Heinrich Weiss (entrepreneur)

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Heinrich "Heiner" Weiss (born June 5, 1942 in Berlin ) is a German entrepreneur and manager. He is the main shareholder and chairman of the shareholders' committee of the industrial group SMS group.

He was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SMS group Düsseldorf until May 3, 2017 and President of the Federation of German Industries from 1991 to 1992 .

Life

Heinrich Weiss was born on June 5, 1942 in Berlin and grew up in Hilchenbach , Siegen district. He attended the Fürst-Johann-Moritz-Gymnasium in Weidenau , studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Munich and graduated in 1968 as a qualified engineer. At the age of 26, his father ordered him to head one of the family company's subsidiaries, Siemag Transplan GmbH, and successfully restructured it. In 1971 he became CEO of Siemag.

Weiss regularly took part in endurance races at the Nürburgring in the 1980s and competed in the DTM 21 times . He has a jet pilot's license and often flies to business meetings himself.

He is a member of the Corps Frisia Braunschweig and the Corps Saxo-Thuringia Munich.

Weiss is divorced and has a son.

Activity in business

Weiss' great-grandfather Carl Eberhard Weiss founded a forge in Siegen in 1871 . In the years that followed, this developed into a group of companies called Siemag (Siegener Maschinenbau AG). From 1942 it was run by Weiss' father Bernhard Weiss , who was convicted in the Nuremberg war crimes trials for his work for the Flick concern. After the death of his father in 1973 and the merger of Schloemann AG with Siemag, Heinrich Weiss moved to the top of the company as CEO in 1974 and built up the SMS group.

He completed major projects in China as early as the early 1970s and is considered the pioneer of German-Chinese economic cooperation. At the end of the 90s, his company merged with Mannesmann Demag Metallurgie to form SMS group, which is now the largest group of companies in the metallurgical and steel plant construction sector in the world.

Posts and honors

In 1982 Heinrich Weiss became chairman of the China working group of German business. On January 1, 1991, he succeeded Tyll Necker as chairman of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), but resigned on August 26, 1992 following quarrels on the board. He then took over the chairmanship of the Foreign Trade Advisory Council at the Federal Minister of Economics. He was also a member of the board of directors of the Eastern Committee of German Business . Weiss was a member of the Presidium of the German Society for Foreign Policy for a long time .

He was a member of numerous supervisory boards of large corporations, including Deutsche Bahn AG , Commerzbank AG , Hochtief AG , Bertelsmann AG , Bombardier Inc. and Voith AG .

In 2001 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by RWTH Aachen University . In June 2013 he received the Russian Order of Honor .

Political commitment

Weiss was a member of the CDU and from 1983 to 1988 Federal Chairman of the CDU Economic Council . He later resigned from the CDU because of doubts about the party's economic competence. In 2014 he described the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as “the only true opposition party in terms of economic and financial policy”, but it had to separate from the right-wing populists in its ranks. In the same year he said that he was not a member of the AfD, but supported the party ideally and financially. In November 2015, he again distanced himself from the AfD.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the anniversary, the old princes come to www.derwesten.de on April 6, 2014, accessed on June 3, 2014
  2. ^ Corporate blacksmith from Siegerland , portrait of Heinrich Weiss on his 65th birthday, Welt online, May 26, 2007
  3. ↑ Embarrassing idea . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1992, pp. 135 ( online ).
  4. ^ Website Edelstahl aktuell from May 3, 2013
  5. ↑ a b Joachim Jahn, Julia Löhr, Werner Sturbeck: The first entrepreneurs are approaching the AfD. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . October 15, 2014, accessed February 4, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Heinrich Weiss in an interview: The AfD is the only true opposition party. In: RP Online . October 9, 2014, accessed February 4, 2015 .
  7. ↑ AfD vies for the favor of the economy. In: n-tv . 15th October 2014 .;
  8. ↑ "I am putting my hopes in the FDP again" rp-online.de, November 4, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Weiss, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weiss, Heiner (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German family entrepreneur and manager
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin