Richard Freudenberg (politician)

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Richard Freudenberg (around 1919)

Richard Freudenberg (born February 9, 1892 in Weinheim ; † November 21, 1975 in Reutte / Tyrol) was a German entrepreneur and politician ( DDP , later FWG ). He worked for 48 years in the company founded by his grandfather Carl Johann Freudenberg in 1849, today's Freudenberg Group. For almost forty years of that he was spokesman for company management.

During the Weimar Republic he was a member of the left-liberal DDP in the Baden state parliament . In the 1949 federal election he won the mandate as an independent in the Mannheim-Land constituency . As a member of parliament he campaigned for the establishment of the unified state of Baden-Württemberg .

Short biography

Freudenberg came on February 9, 1892 as the seventh child and fifth son of his parents Hermann Ernst Freudenberg and Helene nee. Wins in Weinheim to the world. He spent his youth with nine siblings in the Hermannshof in Weinheim , attended the elementary school of the Bender Institute and the new grammar school in Weinheim (today Werner Heisenberg grammar school ), which his father helped to establish. In 1911 Freudenberg finished his school years with the Abitur.

Originally, he had not intended to join the family company , but instead began studying botany at the University of Bonn after finishing school in the winter semester of 1911/12 , where he was particularly interested in plant genetics. In 1912 he attended the Universities of Hastings and Reading while studying in England . Here he got to know the political culture and the democratic system of English society. From the winter semester of 1912/13 he studied at the Technical University in Berlin , where he began his doctoral thesis on cross-breeding experiments with cabbage plants.

When he was preparing his doctoral thesis, the First World War broke out in 1914 . His brothers were called up for military service, and his father asked him to drop out and take responsibility for the company.

Freudenberg's political career began in 1919. From 1919 he was elected to succeed his father in the Weinheim municipal council and a short time later as a member of the German Democratic Party in the Baden state parliament in Karlsruhe.

Freudenberg died on November 21, 1975 at the age of 83 in Reutte / Tyrol. He was buried in his hometown of Weinheim.

The entrepreneur Freudenberg

Freudenberg joined the company on September 1, 1914 at the request of his father Hermann Ernst Freudenberg. After the outbreak of the First World War , his brothers Hans and Otto Freudenberg and his cousin Walter Freudenberg, who were already active in the company, were called up for military service. Freudenberg broke off the dissertation he had already started in botany and initially took over the finances and human resources to support his father. However, he systematically familiarized himself with all areas of the company.

The aspect of social responsibility has always been part of Freudenberg's entrepreneurial activity. He was thus in the tradition of his grandfather and company founder Carl Johann Freudenberg , who had set up a company health insurance for employees as early as 1874 . In order to improve the strained financial situation of the employees resulting from the First World War, Freudenberg drew up a “service bonus contract”, which was introduced on July 1, 1918. Employees who had been with the company for more than five years could receive an interest-bearing share of 1200 marks in the company's capital. These contracts were awarded to employees until the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929. After that no more contracts were concluded, but the interest was paid out until the death of the last contract partner in 1992.

In 1922, Freudenberg was appointed to the company management together with his brothers Hans and Otto Freudenberg. His cousin Walter Freudenberg had been part of the company's management since 1908. However, Richard's father Hermann Ernst Freudenberg ran the company in a very patriarchal way. With his death in 1923, Freudenberg took on the role of spokesman for the company management, albeit as "Primus inter Pares". Together with the other members of the third generation of management, Freudenberg led the company in a modern management team based on division of labor. The resulting consensus-based management decisions have remained formative for the company to this day.

Another driving force behind Freudenberg's entrepreneurial activity was the company's internationalization . In 1923, for example, he encouraged the establishment of trade relations with China. He also made several trips to the USA, Russia and other European countries between 1928 and 1930 in order to initiate new business contacts. As a result, the company's first American company was founded in Boston, USA, in 1929.

The global economic crisis brought the entire leather industry in Germany to the brink of viability. The selling price for a finished calfskin fell dramatically: it was now only a fifth of the purchase price for raw hides . In order to secure the jobs of the more than 3,500 employees in this critical situation, Freudenberg and the other managing directors developed their own short-time working model . The workforce's working hours have been cut in half. This gave the employees and their families the chance to get through the difficult time of the global economic crisis. At the same time, their know-how could be kept in the company.

Freudenberg personally looked after the personnel matters of the senior executives. The recruitment of development engineers like Walther Simmer enabled the company to find a way out of the economic crisis through the development of new products and thus through targeted diversification . The first step in 1929 was the manufacture of leather sleeve seals for the growing automotive industry. These first seals were followed in 1932 by the Simmerring , a radial shaft sealing ring consisting of a metal housing, a sealing lip made of leather and a compression spring (worm spring). In 1936 the leather sealing lip was replaced by a rubber sealing ring. This innovation made Freudenberg a leading sealing specialist.

Like the members of the company's management at the time, Freudenberg was a bourgeois economic advocate of the Weimar Republic . The statements against Hitler made by Richard Freudenberg and his cousin Walter Freudenberg in 1932 and 1933 identified them as staunch democrats. In the years after the National Socialists came to power, the Freudenberg management came to terms with the totalitarian system more and more, so that the company benefited from the Nazi economic policy until its end .

Joachim Scholtyseck sums up Freudenberg's political stance during the National Socialist era as follows: “Richard Freudenberg's self-portrayal as an intrepid Nazi opponent, on the other hand, belongs to the genre of the well-known narratives of self-exculpation and self-stylization, although he is by no means one of the reckless entrepreneurs like Friedrich Flick or Günther Quandt belonged. Richard Freudenberg was not a gnarled opponent of Hitler like Robert Bosch , who, however, belonged to an earlier generation and in some respects was still an entrepreneur of the 19th century. However, it would be wrong to characterize Freudenberg as an unscrupulous profiteer and warmonger who, moreover, had no sympathy for the fate of the plundered Jews and the forced laborers . "

In 1933 the Freudenberg company took over the shoe production and retail chain of the Jewish-owned Conrad Tack company in Burg near Magdeburg. As early as 1932 there were first takeover talks between the economically troubled company Tack and their long-standing leather supplier Freudenberg, which initially failed due to the effects of the global economic crisis . After the National Socialists came to power, the situation of the Tack company steadily deteriorated. Tack started takeover talks with Freudenberg again, which ultimately led to a contractual agreement in 1933. This is how Freudenberg entered the shoe business.

Between 1933 and 1936, the Freudenberg company gradually took over the Gustav Hoffmann children's shoe factory in Kleve with the elefanten brand. In addition, Freudenberg expanded its shoe activities between 1937 and 1938 through the " Aryanization " of J. Kern & Co. GmbH in Pirmasens, a manufacturer of heel caps, and C. Fisch & Co. in Heidelberg, a baby shoe manufacturer. In addition, in 1938 Freudenberg took over the horse leather business of the befriended Jewish company Sigmund Hirsch in Weinheim.

During the war, Freudenberg also became a supplier to the armaments industry. The most important products were seals for various military applications, especially for vehicles, as well as shoes and artificial leather products for the Wehrmacht .

Against the background of the shortage economy caused by the war, the Nazi authorities looked for ways to improve the material properties of shoe components. The " Reich Office for Economic Development " therefore set up a " shoe test track " in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in May 1940 , which was then operated by the SS as a punitive command until the spring of 1945 . The material was tested there by at least 79 companies - one of which was Freudenberg.

Due to the war-related labor shortage, Freudenberg also employed forced laborers between 1940 and 1945 . Over this period a total of 1,845 forced laborers were deployed in the factories in Weinheim, Schönau and Schopfheim.

Since corporations were restricted in their room for maneuver by the legislation of the “Third Reich”, the company management, under the leadership of Freudenberg, decided in 1936 to convert the companies Carl Freudenberg and Freudenberg & Co., previously managed as GmbH, into limited partnerships and thus into partnerships. The Frankfurt lawyer Dr. In 1936, Bösebeck drafted a limited partnership agreement, which is still considered exemplary by lawyers because it anchors the interests of the company before the interests of the shareholders and thus ensures stability in financing and management. This limited partnership agreement still forms the basis of the articles of association of Freudenberg & Co. KG as the Freudenberg Group's holding company.

After the end of the Second World War , Freudenberg's personnel policy decisions continued to have an impact on the company's development. In 1936 the chemist Dr. Carl Ludwig Nottebohm has been hired. Nottebohm was to open up new business areas for Freudenberg based on its own developments and patents. His method consisted in the production of textile fabrics by combining unspun fibers laid in a fleece. These new types of products, called " nonwovens ", were to be processed into artificial leather in order to replace the leather, which is no longer available. At the end of the Second World War, the nonwoven carrier material was further developed under the direction of Nottebohm, and so in 1948 the production of Vlieseline interlinings for the textile industry and Vileda cloths made of nonwovens began. This initiated the next steps in Freudenberg's diversification.

Freudenberg's entrepreneurial activity has always been accompanied by the aspect of social responsibility. Following this, Freudenberg Wohnbauhilfe was founded for the company's centenary in 1949. In this way, the company's management countered the housing shortage after the Second World War . Housing aid still supports employees in financing home ownership to this day.

Freudenberg's efforts to target the internationalization of the company led him on his first business trip to the USA after the Second World War in 1948. As before the war, he aimed to boost international business. One result of this is the establishment of the first overseas manufacturing company in the United States in 1950. Subsidiaries and holdings in many European countries and in the Far East were added in quick succession.

Richard Freudenberg (second from left) in 1960 with a Japanese contract partner

The strategic internationalization, which was continued by the Freudenberg management under the leadership of Freudenberg, also culminated in the development of the Japanese market in 1960: A close partnership in sealing technology was established with the Nippon Oil Seal Industry Company (NOK) in Tokyo . Freudenberg founded a joint venture with Japanese partners for the nonwovens sector, the Japan Vilene Company in Tokyo.

The company opened up another product field: the nora brand rubber floor coverings came onto the market in 1950 as a further development of shoe soles. The corporate strategy of diversification, which Freudenberg helped to develop, was thus advanced. The next steps in diversification by Freudenberg followed in 1957. Freudenberg initially got involved in vibration technology, thus adding to its expertise in sealing technology. In the same year, the product range of technical nonwovens was established with the first filters.

In 1958, the aspect of responsible behavior led Freudenberg to initiate a further step in diversification. His knowledge of the overexploitation of Brazilian pine forests prompted him to set up a forest and timber company in Brazil. The aim of the systematic afforestation was, on the one hand, to halt the progressive desertification of the region and to prevent large-scale forest fires. On the other hand, the entrepreneurial risk for Freudenberg should also be spread geographically. The operation was stopped in 1988 due to the difficult economic conditions in the Brazilian timber industry.

After his 70th birthday in 1962, Freudenberg left the company as spokesman for the company management. He then took over the chairmanship of the shareholders' committee until 1972. In this capacity, he closely accompanied the further development of the company. One example of this is the takeover of Klüber Lubrication.

In 1966, Freudenberg bought the lubricant manufacturer Klüber Lubrication in Munich, opening up a completely new field of business. The fact that the sole owner Theodor Klüber just sold his company to Freudenberg had a very special background: Freudenberg's pacifist attitude. This was expressed in a speech by Freudenberg in the Bundestag on December 5, 1952. In it he spoke out against the rearmament of Germany so that “Germans don't have to fight Germans”. Theodor Klüber identified with this attitude and offered his company for sale to Freudenberg.

The politician Freudenberg

In addition to his entrepreneurial activity, Freudenberg was politically active. Political activity began in 1919. He was elected to succeed his father as Weinheim's youngest councilor at the time, to which he belonged until 1970.

As a member of the German Democratic Party (DDP), he was a member of the Baden state parliament from 1919 to 1925. Freudenberg was a member of the budget committee there and was particularly committed to economic and financial policy issues such as the reorganization of tax legislation and (European) free trade, the interests of the leather industry as well as educational issues in the field of schooling (maintaining the simultaneous school) and funding the Mannheim University of Commerce and the interests of his constituency (promotion of the Mannheim National Theater ). But also infrastructure issues such as the continuation of the Neckar sewer or the expansion of the energy supply were the focus of his political activities.

Since 1919 Freudenberg was active in the executive committee of the Baden DDP. This enabled the DDP to play a key role in shaping state policy and was also a delegate in the DDP's Reich Committee. After leaving the Baden state parliament in 1929 until the DDP was dissolved in 1933, he was also the executive chairman of the Baden regional association in the German Democratic Party. He thus exonerated the party chairman Hermann Dietrich , who was heavily involved in Berlin as a member of the Reichstag and Reich Minister.

Like the members of the company's management at the time, Freudenberg was a bourgeois economic advocate of the Weimar Republic. The statements against Hitler made by Freudenberg and his cousin Walter Freudenberg in 1932 and 1933 identified them as staunch democrats ( see above ).

Joachim Scholtyseck sums up Freudenberg's political stance during the National Socialist era as follows: “Richard Freudenberg's self-portrayal as an intrepid Nazi opponent, on the other hand, belongs to the genre of the well-known narratives of self-exculpation and self-stylization, although he is by no means one of the reckless entrepreneurs like Friedrich Flick or Günther Quandt belonged. Richard Freudenberg was not a gnarled opponent of Hitler like Robert Bosch , who, however, belonged to an earlier generation and in some respects was still an entrepreneur of the 19th century. However, it would be wrong to characterize Freudenberg as an unscrupulous profiteer and warmonger who, moreover, had no sympathy for the fate of the plundered Jews and the forced laborers . "

Freudenberg joined the NSDAP on January 26, 1943 . Accession was backdated in the documents to October 1, 1941.

On March 28, 1945, the American forces reached the city of Weinheim. The white flag was hoisted on the Freudenberg factory premises and shortly afterwards on the town hall. Friedrich Bartels officially handed the city over to the Americans in the presence of Freudenberg. Shortly afterwards, Freudenberg, as acting mayor, negotiated the regulations for the transition to occupation rule with the American city commandant.

On April 3, 1945 Freudenberg sent a leaflet to the residents of Weinheim. He wrote: “The erected houses of cards have collapsed. We have to base ourselves on the hard facts, that is, start over very small, with inner decency and truthfulness. [...] I urge adults to keep a watchful eye on youth. In a free world, which we want to serve, people count on the basis of their inner decency, not on the basis of external fuss that has so blinded and seduced us. [...] Let us be diligent, because this is the only way to avert hardship. Let us be humble because this is the only way we will not become submissive. Let us serve one another, because only in this way can we keep calm and overcome the deep valley over the years. "

On May 10, 1945 Freudenberg was appointed acting head of the district. At the same time, the Allies began to come to terms with the Nazi past. The American investigators turned their attention to Freudenberg, who was a member of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank .

Freudenberg was arrested by American military intelligence on May 27, 1945 and taken to the Mannheim prison. Until 1947 he spent his imprisonment in various internment camps. On June 6, 1947, the arbitration chamber proceedings against Freudenberg were concluded; he was classified as "exonerated".

From 1947 Freudenberg served as the city and district council of the non-party voter association PWV (later the Free Voters' Association), which he founded.

In 1949 he ran as a non-party and independent applicant in the Mannheim-Land constituency for the first German Bundestag . Before his candidacy, he had rejected the offer of the Democratic People's Party (DVP) to run for it as a candidate for the Bundestag in the Mannheim-Land constituency. Associated with a candidacy for the FDP / DVP in the constituency would have been a security in second place on the state list of the FDP / DVP behind Theodor Heuss . Freudenberg rejected the DVP offer for two reasons:

  • He was a staunch supporter of the simple majority election and therefore did not want to move into parliament after a possible failure in one constituency. In his opinion, there was no need for reassurance, because to be defeated in an election campaign based on democratic rules did not appear dishonorable to him. He was convinced that the Weimar Republic had perished through disputes among the far too numerous parties. The Weimar Republic's right to vote on lists only accelerated party fragmentation and ultimately led to alienation between voters and elected. In order for such quarrels not to recur, non-party candidates would be necessary, who would have to be experienced personalities who are also anchored in business and society. That is why Freudenberg advocated majority voting, which was supposed to lead to a stable two- or possibly three-party system over the long term.
  • Secondly, he hoped, with a free candidacy, which was only given by the possibility of majority or personality voting, to overcome the party dogmas and thus to be able to make the right political decision without party or parliamentary group specifications in personal responsibility to his voters and his conscience .

Freudenberg won the election in the Mannheim-Land constituency as a direct candidate with 43.69% of the vote, ahead of the CDU candidate (25.54%); the DVP had not put up its own candidate. This made him, together with Eduard Edert (constituency of Flensburg) and Franz Ott (constituency of Esslingen), one of the independent MPs in the 1st German Bundestag .

As an intern , Freudenberg joined the FDP parliamentary group and worked for them in the committees for foreign trade issues and internal reorganization.

As in his time in the Baden state parliament, he campaigned for the creation of a European economic area combined with the dismantling of customs duties.

One of the focal points of his policy was the commitment to founding the Southwest State. Freudenberg also advocated the merger of the three post-war countries (southern) Baden, Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern to form a “ south-western state ” for reasons of economic policy . After the negotiations of the three southwestern German states about a merger failed in 1950, responsibility in this regard was transferred to the federal government. In the committee for internal reorganization, Freudenberg therefore brought up the idea of ​​dividing the three countries into four electoral districts for the upcoming referendum on the south-western state. This idea found its way into the electoral law for the referendum of December 9, 1951, which finally led to the founding of today's state of Baden-Württemberg in 1952 . Freudenberg can therefore be regarded as one of the “pioneers in Baden-Württemberg”.

Another focus of Freudenberg's work in the Bundestag was his commitment to majority voting. In the discussions about the electoral law for the German Bundestag, he took the position, together with the “German voter community”, that only those who had received a simple majority, but at least a third of all votes cast, should move into parliament as members of parliament. If this quorum is not met, the two candidates with the most votes should be run off. His attitude brought him into conflict with the FDP parliamentary group, which voted for the relative majority election.

The conflict with the FDP parliamentary group came to a head on December 5, 1952, when Freudenberg gave a high-profile speech in the Bundestag against Germany's accession to the European Defense Community and thus against the rearmament of the Federal Republic . He was passionately opposed to raising armies in a divided country that might one day fight against each other. His position deviated again from the FDP parliamentary group, which is why he was expelled from the parliamentary group.

In the election for the second Bundestag on September 6, 1953, Freudenberg failed - also because of the lack of support for the FDP, which put up its own candidate - with 20.8% of the votes against the CDU candidate , who had a share of 38.13% .

After this election defeat, Freudenberg withdrew from federal politics. But until 1970 he played a key role in shaping local politics in the Weinheim region. In addition, Freudenberg was also President of the Mannheim Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK) from 1957 to 1971 and was also a member of the Board of Directors of the DIHT.

Social commitment outside the company

Freudenberg devoted himself to numerous projects in his hometown of Weinheim. For example, on the occasion of his 50th birthday in 1942, he donated 100,000 RM to the city of Weinheim to build an indoor swimming pool. He also sponsored the construction of sports facilities, the Weinheim schools and the local hospital. He supported his former school, today's Werner-Heisenberg-Gymnasium , in a special way. From 1960 to 1967, Freudenberg was a member of the board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation as treasurer .

Honors

literature

  • Petra Bräutigam: Medium-sized entrepreneurs under National Socialism. Economic developments and social behavior in the shoe and leather industry in Baden and Württemberg (= National Socialism and the post-war period in southwest Germany. Vol. 6). Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-56256-8 (also: Tübingen, University, dissertation, 1995).
  • Konrad Exner: Richard Freudenberg - influential entrepreneur in the Baden parliament, (1919–1925). In: Badische Heimat. Vol. 88, No. 4, December 2008, ISSN  0930-7001 , pp. 616-623.
  • Freudenberg, Reinhart; Schuster, Sibylla: 150 years of Freudenberg. The development of a family business from a tannery to an international group of companies , Hemsbach 1999.
  • Freudenberg Corporate Communications: The Development of the Freudenberg Group 1948–2016 , Weinheim 2016.
  • Jörg Schadt: Richard Lederherz. The manufacturer Freudenberg was one of the country's pioneers , in: Moments 2002, Issue 4, pp. 28–30.
  • Joachim Scholtyseck : Freudenberg. A family company in the empire, democracy and dictatorship. CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-68853-9 . Extensive review by Carsten Knop: Suddenly you were part of the system . Morally, the Freudenberg family went downhill under the Nazis. The descendants knew nothing about the “shoe test track” in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In: FAZ , May 11, 2016.
  • Sibylla Schuster: The Freudenberg and Hirsch leather factories during the Third Reich. In: Otto Bräunche u. a .: The town of Weinheim between 1933 and 1945. Ed. Stadt Weinheim. Weinheim 2000 (= Weinheimer Geschichtsblatt , 38), ISBN 3-923652-12-7 , pp. 313-349.
  • Anne Sudrow: The Shoe in National Socialism. A product story in a German-British-American comparison. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0793-3 (Partly also: Munich, University, dissertation, 2009).
  • Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 1: A-M. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , pp. 224-225.
  • Stefan D. Wilderotter: Richard Freudenberg. Liberal politician and independent member of the Bundestag. (At the same time, Master's thesis at Heidelberg University, 1992) Freudenberg Foundation, Weinheim 1992.

Web links

Commons : Richard Freudenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Wilderotter, Richard Freudenberg. Liberal politician and independent member of the Bundestag , p. 13 f.
  2. ↑ See Wilderotter, p. 15.
  3. ↑ See Freudenberg / Schuster, 150 Years of Freudenberg , p. 112.
  4. ↑ See company and family archive Freudenberg (UA) 3/03440 and UA: History of Social Responsibility at Freudenberg.
  5. ↑ See UA: The Freudenberg company management - chronological order.
  6. ↑ Joachim Scholtyseck, Freudenberg - A Family Business in Empire, Democracy and Dictatorship, Munich 2016, p. 440.
  7. ↑ See UA: 1/00288, 3/01032, 3/01033, 3/01203 and 3/03037 as well as Freudenberg Corporate Communications: The Development of the Freudenberg Group 1948–2016, Weinheim 2016, p. 7 f.
  8. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 79 f.
  9. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 451 f.
  10. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 451.
  11. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 113 f.
  12. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 199 f.
  13. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 163 f.
  14. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 149 f.
  15. ↑ See Scholtyseck, pp. 261-271.
  16. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 321f.
  17. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 371 f.
  18. ↑ See UA: History of the legal form of Freudenberg.
  19. ↑ See UA: “Dr. Carl Ludwig Nottebohm 1904-2001 ".
  20. ↑ See UA: The Development of the Freudenberg Group 1948–2016, p. 13.
  21. ↑ See UA: The Development of the Freudenberg Group 1948–2016, p. 14.
  22. ↑ See The Development of the Freudenberg Group 1948–2016, 2016, p. 14 as well as WP: Internationalization of Freudenberg - chronological order.
  23. ↑ a b See The Development of the Freudenberg Group 1948–2016, p. 15.
  24. ↑ a b See The Development of the Freudenberg Group 1948–2016, p. 14.
  25. ↑ The Freudenberg Bausysteme (nora) division was sold in 2007 (cf. The Development of the Freudenberg Group 1948–2016, p. 23).
  26. ↑ See report by Freudenberg of April 2, 1966, in: UA 3/02175; The Freudenberger 1/1989, "'Men with the spirit of the Bandeirantes" "and" Timber companies were sold ", p. 2.
  27. ↑ See Freudenberg / Schuster, 150 Years of Freudenberg , p. 115.
  28. ↑ See Wilderotter, p. 21 ff.
  29. ↑ Freudenberg's activity in the DDP ended when it was dissolved in 1933. Cf. Wilderotter, p. 25 f.
  30. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 451.
  31. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 316.
  32. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 396 f.
  33. ↑ UA 3/01094, leaflet "To the inhabitants of the town of Weinheim" Freudenberg.
  34. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 400.
  35. ↑ See Scholtyseck, p. 417.
  36. ↑ Cf. Bildungswerk für Kommunalpolitik eV: The Free Voters in Baden-Württemberg. A documentation. Schwäbisch Hall 1982, p. 5 and p. 25 f.
  37. ↑ See Wilderotter, pp. 46 f., 61.
  38. ↑ See Wilderotter, p. 69 ff.
  39. ↑ See Wilderotter, p. 72 ff.
  40. ^ Jörg Schadt: Richard Lederherz. The manufacturer Freudenberg was one of the country's pioneers , in: Moments 2002, Issue 4, pp. 28–30, here p. 30.
  41. ↑ See Wilderotter, p. 78 ff.
  42. ↑ See Wilderotter, p. 89 ff.
  43. ↑ See Wilderotter, p. 102 ff.
  44. ↑ See Freudenberg's Chronicle of Social Commitment. In: Freudenberg Magazin 3/2014, p. 27.
  45. ↑ Freudenberg, Richard. In: TSG Lexicon. Special edition of the TSG Journal for the anniversary, TSG Weinheim, March 2012, p. 13.
  46. ↑ See UA 1/00172.
  47. ↑ See UA 1/00144.
  48. ↑ See UA 1/00139.
  49. ↑ See UA 1/00138 and 1/00150.
  50. ↑ See UA 1/00203.
  51. ↑ See UA 1/00130.
  52. ↑ See UA 1/00131.
  53. ↑ See UA 1/00154.
  54. ↑ See UA 1/00147.
  55. ↑ See UA 1/00275.
  56. ↑ See UA 1/00142.
personal data
SURNAME Freudenberg, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (PWW), Member of the Bundestag and manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Weinheim
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1975
Place of death Weinheim