Ludwig Merckle (entrepreneur, 1892)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ludwig Merckle (born January 28, 1892 in Aussig ; † January 2, 1982 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German entrepreneur.

In 1915, Merckle took over the pharmaceutical wholesaler "Adolf Merckle Chemikalie en wholesale", founded by his father Adolf Merckle in 1881 in Aussig (today Ústí nad Labem in Bohemia , Czech Republic ). In 1925 he founded the pharmaceutical company "Ludwig Merckle Chemisch-Pharmaceutical Factory". This produced personal care products, medicines and bandages. Contract manufacturing played an important role, for example Nivea cream for Beiersdorf AG and ointment for the Desitin plants. With the profit from contract production, Merckle developed its own drugs. According to its own information, Merckle was “at the forefront of the Czechoslovak pharmaceutical industry” with more than 300 employees.

After the NSDAP came to power, Ludwig Merckle fled Aussig in early 1945 because he had been summoned to the Gestapo. Merckle was never a party member and was repeatedly interrogated by the Gestapo. He hid with his family in Blaubeuren , the home of his wife Luise Spohn (1900–1984). His father-in-law Georg Spohn granted them accommodation there. After the war, Georg Spohn gave his son-in-law a room in the administration building of the Portland-Zement Blaubeuren Gebrüder Spohn AG in 1946 in order to set up a new chemical-pharmaceutical company, Ludwig Merckle KG . After difficult years of development, the economic breakthrough came from 1954. In 1958 the company was able to move into its first own factory in "Dr.-Georg-Spohn-Straße" (named after Merckle's father-in-law, who died in 1948) in Blaubeuren.

Ludwig Merckle was chairman of the supervisory board of “Otto Stumpf AG” ( Nuremberg ), “ Portland-Zement Blaubeuren Gebrüder Spohn AG ” Blaubeuren and “Gebrüder Spohn AG” ( Ravensburg ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Viehöver: The influential. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2006, p. 15.
  2. ↑ http://www.whoswho.de/templ/te_bio.php?PID=2576&RID=1
  3. ↑ Ulrich Viehöver: The influential. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2006, p. 15ff.
  4. ↑ Walter Habel (Ed.): Who is who? The German who's who. XV. Edition of Degeners who is it? Berlin 1967, p. 1266.
personal data
SURNAME Merckle, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Aussig
DATE OF DEATH 2nd January 1982
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau