Siegfried Gmelin

Siegfried Gmelin (born January 5, 1897 in Geislingen an der Steige , † March 18, 1976 in Salzburg ) is considered the founder of the Austrian building society and the Austrian building society GdF Wüstenrot .

Origin and education

Siegfried Gmelin came on January 5, 1897 as the son of pastor Eduard Ludwig Gmelin and his wife Anna, née. Bernoulli, who descended from the well-known Bernoulli family of mathematicians , was based in Geislingen an der Steige zur Welt in Württemberg. According to his parents' wishes, he was to become a pastor like his father, but after his military service during the First World War , he himself decided to study law in Tübingen , where he also joined the Normannia Association and received his doctorate in law in 1924 .

Professional activity

Through an advertisement in the Württemberg church newspaper, he became familiar with Georg Kropp's idea of ​​the building society savings scheme and developed a keen interest in cooperative models of thought. In March 1925 he began working as an advertising specialist and legal advisor to Kropps at the German "Bausparkasse GdF Wüstenrot".

On November 30, 1925, he gave his first publicity lecture about the idea of ​​a financing option in the old Kurhaus in Salzburg. Following this lecture he broke away from the German building society and moved to Austria with his family. In the same year he founded the independent Austrian building society association of friends Wüstenrot , based in Salzburg, from which today's Austrian Wüstenrot Group emerged . Over the years he fought off several attempts by the supervisory board to relocate the headquarters to Vienna . He saw the “center of the home movement in the middle of Austria” and not in Vienna, where, according to him, “there aren't that many home builders”. Gmelin broke away from Georg Kropps' "draw procedure" practiced in Germany and had a mathematician develop a fairer allocation system for him. Based on this “money x time system”, building society loans are still granted today.

After the early death of his first wife Else (née Lewke), he married Elisabeth Luise Staehler († 1989) on October 26, 1935. In 1963 Siegfried Gmelin resigned from the board of directors of the Bausparkasse, but remained on the supervisory board for many years . After his death on March 18, 1976, Siegfried Gmelin was laid to rest at the Salzburg municipal cemetery.

Honors

The City Council of Salzburg praised his commitment and efforts to strengthen the home ownership movement by handing over the citizens' letter and the ring of the city of Salzburg. Posthumously after his death in 1976 he was given another honor by the Salzburg state capital with the naming of a street leading through the districts of Taxham and Alt- Maxglan . The Dr. Gmelin-Straße leads from Peter-Pfenninger-Straße to Altenbuchgasse and runs parallel to the well-known Europastraße with the Europark .

Literature and Sources

• Walter Frequler (Ed.): Maxglan - A Salzburg district. Salzburger Bildungswerk, Maxglan 1990.
• Friederike Zaisberger , Reinhard R. Heinisch (Hrsg.): Life beyond death. Celebrities in the Salzburg municipal cemetery. Society for Salzburg Regional Studies . Salzburg 2006.
• Conversation with Siegfried Gmelin's youngest daughter Ingrid Lohner-Gmelin.