Hans Kröner

Hans Gottfried Noël Kröner (born December 25, 1909 in Saint Helier , Jersey ; † June 27, 2006 in Munich ) was a German economist, lawyer and entrepreneur . Together with his wife Else Kröner , geb. Fernau, he headed the Fresenius company for many years, from which today's Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA emerged.

Childhood and youth

Hans Kröner was born on the island of Jersey as the son of the businessman Johann Thomas Kröner and his wife Anna Maria Anke. Shortly after Hans Kröner's birth, the young family moved to Munich, where he spent his childhood and youth. Hans Kröner attended elementary school and put in 1929 at the Wilhelm Gymnasium München the High School from.

Education and professional career before the war

In 1929 he began studying law at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . Two years later he also studied banking. On June 9, 1932, he passed the first state examination in law and, after completing his legal clerkship, worked at various courts and in administration.

Military service and imprisonment

Hans Kröner joined the NSDAP in 1933. He justified this step with the economic policy ideas of the party, its struggle against the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty and the National Socialist idea of ​​a national community . He did not hold any leading positions within the party and could not gain much from the party leadership, especially Adolf Hitler. In 1936 the sailing club, of which Hans Kröner was a member, joined the Navy SA, and so Hans Kröner was drafted into the Navy. In 1939 he was initially stationed on the North Sea coast, from 1942 as a department adjutant of a naval flak division on the island of Ré, near La Rochelle. There he was promoted to first lieutenant on July 1, 1943. In 1945, after the German surrender , Hans Kröner remained in French captivity for two years. On his return home, Hans Kröner discovered that the living conditions at home had fundamentally changed: his father had died during the air raids on Munich on July 13, 1944, and the family's house and all of the property had been destroyed. In addition, Hans Kröner lacked important professional experience due to the seven years of military service and imprisonment.

Professional background

After some initial difficulties succeeded Hans Kröner after the currency reform in 1948 a position in the Secretariat of the Munich-based Bankhaus Merck Finck & Co to obtain. At the same time, he worked from 1949 in Frankfurt for IG Farben in Liquidation as a consulting lawyer. From 1955 to 1960, Hans Kröner headed the board of directors at Farbwerke Hoechst AG. On January 1, 1961, he became a member of the board of the ceramics manufacturer AGROB in Ismaning near Munich, for which he was on the board until 1972. Kröner also worked for Chemische Werke Hüls AG in Marl . In the 1950s, Hans Kröner got to know the entrepreneur Else Fernau who, after the death of Eduard Fresenius, has been co-owner of the “Dr. Fresenius chemisch-pharmaceutical Industrie KG ”was. During this time, Kröner's advisory work began at the Fresenius company, which he mainly performed on the weekends. Else Fernau and Hans Kröner married in 1964.

Work at Fresenius

In 1972 Hans Kröner became managing director and spokesman for the management of Fresenius KG with equal rights. At this point in time, he had already driven important processes for the company: in the 1950s, he had advocated that the infusion solutions area should concentrate on business with hospitals. This was followed a decade later by the expansion of the medical technology division: Hans Kröner's attention was drawn to the increasing need for artificial kidneys through a newspaper article . At that time, the dialysis business was exclusively in US hands. Hans Kröner saw the need and reacted: Fresenius entered the dialysis business and finally brought its own devices onto the market. In the 1970s, he pushed the development of foreign business. From 1981 to 1992 Hans Kröner was Chairman of the Management Board of Fresenius AG, after which he became Honorary Chairman of the Supervisory Board and Chairman of the Administrative Board of the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Foundation .

In some cases, Hans Kröner used his business acumen to achieve sustainable humanitarian aid by strengthening the local economy. After the first successful cooperation with the city of Vršac in Serbia in the 1970s - Fresenius had provided the local company Hemofarm with the know-how for the production of infusion solutions and later founded a joint plant with it for the production of tube systems and dialyzers - , Kröner committed himself to extending aid to other countries such as the Soviet Union. In Borisov, Belarus, Fresenius founded the Frebor joint venture. A joint medical technology company was also founded in Kursk, Russia. In addition to the better sales channels that were created for Fresenius in Eastern Europe, it was particularly important to Hans Kröner to improve the medical infrastructure and give the many millions of dialysis patients access to modern medical technology. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union , there was a considerable shortage of medical devices and drugs, which Hans Kröner actively tried to counteract. For example, the company Fresenius SP was founded to support the newly established dialysis stations in several Eastern Bloc countries, which advises these stations and trains their employees.

In 1988 his wife Else, who held 95 percent of the company's voting capital, died. Hans Kröner renounced the inheritance and promoted the transfer to the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Foundation. Since 1995 Kröner has been chairman of the board of directors of the foundation based in Bad Homburg.

Honors

Hans Kröner has received many awards in the course of his life: in 1973 he and Else Kröner received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon . In 1987 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class. In 1988 the City of Oberursel received the Medal of Honor "for his long and meritorious work as an entrepreneur in the commercial sector". In 2000, Hans Kröner received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and an honorary senator from the Technical University of Munich . In 2004, the Bad Homburg vdH town badge of honor followed because of his “extraordinary services to Fresenius AG” and “the economic development of [the] town”. Also in 2004 the city of Munich awarded him the "Münchner Kindl". In June 2005, Hans Kröner was awarded the Order of Saint Sava first row in Belgrade , the highest honor of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Annual report on the Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Munich 1928/29.
2. ^ University archive Ludwig Maximilians University Munich: Student card index I.
3. ↑ State Archive Munich, SpkA K 969: Kröner, Hans.
4. ^ Kröner, Hans: "From yesterday for tomorrow", p. 26.
5. ↑ State Archive Munich, SpkA K 969: Kröner, Hans.
6. ^ "Hans Kröner 90 Years", in: FAZ, December 24, 1999.
7. ↑ Hans Kröner: Weg einer Unternehmens, 1992, pp. 30–32.
8. ↑ Honorary senator to Prof. Ernst Denert and Hans Kröner. Technical University of Munich, July 12, 2000, accessed on November 11, 2011 .