Kurt Lotz
Kurt Lotz (born September 18, 1912 in Lenderscheid ; † March 9, 2005 in Hanover ) was a German officer in the Wehrmacht and manager . He was chairman of the board of directors of Brown, Boveri and Cie. AG (BBC) and Volkswagenwerk AG as well as chairman of the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) in Germany.
Life
Lotz attended the August Vilmar School (since 1964 Federal President Theodor Heuss School) in Homberg (Efze) . After graduating from high school in 1932, he embarked on the police career . In 1935 he passed the police officer examination and was promoted to police lieutenant, but switched to the air force in the same year .
Wehrmacht
Unsuitable as a fighter pilot for health reasons, he switched to anti-aircraft cartillery . He served at the front and became First General Staff Officer (Ia) of the 6th Flak Division . By the end of the war he reached the rank of major on the general staff. At the end of the Second World War, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets , from which he was able to escape in 1946.
economy
From 1946 he did a commercial apprenticeship at the BBC in Dortmund and worked his way up - after evening studies in business administration - in twelve years from payroll and material accounting to CEO.
In June 1967 he was hired by the then Volkswagen boss Heinrich Nordhoff as deputy chairman of the board of the VW group. After Nordhoff's death on April 12, 1968, Lotz became CEO of VW on May 1, 1968. Lotz realized that VW could no longer continue with the successful Beetle car model alone and encouraged the development of new models. In September 1971, Lotz resigned after having dealt with the issues of personnel policy and union and political participation at VW for a long time . At the time of his resignation, the workforce was behind Lotz. His successor was Rudolf Leiding . Only his successor Toni Schmücker could reap the fruits of his and Leiding's work with the great sales success of the Golf.
Lotz was a member of several supervisory boards and the Transrapid consortium .
environmental Protection
He was a member of the German Council for Land Care . From 1970 he was environmental protection advisor to the state government of Baden-Württemberg . In 1981 Lotz became chairman of the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) in Germany.
family
Lotz, married and father of three children, died after a long and serious illness at the age of 92.
Awards
- 1960: Honorary Senator of the University of Heidelberg
- 1962: Honorary doctorate from the Mannheim Business School (Dr. hc rer. Pol.)
- 1970: Honorary professor for corporate policy at the TU Braunschweig
- 1976: Order of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg
- 1988: Large Federal Cross of Merit
literature
- Kurt Lotz: Life Experiences. What one should also talk about in business and politics. Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf u. a. 1978, ISBN 3-430-16201-7 .
- Ferdinand Simoneit : The new bosses. This is how you become a general manager. Revised by the author. Output. Fischer library Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1969 ( Fischer-Bücherei 1034, ISSN 0173-5438 ).
- The man who comes to Nordhoff . In: Die Zeit , No. 13/1967.
- Kurt Lotz , in Internationales Biographisches Archiv 35/1988 of August 22, 1988, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely available)
Web links
- Literature by and about Kurt Lotz in the catalog of the German National Library
Heinrich Nordhoff (1960–1968) | Kurt Lotz (1968–1971) | Rudolf Leiding (1971–1975) | Toni Schmücker (1975–1982) | Carl Hahn (1982-1993) | Ferdinand Piëch (1993-2002) | Bernd Pischetsrieder (2002–2006) | Martin Winterkorn (2007–2015) | Matthias Müller (2015–2018) | Herbert Diess (since 2018)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lotz, Kurt |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German officer and manager |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 18, 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lenderscheid |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 9, 2005 |
| Place of death | Hanover |