Rudolf-August Oetker

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Rudolf-August and Maja Oetker at the inauguration of a student residence of the Dr. Oetker Foundation in Kiel (1966)

Rudolf-August Oetker (born September 20, 1916 in Bielefeld ; † January 16, 2007 in Hamburg ) was a German entrepreneur in the food industry and shipowner from the Oetker dynasty .

life and work

Rudolf-August Oetker and his older sister Ursula Oetker are the children of Rudolf Oetker , who died near Verdun before Rudolf-August was born on March 8, 1916 , and the grandson of the Dr. Oetker company founder August Oetker , who in his will Wish formulated that the company should remain unchanged for his grandson Rudolf-August . As a member of a Bielefeld riding club, which was transferred to the Reiter-SA after 1933, he also became a member of the SA . After graduating from the Ratsgymnasium Bielefeld , he completed an apprenticeship in a bank in Hamburg from 1937 , after having completed his labor service in 1936 . In 1942 he applied for membership in the Waffen SS in order to pursue a career there.

In 1944, at the age of 28, Rudolf-August took over the management of the family business Dr. August Oetker Nahrungsmittelfabrik after his stepfather Richard Kaselowsky , his mother Ida Oetker and his half-sisters Ilse and Ingeborg were killed in a bomb attack in the Second World War in the basement of their villa at Am Johannisberg 10. His wife and his eldest son August Oetker (* 1944) survived the attack because at that time they were not in Bielefeld but in Hameln .

Rudolf-August Oetker had been a member of the Reiter SA since the early 1930s . In 1942 he registered for the Waffen SS and fought on the Eastern Front . After the war he was interned in the Staumühle internment camp near Paderborn . When the tattoo of his blood type was discovered under his left armpit, which marked him as a member of the SS, he was severely mistreated by the guards. The health damage persisted for a long time, and after the Second World War Oetker still needed a stick for a long time. After his release from internment, Rudolf-August Oetker was denazified as unencumbered by the main denazification committee for the Bielefeld district in July 1947.

After the Second World War, Rudolf-August Oetker took the ailing family business to new heights. In a few years after the war, he forged the food manufacturer into a widely branched conglomerate that trades in beer, pizza and sparkling wine, but whose main source of income soon became the Hamburg Süd shipping company . In addition, Oetker took over the sparkling wine cellars Henkell , Söhnlein and Deinhard , the spirits manufacturer Wodka Gorbatschow and the breweries Binding and Dortmunder Actien-Brauerei . He bought Bankhaus Lampe and luxury hotels, which, as part of the Oetker Collection (OHC), are integrated into Oetker Hotel Management .

In 1976 his then 25-year-old son Richard Oetker was kidnapped by Dieter Zlof in Freising and ransomed for a ransom of 21 million marks. In 1981, at the age of 65, Rudolf-August Oetker retired from day-to-day business and left the management of the company to his son August Oetker . At the end of 2002, by transferring substantial parts of his assets to the next generation and the next but one, he ensured the continued existence of the Oetker Group as an independent family company.

Support of National Socialism

In October 2013 the Oetker family gave an insight into their involvement in National Socialism. “My father was a National Socialist,” August Oetker told the weekly newspaper Die Zeit . According to the same source, Oetker volunteered for the Waffen SS . The book “Dr. Oetker and National Socialism ”. The study was commissioned and paid for by the family. In 2009 - two years after the senior's death - the family commissioned Andreas Wirsching (director of the Institute for Contemporary History , Munich) to research the history of the company during the Nazi era. The project took three years; The researchers judge: "The family and the Oetker company were pillars of the Nazi society, they sought proximity to the regime and benefited from its policies."

Patronage

Oetker also worked as an art patron and art collector. At the end of 1999 he set up the Rudolf August Oetker Foundation to promote art , culture , monument protection and science . After the Bielefeld city ​​council decided in 1998 to rename the Kunsthalle, which Oetker had largely financed since 1968, after 30 years, so that it no longer had the Kaselowsky House suffix after his stepfather Richard Kaselowsky , he withdrew his financial support and his loans. In 1981 Oetker was made an honorary citizen of the city of Bielefeld . He did not support Rüdiger Jungbluth's work on the family history of the Oetkers.

family

In his first marriage, Oetker was married to Marlene Ahlmann; The CDU politician Rosely Schweizer (* 1940) emerged from the marriage. In his second marriage, Oetker married Susanne Jantsch-Schuster (* July 21, 1922; † November 24, 2012), the daughter of an insurance company; the marriage resulted in August (* 1944), Bergit Countess Douglas (* November 26, 1947), Christian (* May 24, 1948) and Richard (* 1951). Since February 8, 1963 Rudolf-August Oetker was married to Marianne (Maja) von Malaisé (* December 30, 1934); from the marriage are Alfred (* 1967), Ferdinand (* 1972) and Julia (* 1979).

Rudolf-August Oetker died in 2007 as a result of pneumonia in a Hamburg clinic and was buried on January 20, 2007 in the Oetkers family grave at the Johannisfriedhof in Bielefeld. The family's fortune is estimated at 4.35  billion  euros .

In art

In 1983 he was portrayed by the painter Carlos Luis Sancha (1920–2001) in the library equipped with works of art.

literature

documentation

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Rüdiger Jungbluth, Die Oetkers, page 102
  2. ^ Rüdiger Jungbluth : The Oetkers: Business and secrets of the most famous economic dynasty in Germany. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 172 f. limited preview in Google Book search
  3. ↑ Stefan Weber: In the shadow of the Patriarch , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 19, 2013, p. 25
  4. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from October 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oetker-gruppe.de
  5. ^ Rüdiger Jungbluth: The Oetkers: Business and secrets of the most famous economic dynasty in Germany. 2nd Edition. Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, p. 410 f.
  6. ↑ Jürgen Finger, Sven Keller, Andreas Wirsching : Dr. Oetker and National Socialism. History of a family business 1933–1945. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-64545-7 , p. 380
  7. ↑ August Oetker: "My father was a National Socialist" , accessed on March 18, 2019
  8. ↑ Stefan Weber: In the shadow of the Patriarch , SZ, October 19, 2013, p. 25
  9. ↑ Die Oetkers and the Nazis , Die Zeit , January 19, 2012, accessed on October 16, 2013.
  10. ↑ On the death of Rudolf August Oetker: Modest and Successful , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 16, 2007, accessed on October 16, 2013.
  11. ^ Lippische Landes-Zeitung , January 17, 2007.
  12. ↑ Goldsmiths from the Rudolf-August Oetker Collection , accessed on July 14, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Oetker, Rudolf-August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielefeld
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 2007
Place of death Hamburg