Karl Bucket

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3K truck with Karl Kübel (front right)

Karl Kübel (born September 6, 1909 in Duisburg , † February 10, 2006 in Wald-Michelbach ) was a German entrepreneur , philanthropist and founder . The Karl Kübel School in Bensheim , the Karl Kübel Foundation for Children and Family and the Karl Kübel Bridge in Worms are named after him. He was married to the educator and founder Mary Anne Kübel.

Life's work

At the age of 23, he founded a furniture fittings business in Worms before entering furniture production in 1936. The basis for this was an order to manufacture 1,000 desks, which Kübel was supposed to produce over the course of a year. In 1937 he stopped trading in joinery supplies and from then on traded under the company name Karl Kübel Worms (KKW) .

At that time there was the "Jewish furniture factory Lindheim in Kahl" in Lower Franconia. This factory, "which the Jewish owner had to sell under pressure from the National Socialists," came into the possession of Karl Kübel. In the same year, he turned it into 3K Möbelwerke .

After selling his factory, Hugo Lindheim was able to emigrate to Belgium with his wife Mathilde and daughter Laura and settled in Mechelen . There the family was surprised by the advancing German Wehrmacht in 1940 and was taken to the SS assembly camp in Mechelen . On January 15, 1943, they were deported from there to Auschwitz , where they were murdered.

In 1940 Kübel had to adapt production to military needs and was drafted into the military himself. In 1941, however, he was transferred to Mannheim and was able to devote himself to his company again from there. “During the war, prisoners of war were assigned to the Kübel works as workers. In 1943 there were around 40 Russian forced laborers. They were housed in a barrack next to the factory premises, which was fenced in with barbed wire and guarded by soldiers. ”According to the Karl Kübel Foundation for Children and Family in a publication from 2009, Kübel cared for the forced laborers much better than prescribed , and three Russian slave laborers remained at the plant after the war.

After the end of the war, there was another public dispute about the Lindheim furniture factory taken over by Kübel . “On the grounds that the factory in Kahl was acquired illegally and too cheaply by the previous owner, a group of employees demanded the expropriation of the factory after the Second World War. Karl Kübel brought the bank director, who had been present during the negotiations, to the hearing, as well as the notarized sales contract. After the hearing, the judges were convinced of the lawful sale. ”It is not known whether the appropriateness of the purchase price was also discussed, as this was disputed in a reparation procedure opened in 1948 by Lindheim's siblings who had survived the Holocaust. This reparation procedure ended in a relatively short time with a settlement through which Karl Kübel undertook to pay Hugo Lindheim's heirs the amount of DM 40,000.

After 1945, thanks to inexpensive mass production, 3K-Möbelwerke developed into one of the largest furniture manufacturers in Europe with around 3,800 employees. Nonetheless, Kübel was very interested in “the personal relationship with his employees. Whenever he could, he would talk to them or help out. With the growing size of the workforce, even this sporadic contact was lost and so in 1952 he decided to offer his employees partnership agreements through which they could share in the company's profits. In addition, the employees were given company co-determination that exceeded the statutory co-determination rights. The idea behind this was that Kübel wanted to motivate his workforce for the benefit of the company and also wanted to create a sense of community and quality of life. However, the company's executives struggled with this partnership principle. They feared that the codecision would limit their options too much. As a result, the partnership agreements were abolished in 1959. Nevertheless, the employees got a share in the generation of a company profit. "

In 1952, Kübel founded the housing development company for the family-friendly home . In 1973 he sold the furniture factory and founded the Karl Kübel Foundation for children and families with the proceeds of 37 million euros and a large part of his private fortune . The foundation, based in Bensheim in southern Hesse, is geared towards the needs of children and families. It employs around 150 people and is active in Germany and developing countries, particularly in India and the Philippines.

In 1988, Kübel received the Federal Cross of Merit from Richard von Weizsäcker . In 1995 Roman Herzog awarded him the medal for services to the foundation system . In the same year the commercial school of the Bergstrasse district in Bensheim was renamed the Karl Kübel School . In 2009, the Worms city council decided to name a street in the Horchheim district Karl-Kübel-Straße .

Karl Kübel was buried on February 17, 2006 in the Kocherbach district of Wald-Michelbach.

Karl Kübel Bridge

The Karl Kübel Bridge in Worms

With a length of 48 meters and a width of 6 meters spanning Karl-bucket bridge the B9 and provides pedestrians safe access of the Worms downtown to Rhinebanks and held there Backfischfest . The Federal Republic of Germany will bear the construction costs of 900,000 euros for the bridge, which has been planned since the 1980s. The bridge structure was opened on August 24, 2016.

Parts of the population of Worms call the bridge "Terence Hill Bridge".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Lilli Braun: Karl Kübel GmbH / AG on the website Economic History in Rhineland-Palatinate
  2. ↑ Martin Broszat, Elke Fröhlich, Falk Wiesemann (eds.): "Bavaria in the Nazi era. Social situation and political behavior of the population in the mirror of confidential reports", R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich and Vienna, 1977, ISBN 3-486 -48361-7 , p. 452
  3. ^ A b Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): Deutsche Biographische Enzyklkopädie (DBE) , 2nd edition, Volume 6, KG Saur, Munich, 2006, ISBN 978-3-598-25036-1 , p. 114
  4. ^ The Lindheim family in the memorial book Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933–1945
  5. ↑ Welcome - Worms - B 9 at the level of the Karl-Kübel-Brücke completely closed - Landesbetrieb Mobility Rhineland-Palatinate. (No longer available online.) In: lbm.rlp.de. Archived from the original on August 24, 2016 ; accessed on August 24, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lbm.rlp.de
  6. ↑ Worms: 83rd Backfischfest begins - Metropolnews.info. In: metropolnews.info. Retrieved August 24, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Vera Beiersdörfer: Many ways lead through the Backfischfest . In: Nibelungen Courier . August 27, 2016, p. 1 .
  8. ↑ Narrow access to the Karl-Kübel-Brücke in Worms - baptized "Terence-Hill-Brücke" on Facebook. In: wormser-zeitung.de. Retrieved August 27, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Bucket, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur and founder of the foundation
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Duisburg
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 2006
Place of death Wald-Michelbach