Kurt Pentzlin

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Kurt Pentzlin (born March 30, 1903 in Schwetz an der Weichsel ; † April 25, 1989 in Hanover ) was a German economist , politician and engineer , managing director and association functionary for various employer organizations. The representative of the free market economy is considered a pioneer of the rationalization movement in Germany, which he never only viewed technically, but also commercially, organizationally and socially.

Life

Kurt Pentzlin was born in the late founding period of the German Empire in 1903 in the then West Prussian town of Schwetz an der Weichsel, now the Polish town of Świecie.

After graduating from high school, he initially studied law and later also economics in Kiel at the Christian Albrechts University , in Vienna at the university there , in Tübingen at the Eberhard Karls University and in Paris at the university there . His doctorate as Dr. sc. pol. he passed in Kiel with his legal and political dissertation The Limits of Pure Economic Theory, investigated on the problem of economic autarky. A contribution to the question of method .

After his studies, according to a later self-assessment, Pentzlin was "sent to America in 1928 to find out what effects mass production had on people and society". In the United States of America he not only got to know work on the assembly line and other efficient production methods. In the USA he also trained as an engineer.

After the height of the global economic crisis and towards the end of the Weimar Republic , Kurt Penzlin returned to Germany, where he became a rationalization specialist in 1931 from Werner Bahlsen , a son of the Bahlsen company founder Hermann Bahlsen , who had introduced the first assembly line in Europe in Hanover in 1905 was discontinued. Bit by bit, Pentzlin led all corporate divisions at Bahlsen to ever new rationalization successes, for example in production , in packaging , in marketing and even in costing . For the rationalization of Bahlsen's accounting , Pentzlin worked closely with the management consultant Otto Bredt and even in later years formed the company into one of "[...] the most highly automated companies" in Germany.

At the time of National Socialism , Kurt Pentzlin, who was “[...] distant from the Nazi regime ”, was one of the decision-makers in the Bahlsen family company .

During the Second World War , which came to an end in Hanover after the invasion of American troops and before the surrender of the Third Reich , Pentzlin already participated in April 1945 - together with Franz Henkel , Christian Kuhlemann and Hans-Joachim Fricke - as a contact person for the British military government on the rapid rebuilding of the economy and the Hanover Chamber of Commerce and Industry . From May 1945 to the end of 1946, Pentzlin also took on the duties of one of the deputy chairmen of the Committee for Reconstruction in the city ​​of Hanover, which was 48 percent destroyed in the war and soon declared the capital of the newly founded state of Lower Saxony .

After the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, Kurt Pentzlin was a member of the management team at Bahlsen until 1973. At times parallel to this, he was involved both in the founding and in the management of various employer organizations such as the state and federal association of German employers' associations (BDA), the Rationalization Committee of German Business (RAW) and the German Industry Institute .

From 1959 to 1960 he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom . 1965 took an active part in the Pentzler of the Körber Foundation in the Bergedorf Castle in Hamburg on 19 Bergedorf part.

Also in 1965 Pentzlin took part in the international conference organized by IG Metall in Oberhausen under the title About the dangers and opportunities of automation . In August 1966, Pentzlin discussed a two-part anthology with the presentations and discussion contributions from this conference, documented and edited by Günter Friedrichs , the head of the Automation and Nuclear Energy Department on the IG Metall executive board, in the news magazine Der Spiegel under the title Who is afraid of robots ? .

In addition, Kurt Pentzlin gained an international reputation through numerous publications.

Awards and honors

Fonts (selection)

  • The limits of pure economic theory, examined on the problem of economic autarky. A contribution to the question of method , legal and political dissertation at the University of Kiel, o. O., date of publication: 1928 [1932 edition].
  • Efficient production. Methodology, basic rules and practical examples , Gera: Thüringische Verlags Anstalt Karl Basch, 1945.
    • 2nd, modified and expanded edition, Kassel: Basch, 1950.
  • Expansive sales policy , in: Die Zeit from October 11, 1951.
  • The secret of the success of leading American companies. In: Industrielle Organization , Issue 21 (1952), No. 3, pp. 64-69.
  • Economic policy principles of an organic tax reform. Lecture (= publication series of the institute “Finances and Taxes” , Issue 22), printed as typescript , Bonn am Rhein: Institute “Finances u. Taxes “, Bonn am Rhein: Stollfuss in commission, [1952].
  • Demands on tax policy (= lecture series of the German Industrial Institute , [1952], No. 39), Cologne: Deutsche Industrieverlags-GmbH, 1952.
  • Kurt Pentzlin, Helmut Thielicke : People and work in the technical age. On the problem of rationalization , Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1954.
  • Labor rationalization. Textbook of rational work design (= basics of work and time study , vol. 4), Munich: Hanser, 1954.
  • The function of private property (= lecture series of the German Industrial Institute , [year] 1957, No. 48), Cologne: Deutsche Industrieverlags-Gesellschaft, 1957.
  • Kurt Pentzlin (ed.): Master of Rationalization , ed. in cooperation with the Rationalization Board of German Business (RKW), Düsseldorf; Vienna: Econ-Verlag, 1963.
  • Kurt Pentzlin (author), Jadwiga Mrełowa (Tłum.): Racjonalizacja pracy. Podre̜cznik racjonalnej organizacji pracy (in Polish), Warszawa: Państw. Wyd. naukowe, 1964.
  • Kurt Pentzlin: Initiative of the individual and planning (= lecture series of the German Industrial Institute [1965], No. 47), Cologne: Deutscher Instituts-Verlag, 1965.
  • Rationalization in the building trade (= Rationalization dans les entreprises de construction = Rationalization in the building trade ), in: Bauen + Wohnen (= Construction + habitation = Building + home ) Internationale Zeitschrift, 19/2 (1965), p. 45 f .; as a PDF document on the Swiss Journals online (e-periodica.ch) page of the ETH Library in Zurich.
  • Rudolf Augstein (responsible), Kurt Pentzlin: Who's Afraid of Robots? In: Der Spiegel from August 29, 1966; online .
  • Rationalization as an entrepreneurial task , ed. from the Association for Labor Studies eV, Darmstadt, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main: Beuth, 1968.
  • Marxists overcome Marx (= econ aktuell ), Düsseldorf; Vienna: Econ-Verlag, 1969.
  • Kurt Pentzlin, Otto Kienzle (Hrsg.): Manufacturing automation. 18 contributions from theory and practice , “Professor Dipl.-Ing. Dedicated to Carl Martin Dolezalek by colleagues, friends and employees on the occasion of his 70th birthday on October 19, 1969 ”, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer Verlag, 1969.
  • Organized dissatisfaction. A role of the trade unions , Stuttgart: Seewald, 1973, ISBN 978-3-512-00332-5 and ISBN 3-512-00332-X .
  • The future of the family business. Successful from generation to generation , Düsseldorf, Vienna: Econ-Verlag, 1976, ISBN 978-3-430-17442-8 and 3-430-17442-2.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Pentzlin, Kurt. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , p. 281 u. ö .: online via Google books.
  2. ^ Pentzlin, Kurt in the database of Niedersächsische Personen (new entry required) of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library - Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek , edited on July 17, 2006, last accessed on November 6, 2016.
  3. ↑ Compare the information and cross-references under the GND number of the German National Library .
  4. ↑ a b Bergedorf Round Table 19 / Minutes  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , passim .@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.koerber-stiftung.de  
  5. ↑ a b Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Bahlsen GmbH & Co. KG. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , p. 43 f.
  6. ↑ a b Rudolf Augstein (responsible), Kurt Pentzlin: Who is afraid of robots ?. In: Der Spiegel from August 29, 1966; online .
  7. ^ A b Klaus Mlynek : Second World War. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 994 f.
  8. ↑ Heiner Pollert, Alexander J. Wurzer Manfred columnsberger (responsible): All winners of the diesel medals , section 1961–1969 on the dieselmedaille.de site , last accessed on November 6, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Pentzlin, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist, politician and engineer, non-fiction author and editor, pioneer of the rationalization movement and automation
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwetz on the Vistula , now the Polish Świecie
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1989
Place of death Hanover