Herbert Steffen

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Herbert Steffen (born October 18, 1934 in Mastershausen im Hunsrück ) is the founder and chairman of the Giordano Bruno Foundation (gbs) and a former furniture manufacturer.

Life

From 1947 to 1957 Steffen attended the bishop's boarding school Albertinum in Gerolstein in the Eifel for nine years . Despite registering for the seminary, he decided to study business administration at the University of Cologne , which he completed with a degree in business administration.

In 1969 he took over the management of the Steffen Möbel company in Mastershausen, specializing in bedroom furniture . In 1973 he introduced the company profit-sharing scheme for employees. In 1990 the company went public with Steffen AG. At its peak, the Steffen Group had 2000 employees. For several years, Steffen was chairman of the Association of the Wood and Plastic Processing Industry in Rhineland-Palatinate and a member of various committees of the Association of the German Furniture Industry and the Cologne Trade Fair's Advisory Board . From 1985 to 1986 he was a member of the board of directors of the Foundation for Academic Business Management . At the end of the 1990s, Steffen left Steffen AG. It was taken over in 2009 by Rauch Möbelwerke with the Mastershausen production site.

He is married to Ingrid Steffen-Binot and has grown-up children.

Social Commitment

Herbert Steffen is a former member of the Diocesan Council of the Diocese of Trier . He left the church in the mid-1980s. In the course of the discovery of the Catholic abuse system , Steffen commented on the conditions in the Albertinum boarding school of the Trier diocese, supported criminal charges against sexual offenders of the Church throughout Germany , promoted legal proceedings for victims of abuse and provided support for claims for damages and clarification. The Focus wrote that Steffen has moved as far away from the Catholic Church as it seems possible. When he left the church, he said in retrospect that his life had improved enormously in quality since he had "thrown this soul ballast of sin, guilt and punishment overboard". He actually only became a person when he realized that "my conflict situation had been artificially conjured up by the church. That suddenly set me free."

After discovering Karlheinz Deschner's work, which was critical of the church , he became involved as his patron . Since the fourth volume, published in 1994, Deschner has thanked him for his "selfless assistance" in each of the subsequent volumes of the ten-volume criminal history of Christianity . Steffen described his collaboration with Deschner as follows: "We think together about what he can delegate so that we can concentrate fully on the creative side. What I can do, what he lets me do to make his big job as easier as possible , I do." In addition, Steffen appears philanthropically for a wide range of humanistic and secular-oriented people and organizations.

In 2004 he and Michael Schmidt-Salomon founded the evolutionary-humanistic Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung (gbs) as a "think tank for humanism and enlightenment" - initially based in Mastershausen, from 2011 in the Weitblick house in Oberwesel . Steffen said of the motivation for his commitment:

"It's not enough to just criticize what's going wrong, you have to show how it could go better."

In the following years he supported and accompanied the founding of the research group Weltanschauungen in Germany (fowid), the Humanist Press Service (hpd), the Central Council of Ex-Muslims , the Institute for Weltanschauungsrecht (ifw), the secular refugee aid and Hans Albert Institute (HAI).

Varia

In 2007, Der Spiegel described Herbert Steffen's house as the "headquarters of the German infidels".

In 2014 he said in the magazine on this side: "The strength that I used to invest in my love for the God of the Bible, I now invest in people."

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christian Altmayer: Crime: Crime Scene Albertinum: More cases, more victims. Volksfreund Trier, 2018, accessed on May 18, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Hermann Gieselbusch: The joys of the Enlightenment. (Interview) Interview with the German entrepreneur Herbert Steffen. In: Karlheinz Deschner. Life, works, response. Herrmann Gieselbusch, 1994, accessed on October 18, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Möbelwerke_Mastershausen. Retrieved May 18, 2020 .
  4. ^ Chronicle: Preparation team. weltanschauungsrecht.de, 2017, accessed on May 18, 2020 .
  5. ↑ "Finally ensure transparency and fairness!" giordano-bruno-stiftung.de, March 13, 2020, accessed on May 18, 2020 .
  6. ^ Image from left: Herbert Steffen, Christian Pfeiffer, Jacqueline Neumann, Michael Schmidt-Salomon. https://www.giordano-bruno-stiftung.de/ , 2020, accessed on May 18, 2020 .
  7. ↑ FOCUS Online: Gerolstein: Abuse in the Albertinum boarding school: More cases, more victims. September 26, 2018, accessed May 18, 2020 .
  8. ^ Enlightenment in the 21st century: Herbert Steffen (1934). Retrieved May 18, 2020 .
  9. ^ Frank Nicolai: For Herbert Steffen's 80th birthday. hpd, October 18, 2014, accessed May 18, 2020 .
  10. ↑ The Joys of Enlightenment. Interview with the German entrepreneur Herbert Steffen. In: Gieselbusch, Herrmann (ed.): Karlheinz Deschner. Life, works, response . Rowohlt-Verlag, Reinbek 1994; Pp. 20-27.
  11. ↑ New headquarters in Oberwesel. giordano-bruno-stiftung.de, 2011, accessed on May 18, 2020 .
  12. ↑ bruno. The annual magazine of the Giordano Bruno Foundation 2019 ( PDF; 7.8 MB ), p. 14.
  13. ↑ Ansbert Kneip: “No prayers!” In: DER SPIEGEL 22/2007. May 26, 2007, accessed May 18, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Arik Platzek: The heart of evolutionary humanism. In: This side. HVD, 2014, accessed May 18, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Steffen, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur and patron
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Mastershausen