Hans Thierfelder (entrepreneur)

Hans Thierfelder (born March 4, 1913 in Auerbach (Erzgebirge) ; † January 23, 1987 in Westerland , Sylt ) was a German entrepreneur and textile manufacturer.

Education and family

Hans Thierfelder's parents were the architect and authorized signatory Paul Thierfelder (1884–1917) and the entrepreneur daughter Rosa Thierfelder born. Wieland (1886-1965). He spent his childhood in Auerbach. In 1917, the year of the war, his father succumbed to the serious wounds he sustained as an air combat officer. After his father's death, his grandfather August Robert Wieland and his uncle Max Wieland took care of his upbringing and training. After attending primary school in Auerbach, secondary school in Thum and secondary school in Klotzsche near Dresden, Thierfelder passed his Abitur at the grammar school in Neuchâtel (Switzerland). This was followed by training at the higher technical school for knitting and knitting in Chemnitz to become a textile engineer . He received his operational and commercial training in his grandfather's company in Auerbach. Thierfelder's grandfather was the founder and owner of "Feinstrumpf Großwerke A. Robert Wieland, Auerbach" - ARWA for short -, one of the largest German stocking factories of that time. After August Robert Wieland's death in 1940, Thierfelder's mother, Rosa Peters, widowed Thierfelder, née Wieland, took over the management of the company. Thierfelder was granted power of attorney as early as 1936 and appointed operator manager by his grandfather in 1937, but had no shares in the company himself. In 1941 he joined the NSDAP . From March 1, 1941 to July 31, 1944 he did his military service in the Navy . He ended his career with the rank of lieutenant in the reserve. In 1946 Hans Thierfelder married Ursula Thiess. She was the daughter of a master carpenter and came from Gumbinnen.

Cultural activity in the Nazi state

From 1937 to 1945 Hans Thierfelder appeared as a promoter of typical regional folk art in the Saxon Ore Mountains. In keeping with the National Socialist concept of people and customs, he supported z. For example, together with the entrepreneur Friedrich Emil Krauss, cultural workers from the Ore Mountains such as the musician Helmuth Stapff , the dialect poet Max Wenzel and the elementary school teacher Hellmuth Vogel.

Expropriation and a new beginning after 1946

Since the ARWA plant in Auerbach also produced for the armaments company AGO Flugzeugwerke GmbH Oschersleben from autumn 1943 , the company was expropriated by referendum on June 30, 1946. Thierfelder's attempts to remove ARWA from the list of companies to be expropriated failed. As early as the spring of 1946, Hans Thierfelder had left for West Berlin because he saw no future for himself in Auerbach. At this time there was a shortage of stockings in West Germany because the entire German stocking industry was located in Saxony. But there was also a lack of machines, because the stocking machine factories were all on the territory of the Soviet occupation zone . In this situation, Thierfelder, with the name ARWA, the reputation of his grandfather and the long-standing business relationships with customers all over the world, succeeded in making a clever business move within a few months: his former business partners paid ten percent of their orders in advance to get him into the situation to move to import old cotton machines from the USA. Little by little, Hans Thierfelder collected 2 million DM in this way and was able to use this money to import twelve machines and install them in a factory in Backnang, Württemberg . The first stockings could be produced at Pentecost 1949. At the same time he was looking for a site for a new factory and at the same time for the construction of a settlement for the employees. He found this with the help of the Württemberg state planning authority in Unterrot near Gaildorf . Production began there in autumn 1949. As early as 1952, the company had 1,450 employees and a market share of 20 percent.

Cultural and social benefits

Thierfelder attached importance to a good corporate policy towards its employees: Above-average wages were paid and company parties were held, at which well-known artists such as Margot Hielscher , Vico Torriani or Peter Frankenfeld performed. In Meersburg on Lake Constance, a holiday home was built, had in the company employees free stay. Furthermore there were u. a. Subsidies for housing, rental car, a kindergarten, a shop, a library, a company orchestra, a company health and a provident fund and a company doctor . As a result of the good economic situation, further plants were built in Berlin , Vienna and in Parys, South Africa . His work in Bischofswiesen was particularly well received in the 1950s. It was one of the most modern industrial buildings of that time. The glass factory, in which you could see how a stocking is made, became a magnet for visitors to this region. Thierfelder achieved a special coup in June 1951 with the election of a "leg queen". This involved the largest market analysis carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany to date in order to re-measure the legs of women after the Second World War and thus to give the stocking a better fit. With this data, Thierfelder again secured important market shares.

1958 strike

In June 1956 a development began in the hosiery industry that was to be fatal for many companies in this branch. The companies undercut each other in terms of prices and were thus forced to produce cheaper. Hans Thierfelder's company was also affected by this price war. As a result, the working conditions for his employees deteriorated enormously. Many skilled workers were made redundant and replaced by auxiliary staff in order to reduce operating costs. The wages above the collective bargaining agreement up to then were cut. This ultimately led to the strike of the ARWA employees from July 11, 1958. Thierfelder responded with the means of lockout , which gave him the opportunity to stop paying his workers for a short time during the economic downturn. However, the recession in the hosiery industry could no longer be stopped. As a result of mass imports, price wars and overcapacities, ARWA steadily lost market share from the beginning of the 1960s. In September 1973 Thierfelder had to bow to the competition and sell his stocking factories to the US company Hudson. After his retirement from the business world, Thierfelder lived most of the time in St. Moritz (Switzerland) or in Westerland on Sylt . Thierfelder profited from the upswing of the West German economy after the Second World War and is one of the most important economic pioneers in the Federal Republic of Germany. The ARWA brand became a symbol of the West German economic miracle and, due to its roots in the Ore Mountains knitting tradition, was considered a traditional company for a long time. Today street names in Gaildorf-Unterrot still remind of the former factory location.

Hans Thierfelder is buried in Berchtesgaden in the mountain cemetery. His wife Ursula Thierfelder died on August 26, 2000 in Bischofswiesen. She was buried at the side of her husband in Berchtesgaden.

swell

• C. Riess: You did it again. Berlin u. a. 1955.
• K. Wolf: Secrets of Success. Berlin / Düsseldorf 1957.
• Hans starts again . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1954, pp. 29-33 ( online ).
• Prices broken - West Germany's hosiery industry has got into trouble due to overproduction and price wars . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1971, p. 94-95 ( online ).
• H. König: People from the Limpurger Land. Horb am Neckar 1998.
• S. Schmidt: Ursula Thierfelder b. Thies from Gumbinnen. In: Gumbinner Heimatbrief , 109/2006, pp. 71–77.
• We from the stocking knitting factory , works magazine of the ARWA-Betriebsgemeinschaft A. Robert Wieland, Feinstrumpf-Großwerke, Chemnitz 1939–1945.
• Municipality of Auerbach / Erzgebirge (Ed.): Nodelzang 'un Maschenfang. Stollberg 2001.
• Falk Drechsel: Thierfelder, Hans . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
• Falk Drechsel: folk art between hosiery. In: Saxon State Office for Museums (ed.): Between Davos and Auerbach. Life and work of elementary school teacher Hellmuth Vogel. Dresden 2010.
• Falk Drechsel: A. Robert Wieland - for his 150th birthday. In: Bulletin of the municipality of Auerbach (Erzgebirge) , January 2012 ff.
• ARWA. In: The Great Herder. Freiburg 1962, p. 597.
• Falk Drechsel: "A lot of work, effort, worries ..." For the 150th birthday of ARWA founder August Robert Wieland from Auerbach in the Ore Mountains. In: Der Kocherbote, Rundschau for the Swabian Forest , edition of June 9, 2012, extra sheet, p. 11.
• Falk Drechsel, Heike Krause, Klaus Michael Oßwald: ARWA - the rise and fall of a stocking empire . Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 2014.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gesche Sager: The stuff dreams are made of. one day , October 20, 2008, accessed on December 27, 2016
2. ↑ INDUSTRY / STOCKINGS Hans starts again at DER SPIEGEL 10/1954