Karlheinz Bauer (entrepreneur)

Karlheinz Bauer (born April 24, 1928 in Schrobenhausen ) is a German civil engineer and building contractor .

Life

Karlheinz Bauer was born as the son of Karl Bauer and his wife Luise, geb. Kastner, born in Schrobenhausen. The Bauer family business developed from a coppersmith's forge whose founder came to Schrobenhausen from Lower Bavaria in 1790. Karlheinz Bauer belongs to the sixth generation since it was founded. In the first half of the 20th century, the company changed to a well construction company, from the middle of the century to a continuously growing and now globally active construction and mechanical engineering group - the BAUER Group .

Karlheinz Bauer belongs to the "Flakhelfer generation" and after the war interrupted 1946 he graduated from high school in Augsburg. He completed a civil engineering degree at the Technical University of Munich until 1951, followed by a traineeship at the Bavarian state . This was followed by the dissertation on the subject of changes in the groundwater flow due to barrages and water losses in the reservoir in wide valleys with alluvial filling , completed in summer 1954 at the Technical University of Karlsruhe .

When his father, Karl Bauer, died unexpectedly in 1956, he had already been part of the family business for four years and now ran it - supported by his wife Marlies Bauer, nee. Zenger - the operation. He initiated the transition from a well construction company to a construction company specializing in civil engineering.

One of the decisive factors in the company's steep rise was the invention of the injection anchor in loose rock in 1958 . Since then, large free construction pits can be made; instead of the hitherto usual and cumbersome stiffening with wooden beams, sheeting walls are now anchored laterally in the ground. The anchor was patented, as were many other processes later. Since there were only inadequate machines for the new technologies on the market, Karlheinz Bauer also began to design and manufacture machines from 1969, first with an anchor drilling rig and in 1976 with the first rotary drilling rig.

In 1984 Karlheinz Bauer - the family had six children - took his son Thomas Bauer into the company as co-managing director, a few years later he retired from management and moved to the supervisory board as chairman. Under the leadership of Thomas Bauer, the companies in the BAUER Group grew into a global group. Karlheinz Bauer chaired the supervisory board until 2005. When BAUER AG went public on July 4, 2006, he handed over the chairmanship to Klaus Reinhardt . Bauer retained his seat on the supervisory board until 2011.

Awards

• 1983: Federal Cross of Merit, First Class of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1990: Golden Citizen Medal of the City of Schrobenhausen
• 1993: Honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Munich
• 1996: Leo von Klenze Medal from the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior for outstanding engineering achievements
• 1998: Honorary citizen of the city of Schrobenhausen
• 1998: Bavarian Order of Merit
• 2007: Honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria

literature

• Klaus Englert , Manfred Stocker (ed.): 40 years of special civil engineering 1953–1993. Technical and legal developments. Festschrift for Karlheinz Bauer on his 65th birthday. Werner, 1993.
• Franz-Josef Mayer: BAUER - history and stories. Ballas, 2006.
• Erwin Stötzer, Manfred Schöpf, Franz-Josef Mayer, Klaus Englert : Special civil engineering. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Karlheinz Bauer. Ballas, 2008.

Web links

• Literature by and about Karlheinz Bauer in the catalog of the German National Library