Gert Silber-Bonz

Gert Silber-Bonz (born June 8, 1930 in Reutlingen ) is a German entrepreneur .

Life

Gert Silber-Bonz was born in Reutlingen in 1930 as the son of the businessman Alfred Silber-Bonz and Marie Mathilde doctor. He is the grandson of Ludwig Arzt . After graduating from the Johannes-Kepler-Gymnasium in Reutlingen, he trained in the textile industry and at a private bank. After various stays abroad in South Africa and the USA, Gert Silber-Bonz worked in the doctor cloth factory in Michelstadt in the Odenwald in the 1950s . At that time the company had around 600 employees and was one of the largest companies in the Odenwald.

From around 1960 the situation in the German cloth industry deteriorated, from which the Doktor company also suffered. Compensation was provided by the start of the production of plastic products, primarily films for agriculture under the company name Polydress Plastic. In 1974, BP acquired a stake in the company, and cloth production was ended. In 1978, BP took over the company entirely.

Gert Silber-Bonz had already switched to Gummifabrik Veith AG in Sandbach in the Odenwald in 1958, which was majority owned by the Arzt / Silber-Bonz family. After the Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli joined Veith AG in 1963, Gert Silber-Bonz became chairman of the board. He held this position until his retirement in 1995, after which he was Chairman of the Supervisory Board until 2000.

During his professional activity, Gert Silber-Bonz was a member of numerous supervisory boards, including at Dura Tufting GmbH, Fulda (chairman), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH (deputy chairman), Haindl Papier GmbH, and Coca-Cola GmbH Switzerland. He was also a member of the advisory board of the Eduard Winter group of companies in Berlin.

In addition to his entrepreneurship, Gert Silber-Bonz was involved in local politics, in the Protestant Church and held numerous honorary positions. For twelve years he was parliamentary group leader of the CDU in the Michelstadt city parliament,

From 1981 to 1983 and 1989 to 1992 he was chairman of the trade association of the German rubber industry and from 1991 to 1995 president of the Darmstadt Chamber of Commerce . He was also a member of the Presidium of the Federation of German Industries . In addition, he was the spokesman for the working group of Protestant entrepreneurs in Hesse and a member of the presidium of the German Protestant Church Congress . For many years he was a member of the board of trustees of the FAZIT Foundation , the board of the Association of Friends of the TU Darmstadt and an appointed member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

Gert Silber-Bonz is married, has two grown children and lives in Michelstadt in the Odenwald.

Honors

• 1987: Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class
• 1990: Letter of Honor from the State of Hesse
• 1998: Commendatore al merito della Repubblica Italiana
• 2014: Crown cross in gold from Diakonie Deutschland
• 2020: Alfred Dregger Medal in silver from the CDU Hessen

literature

• Heinz-Otto Haag: About blue-makers and whitewashers. The doctor cloth factory in Michelstadt and its founding family. In: gelurt , 2014, ISSN  0947-4870 , pp. 161–167.
• 125 years of the Ph. Ludwig Arzt Michelstadt cloth factory in the Odenwald. Hoppenstedt, Darmstadt 1953, OCLC 313715694 .
• Ulrich Eisenbach (Ed.): From the beginnings of industrialization to the engineering region. 150 years IHK Darmstadt Rhein Neckar. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2012, ISBN 978-3-534-25504-7 .