completed an apprenticeship as a painter and then ran the business until 1945. He rebuilt the company after the Second World War and was guild master of the Bremen Chamber of Crafts . In addition, worked as an employee for the Senator for the welfare system.

In 1947 Gries gave up his business and was now the driving force behind the establishment of a workshop for the disabled. In 1949 he took over the management of the workshop. At the beginning of the 1950s, there were seven different workshops with 93 places, a central kitchen and a home with 50 beds on Buntentorsteinweg . Gries shaped the objectives of the joint facility, which was then founded in 1953, as a contemporary care concept with educational and socio-psychological care for disabled people in a friendly atmosphere. He suggested the new name Martinshof as a memory of St. Martin (around 316/317 to 397). This should symbolize the new beginning in terms of content.

Gries managed to win Bremen companies as clients for the facility and later also several industrial companies such as AEG and Nordmende . New fields of activity were added. A carpentry workshop was created, producing high quality toys and furniture.
In 1960 he was a co-founder of the Lebenshilfe for the mentally handicapped child (today the Bundesvereinigung Lebenshilfe ) and managing director of the facility in Bremen. 1961 suggested an overall plan for mentally handicapped people in the state of Bremen , which was drawn up under the welfare senator Annemarie Mevissen ( SPD ). In 1961 the Martinshof became a department in the social welfare authority and was no longer directly subordinate to the welfare senator; a development that Gries disagreed with.

In 1962 there were 27 salaried employees, 56 workers, 85 interns and 45 apprentices in the workshops. In 1964 there were 180 mentally handicapped people between the ages of 15 and 25 and 104 residents in the Martinshof. The Martinshof was the largest such facility in northern Germany.

Gries worked as a leader until October 1965; his successor was Hans Menning. Today the Martinshof is the centerpiece of the Bremen workshop , owned by Bremen since 1993 .

The Gries had a fatal accident on Crete in 1977.

Honors

• 1977: Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class
• The Georg-Gries Street in Bremen- Hemelingen , a side road at the Ludwig-Roselius-Allee , was named after him.

swell

• Wilfried Hautop, Lydia Niehoff : The Bremen Martinshof . Hauschild, Bremen 2004, ISBN 3-89757-186-2 .
• Weser-Kurier : work, participation and integration. A new chapter in social history in Bremen began in 1953 with the Martinshof . In: Special supplement of the WK Links der Weser , Bremen 2016.
• Monika Porsch: Bremer Straßenlexikon, complete edition. Schünemann, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-7961-1850-X .