Hans-Georg Karg

Hans-Georg Karg (born August 29, 1921 in Berlin; † June 25, 2003 in Ruhpolding ) was a German businessman, owner of Hertie Waren- und Kaufhaus GmbH. Together with his wife Adelheid Karg (1921–2004) he founded the non-profit Karg Foundation (Frankfurt am Main).

Youth and years of apprenticeship

At that time, his father Georg Karg (1888–1972) was a buyer at the Hermann Tietz department stores. In 1933 he joined the management of the department store group, which was in financial difficulties. The company was granted further loans from the house bank and the Reich Ministry of Economics only under the condition that the management was " Aryanized ", so that the Tietz family finally left the management and was forced to sell their shares. Georg Karg finally acquired the Hertie company from Dresdner Bank by 1942.

Hans-Georg Karg was born into a well-off middle-class family in Berlin-Charlottenburg. After completing school, he completed a commercial apprenticeship from 1938 to 1941 at the Paul Reetz textile company in Liegnitz, Lower Silesia. After completing his apprenticeship, he was initially a recruit in Potsdam. Hans-Georg Karg experienced the years 1943 and 1944 as well as the end of the war as a soldier in Italy. Like his father, he was not a member of the NSDAP or any other Nazi organization.

reconstruction

After the war, Georg and Hans-Georg Karg rebuilt the Hertie company. Most of the Hertie department stores were in eastern Germany and were expropriated, while those in western Germany were destroyed or only partially functional. In 1947 an agreement was reached with the Tietz family, who had fled to the USA and Switzerland, to whom shares in the department store group were transferred as part of a restitution, but which they sold to the Karg family in the 1950s. Hans-Georg Karg first opened and operated the Hertie-Haus in Munich, built up a network of suppliers and was able to successfully participate in the so-called German ' economic miracle ' immediately after the currency reform (June 1948) . The Hertie chain developed into one of the largest department store groups in West Germany, in 1955 there were already 25 department stores in the Federal Republic. In 1953, Hans-Georg Karg joined the management of Hertie Waren- und Kaufhaus GmbH, in 1961 he became the managing director of the entire Hertie group, which, after having worked in Hamburg and Berlin, has since finally resided in the centrally located Frankfurt am Main. In 1972, after the death of his father, Hans-Georg Karg succeeded his father in all leading positions.

Hans-Georg Karg's first wife Martha died in a car accident in 1949 when she was only 25 years old. On March 12, 1952, Hans-Georg Karg married Adelheid Sulovsky (1921-2004). The marriage remained childless.

Late years

The crisis in the department stores, which had persisted since the 1970s at the latest, and which only paused briefly during the years around German reunification, prompted Hans-Georg Karg in 1993 to sell the entire Hertie to competitor Karstadt. At that time it was a group with 100 department stores, 36,000 employees and 5 billion DM annual sales. Most of the proceeds went to the non-profit Hertie Foundation, Frankfurt am Main.

From then on, Hans-Georg lived with his wife in seclusion in Bad Homburg, but above all on Gut Sossau near Grabenstätt in Chiemgau . There he pursued his passion as a farmer . He also put together an important collection of Max Liebermann's works. Since 1989 the Karg couple have devoted themselves to building up the charitable Karg Foundation for the gifted, to which Hans-Georg Karg left all of his private fortune when he died. In 2003 the businessman and founder Hans-Georg Karg died after suffering from a serious illness for many years. Adelheid Karg died in 2004.

Web links

• Karg Foundation

source

All documents relating to Hans-Georg Karg's life are with the Karg Foundation in Frankfurt am Main.

Individual evidence

1. ^ "A brown band of sympathy" ( Memento from October 13, 2004 in the Internet Archive ), documentation, 45 min., Script and direction: Dagmar Christmann, Thomas Rautenberg, production: hr , first broadcast: March 5, 2004.