Kurt Ernsting

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Kurt Werner Ernsting (born November 6, 1929 ; † December 7, 2011 ) was a German entrepreneur and patron . He founded the textile company Ernsting’s family .

Life

Kurt Ernsting was the son of the textile entrepreneur Hugo Ernsting and grew up in Coesfeld . During the Second World War he lost his father and sister in air raids and was wounded himself. After the war he first worked in agriculture , but then rebuilt his parents' business in Coesfeld. In 1955 he married his long-time fiancée Elisabeth "Lilly" Kleier .

Kurt Ernsting laid the foundation stone for what would later become the large company Ernsting's family with headquarters in Coesfeld-Lette when he opened the first “minipreis” store in the laundry room of his parents' house in 1967 . He relied on the concept of self-service in the textile trade . A year later he founded the "Minipreis Ernsting Handels-GmbH" and began to continuously build up a chain of branches. In 1972 the company was renamed "miniladen". The textile supplier received its final name Ernsting's family in 1990. When the company founder withdrew from the operative business in 2007, he handed over a company that was expanding continuously. In 2010 it achieved an annual turnover of 700 million euros with around 10,000 employees in 1,600 branches.

The entrepreneur and his wife were also known far beyond Coesfeld for their social and cultural commitment, which was not least fueled by their strong, Christian-motivated basic attitude. Together with his wife Lilly, Kurt Ernsting founded the Kurt and Lilly Ernsting Foundation in the 1990s, which pursues charitable purposes, and in 1995 the Ernsting Foundation Alter Hof Herding, whose statutory task is to promote art and culture in the Coesfeld region. The foundation not only financed the Concert Theater Coesfeld , which opened in 2007 , but also maintains the Alter Hof Herding cultural center with the glass museum in Lette and the Münsterland Art Association . The foundation also supported the Lette train station's association . In addition, the Ernsting Foundation successfully converted the military district command (WBK) into the Knowledge Education Culture Center . With the Ernsting's family endowed professorship he set up , the entrepreneur supported the Coesfeld study center at the Hagen Open University .

In addition, the Ernsting couple founded the day-care center “family Kita” in Lette and also personally supported numerous charitable activities - often as secret sponsors.

As an enthusiastic hiker , Kurt Ernsting also volunteered as a hiking warden for the Westphalian Heimatbund from the mid-1970s until 1995 . When his successor in this office was no longer able to do the job due to the increasing number of tasks, Ernsting set up a full-time two-thirds position for this post at the Westphalian Heimatbund through the Ernsting Foundation in 2004.

In addition, Kurt Ernsting has worked closely with the charitable association Herzenswunsch eV since the 1980s and, together with his employees, collected a total of more than two million euros for seriously ill children and young people.

For his extensive patronage, the city of Coesfeld honored him on August 28, 2001 with the plaque for outstanding services to the city of Coesfeld and made him and his wife honorary citizens by a unanimous council decision on May 23, 2007 - the first after the Second World War. In the following year, Federal President Kurt Ernsting awarded the Order of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany on April 14th . In addition, on March 1, 2001 - also together with his wife - he received the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia . The municipality of Klieken , where the textile chain Ernsting's family has had a distribution center since 1993, and in which the entrepreneur was also heavily involved, dedicated Kurt-Ernsting-Straße , a previously unnamed access road to the company's sales center , to him in 2007 .

Kurt Ernsting died on December 7, 2011 at the age of 82 as a result of a long and serious illness.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Mario Brück: On hiking trails . In: Wirtschaftswoche , online version of April 6, 2006 ; Retrieved December 8, 2011
  2. ^ A b c Jürgen Stilling: Entrepreneur with a lot of common sense. Coesfelder Kurt Ernsting died at the age of 82 . In: Westfälische Nachrichten of December 8, 2011 ( online version under the title Kurt Ernsting died. Coesfeld textile entrepreneur founded Ernsting's family on December 7, 2011)
  3. a b c d Passion for innovation ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) 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. - Speech by Mayor Heinz Öhmann on the award of honorary citizenship to Elisabeth and Kurt Ernsting in 2007; Retrieved December 8, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oehmann.de
  4. Obituary by the Lette train station supporting association ( Memento of the original from October 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been 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.bahnhof-lette.de
  5. a b N.N .: Mayor congratulates honorary citizen Kurt Ernsting on his 79th birthday . ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) 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. Press release from the City of Coesfeld on November 6, 2008; Retrieved December 8, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.coesfeld.de
  6. ^ NN: Mourning for Kurt Ernsting . Press release from Ernsting's family  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on www.muensterland.de; Retrieved December 8, 2011@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.muensterland.de  
  7. ^ Obituary by the city of Coesfeld on Kurt Ernsting ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.coesfeld.de
  8. NN: Award of the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia . In: Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) , No. 48/2001 of August 6, 2001, pp. 1015-1026 - here based on the version in the online portal rechts.nrw.de; Retrieved December 8, 2011
  9. Claus Blumstengel: Klieken now has a Kurt-Ernsting-Straße . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , online version at www.mz-web.de from June 12, 2007 ; Retrieved December 9, 2011