IHK Frankfurt am Main

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The IHK Frankfurt am Main is the Chamber of Industry and Commerce for Frankfurt am Main and the districts of Hochtaunuskreis and Main-Taunus-Kreis . It currently has around 111,000 member companies. It was founded in 1808 and is the third largest Chamber of Commerce in Germany due to the economic strength of its members.

Seat

Boerse Frankfurt front.JPG

The Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce and Industry is based in the Börsenplatz  4 building, which is also where the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is located. A branch of the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce is located in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe .

organization

The IHK's fields of activity are broad and range from advising public administration and legislative bodies to preparing expert reports for the courts, from being responsible for commercial and industrial vocational training and continuing education to individual company support. The IHK Frankfurt am Main is a lobby group and opinion leader in all economic and economic policy issues within its district. The sustainable promotion of the economy is one of its most important goals. Furthermore, the IHK Frankfurt is the information and communication center for the entire region and advises individual companies on financing and relocation issues.

Ulrich Caspar was elected President on May 9, 2019, replacing Mathias Müller , who had headed the Chamber since April 22, 2009. He represents the Chamber of Industry and Commerce together with the general manager and chairs the meetings of the presidium and the general assembly.

In addition to the President, the Presidium consists of up to nine Vice-Presidents. It determines the focus of work and prepares the decisions of the plenary meeting.

The plenary assembly is the highest body of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce and consists of 89 honorary members who are all representatives of a company. The general assembly elects the president and the presidium and votes on important decisions. The turnout in the elections for the General Assembly in 2014 was below 10%. After the elections, a five-member electoral committee publishes the elected candidates.

The election is made separately in 12 electoral groups. An electoral group committee determines which sectors belong to an electoral group and how many seats the group is entitled to before the election. The outgoing general assembly votes on the proposal.

Criteria for the size of the electoral group are the number of employees and premium income. Each member company has one vote to elect the general assembly.

Various specialist committees carry out tasks; the members of the committees are elected by the general assembly.

Hochheim am Main does not belong to the IHK Frankfurt am Main, but to the IHK Wiesbaden.

Business areas

The content-related work of the IHK Frankfurt is divided into seven business areas:

  1. Location policy
  2. Economic Policy and Metropolitan Development
  3. Financial center | Business Promotion | Jump start
  4. Initial and continuing education
  5. Innovation and the environment
  6. International
  7. Law and taxes

With the family atlas compiled by the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a comparative analysis of the family friendliness in the cities and municipalities of the Rhine-Main area was created.

Business figures

The IHK Frankfurt has an income of around 32 million euros, of which a good 23 million euros come from contributions from member companies. The contribution rate for the member companies is 0.11 percent of the trade income. The General Assembly decides on the respectively valid economic statutes. Around 220 employees work full-time for the Frankfurt am Main Chamber of Commerce. The IHK looks after around 14,000 training positions (2014).

history

The history of the IHK Frankfurt is eventful and embedded in the general social and political upheavals. Some tasks and topics have accompanied the history of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce over the centuries, such as the commitment to more entrepreneurial freedom and better traffic routes. The models of the honorable businessman and the democratic self-government of the economy were always important. The history of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce also brought change: more and new tasks, increasing professionalism and many changes in the expansion of the chamber district.

The Frankfurt am Main Chamber of Commerce was founded on April 27, 1808 based on the French model by a decree of the Prince-Primate Carl Theodor von Dalberg based on a request from the Frankfurt merchants of April 25, 1808.

Von Dalberg appointed the princely general commissioner, Count von Beust, as the first president . However, the chamber rejected this personnel decision and decided at its constituent meeting on May 23, 1808 that the chair should be held by the longest-serving member. In accordance with this seniority principle, stock exchange manager Johann Gerhard Hofmann became the first president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In the following two centuries it was often the bankers who headed the IHK in the banking city of Frankfurt. Well-known names were, for example, Michael Friedrich Hauck (1822–1829) and Otto Hauck (1921–1933) (owner of Hauck & Aufhäuser ).

time of the nationalsocialism

After coming to power of the Nazis and the Chambers of Commerce were brought into line . The IHK Frankfurt was initially aloof from the National Socialist ideology. The völkisch ideas of self-sufficiency did not meet with understanding in the trading metropolis, nor were anti-Semitic ideas represented by the majority of traders. Banking in particular, but also trade in Frankfurt, were shaped by Jewish business people. Otto Hauck signed an appeal against anti-Semitism in the early 1930s. On April 1, 1933, the National Socialists called for a boycott of Jewish shops. On this very day, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry invited Jewish merchants to jointly take action against anti-Semitic riots. This meeting was dissolved by the SS .

On March 31, 1933 Otto Hauck resigned with the entire presidium. This resignation was due on the one hand to pressure from the Nazis, on the other hand it represented a protest against the actions of the SS. The latter had blown up the session of the general assembly and arrested 35 members.

Otto Hauck was replaced by officials appointed by the NSDAP . Until 1943, Carl Lüer held the position of President for the NSDAP. Lüer was not an ideologist, but a pragmatist. Even under the conditions of the new regime, he managed to secure a residual degree of independence for the IHK. However, the Frankfurt economy had to accept a bloodletting , especially due to the " Aryanization ". The number of banks fell from 182 to 119. The retail trade (for example the Wronker department store ) was largely “ free of Jews ”.

In 1943 the IHK was dissolved and transferred together with the Chamber of Crafts to the " Gauwirtschaftskammer Rhein-Main ", headed by Hermann Gamer .

Federal Republic of Germany

After the war, the tradition of self-organization of the economy, which was broken off in 1933, was resumed. On January 10, 1946, the state government formally decreed the abolition of the Gau economic chambers in Hesse and the restoration of the law of 1933. The minister of economics and transport was to oversee the chambers . These regulations met with the contradiction of the American occupying power: They saw the public law position of the chambers as an important instrument for steering the economy during the National Socialist era . In implementing the American demands, the state government therefore decreed the performance of public law tasks in May 1946 and ordered the chambers to continue as private law associations without compulsory membership. The final regulations for the Chamber, its competencies and its election were laid down in a circular of December 5, 1946. The consequence of the discontinuation of compulsory membership was the withdrawal of a larger number of small businesses. The larger chambers lost up to 50% of the members, the smaller between seven and fifteen percent.

With the occupation statute in 1949, the Federal Republic regained a good part of its sovereignty. Apart from Bavaria and Hesse, the states of the American occupation zone now returned to the model of public chambers (in the British and French zones this was the case immediately after the war). The SPD -governed Hessen had completely different plans: According to the government's will, the IHKs were to be dissolved and replaced by chambers of commerce. These should be filled equally by employers and employees. The employer representatives should be nominated by the trade associations and the employee representatives by the trade unions. However, these plans were not implemented because a nationwide regulation was made instead.

With the entry into force of the " Act on the Provisional Regulation of the Law of Chambers of Commerce and Industry " on December 22, 1956, the chambers are once again incorporated into public law corporations. The advisory board of a chamber is now called the "plenary assembly".

From 1945 to 1950, Alfred Petersen from the metal company carried out development work. In the 80s, Hans Messer ( Messer Griesheim ) headed the IHK (1980–1991).

Since 2007, the work of the IHK has increasingly been determined by conflicts. At the end of December 2006 an anonymous letter was received by the Hessian Ministry of Economics as the legal supervisor of the Chamber of Commerce. This questioned the eligibility of the then IHK President Joachim von Harbou and four of his deputies. In mid-January 2007 the Frankfurter Rundschau published a corresponding article. In the IHK presidium, there were then different views on how to proceed. As a result of these disputes, President Joachim von Harbou announced in April 2007 that he would resign at the next General Assembly on June 27, 2007. He was followed by Hans-Joachim Tonnellier, CEO of Frankfurter Volksbank, who held the office until the end of the electoral term in April 2009 and who was no longer available for a further term. Mathias Müller, real estate consultant in Hofheim near Frankfurt, has been President since April 22, 2009. On May 9, 2019, Ulrich Caspar, entrepreneur, was elected President for the period of office from 2019 to 2024.

Branch offices

bad Homburg

Branch office in Bad Homburg

In 1945 the American military government set up a branch of the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce for the Obertaunus district in Oberursel (Taunus) , which was later relocated to Bad Homburg. The Bad Homburg branch of the IHK is now located at Ludwigstrasse 10 in Bad Homburg, previously the branch was at Louisenstrasse 105 (see photo).

Personalities

Seniors, chairmen or presidents of the Chamber

  • Samuel Friedrich Osterrieth

  • Carl Lüer

  • Wolf Klinz

  • Ulrich Caspar

Other

literature

  • Werner Plumpe , Dieter Rebentisch: The pile of the local plot. 200 years IHK Frankfurt. Frankfurt am Main 2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IHK Frankfurt am Main: IHK district Frankfurt in figures (PDF; 1.7 MB; 12 pages), p. 2, accessed on May 6, 2019.
  2. ↑ IHK Frankfurt am Main: IHK - explained in a few sentences. IHK Frankfurt am Main, accessed on May 8, 2019 .
  3. ↑ frankfurt-main.ihk.de
  4. ↑ Voter participation in the “full” meetings of the 80 chambers of industry and commerce ( Memento from January 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ^ IHK Frankfurt am Main: Business areas of the IHK Frankfurt am Main. IHK Frankfurt am Main, accessed on May 9, 2019 .
  6. ↑ IHK Frankfurt am Main: Business report of the IHK Frankfurt am Main. (PDF) IHK Frankfurt am Main, accessed on May 8, 2019 .
  7. ↑ IHK Frankfurt am Main: IHK figures .
  8. ^ IHK Frankfurt am Main: Economic statutes of the IHK Frankfurt am Main. IHK Frankfurt am Main, accessed on May 8, 2019 .
  9. ↑ IHK Frankfurt am Main: IHK Frankfurt introduces itself
  10. ↑ frankfurt-main.ihk.de: Annual Report 2014 (PDF; 18.3 MB; 100 pages), p. 3, accessed on April 6, 2019.
  11. ^ IHK Frankfurt am Main: History of the IHK Frankfurt am Main. IHK Frankfurt am Main, accessed on May 8, 2019 .
  12. ↑ HWA Abt. 9, No. 56; Greater Hesse State Ministry to the Chambers of Industry, Commerce and Crafts of the State of Greater Hesse, January 10, 1946
  13. ↑ HWA Abt. 9, No. 56; Circular decree of the Greater Hesse State Ministry to the Chambers of Commerce and Industry of the State of Hesse, May 9, 1946
  14. ↑ HWA Abt. 9, Nr. 37; Circular decree of the Greater Hesse State Ministry on the reorganization of the Hesse Chamber of Commerce and Industry, December 5, 1946
  15. ↑ HWA Abt. 9, No. 58; Draft law on the formation of chambers of commerce (Chamber of Commerce Act) of July 18, 1951
  16. ↑ Ulrich Eisenbach: Between commercial interest representation and public law mandate; in: Helmut Berding (Ed.): 125 years of the Giessen Chamber of Commerce and Industry: Economy in one region. Hessian economic archive. Darmstadt 1997, ISBN 3-9804506-1-9 , pp. 5-43.
  17. ↑ Number 30 . In: FAZ . June 29, 2007, p. 57 .
  18. ^ Dispute settled - New President for IHK. In: hr-online.de. June 27, 2007, accessed June 29, 2007 .
  19. ↑ Barbara Dölemeyer et al .; Magistrat Bad Homburg in front of the height (ed.): History of the city of Bad Homburg in front of the height: Awakening, tradition, growth, 1948–1990, Volume 5 of the history of the city of Bad Homburg in front of the height: With the districts of Kirdorf, Gonzenheim, Dornholzhausen , Ober-Erlenbach and Ober-Eschbach, 2007, ISBN 978-3-7973-1048-4 , page 268
  20. ↑ frankfurt-main.ihk.de