Matthias Seefelder

Matthias Seefelder (born February 28, 1920 in Boos / District Office Memmingen ; † October 30, 2001 in Heidelberg ) was a German industrial manager and from 1974 to 1983 chairman of the board of BASF AG.

Life

After graduating from high school, the son of a forest warden served as a soldier in World War II and became a prisoner of war in Yugoslavia. After his return he studied chemistry, physics and physiology in Munich and received his doctorate in 1951. rer. nat. He then started as a chemist in BASF's main laboratory and acquired 133 patents over the course of his career, primarily in acetylene chemistry, as well as for dyes and active pharmaceutical ingredients. From 1962 to 1967 he headed the color research laboratory, was then appointed director of the colors division, in 1971 a deputy board member and in 1973 a full board member. In 1974 he succeeded Bernhard Timm as Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF and thus took over the management of Germany's largest chemical company.

During Seefelder's term of office, both the management of the oil crises of the 1970s and the alignment of the group to the new business fields of genetic engineering and biochemistry took place .

In 1983 Seefelder left active management and moved to the top of the BASF Supervisory Board. In the same year he also took over the chairmanship of the Gutehoffnungshütte supervisory board . At the same time he made a name for himself as a non-fiction author and held various honorary posts in scientific and cultural committees (Senate of the Max Planck Society , corresponding member of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature , Chairman of the Franco-German Society for Science and Technology); since 1974 he was also honorary professor at Heidelberg University .

Works

• with Hans-Jürgen Quadbeck-Seeger (editor): Indigo , BASF , Ludwigshafen am Rhein 1982, DNB 831090383 ; 2nd, revised edition: Indigo. Culture, science and technology , ecomed, Landsberg am Lech 1994, ISBN 3-609-65150-4 ; English: Indigo in culture, science and technology , ISBN 3-609-65160-1 .
• Opium . A Cultural History (1987)

Awards

• Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class (1977)
• Knight (1979) and officer (1997) of the French Legion of Honor
• Large Federal Cross of Merit (1980) with a star (1983)
• Grand Cross of the Spanish Civil Order of Merit (1982)
• Oskar von Miller Gold Medal from the Deutsches Museum (1986)
• Order of Merit of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate (1986)
• Prix ​​France-Allemagne Sciences et Cultures (1990)
• Maximilian Medal of the City of Ludwigshafen am Rhein (1995)
• Honorary Senator of the Technical University of Munich , the University of Mannheim and the University of Heidelberg

literature

• Susan Becker:  Seefelder, Matthias. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 141 ( digitized version ).
• Matthias Seefelder , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 07/2002 of February 4, 2002, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Literature by and about Matthias Seefelder in the catalog of the German National Library