Walter Forstreuter

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Walter Max Forstreuter (born August 30, 1889 in Koenigsberg ; † March 18, 1960 in Berlin ) was a German insurance manager and from 1935 to 1948 chairman of the Gerling Group .

Career

After completing secondary school with the upper secondary qualification , Forstreuter joined the East Prussian Fire Society in Königsberg as a supernumerar. He worked there until 1920, most recently as head of department. On November 1, 1920, Forstreuter moved to the Berlin management of the Gerling Group as authorized signatory and soon after took over the management of the Berlin office. After he had successfully expanded the insurance business in Berlin and East Germany, he was also entrusted with the management of the East German branches in Königsberg, Cottbus and Stettin, which were newly founded in 1923 . In 1930 he was also a member of the board of directors of the Cologne-Berliner-Versicherungs-AG, which belong to the Gerling group, and of the Gerling-group-Verwaltungs-AG, Berlin.

When Robert Gerling died in 1935, Forstreuter took over the management of the family business, as the sons of the company founder were still too young for this task. Forstreuter kept the principle of the company founder, which was hotly debated in the insurance industry, of keeping all risks within the group without the help of external reinsurers. He saw his task in tightening the organization of the nested Gerling group and leveraging synergies. At the same time, he opened the group's German reinsurance companies, which until then had only been available to direct insurers of the group, to the national insurance market. The Swiss subsidiary Rheinische Rückversicherungs-AG, based in Basel , was founded in 1938 as Universale Rückversicherungs-A.-G. based in Zurich . Since then she has taken on the role of an international reinsurance company. When representatives of the NSDAP tried to nationalize the German insurance industry, the private insurance companies, for whose interests In particular Forstreuter campaigned successfully, managed to avoid such a serious intervention.

Forstreuter was never a member of the NSDAP, so that he was able to continue his activities with the approval of the American military government when the business was reopened on June 2, 1945. On November 13, 1948 Forstreuter resigned from the chairmanship in favor of Hans Gerling . In 1949, Hans Gerling became CEO of all Gerling companies.

Family and private

Walter Forstreuter was a son of the butcher Matthias Forstreuter and his wife Wilhelmine, nee. Litty. On April 25, 1931, he married Claudia Schrempp in Karlsruhe, the daughter of a Karlsruhe brewery owner. The house in Berlin-Dahlem, Im Dol 48, acquired by Forstreuter in 1939, was occupied by the Americans in 1945 and served a.o. a. General Lucius D. Clay as a residence. Forstreuter did not get the house back until 1954.

Others

In 1925 Forstreuter became an honorary commercial judge at Regional Court II, Berlin. He was a member of the Academy for German Law and was a member of the large committee of the German Association for Insurance Science. In 1944 he was made an honorary senator of the University of Cologne .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Peter Koch: History of the insurance industry in Germany . Verlag Versicherungswirtschaft, Karlsruhe 2012, ISBN 978-3-89952-702-5 , p. 364 .
  2. ↑ a b Robert Volz: Empire Manual of German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 , p. 464.
  3. ↑ a b Gerling Group . In: Der Deutsche Volkswirt, magazine for politics and economy . Volume 13 (1938/1939), No. 42 . Self-published, Berlin 1939, p. 2106-2110 (2106) .
  4. ↑ Gerling Group . In: Der Deutsche Volkswirt, magazine for politics and economy . Volume 14 (1939/1940), no. 47 . Self-published, Berlin 1940, p. 1728-1731 (1728) .
  5. ↑ Gerald D. Feldman: The alliance and the German insurance industry, 1933-1945 . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 978-3-406-48255-7 , p. 223 .
  6. ↑ 100 years of Gerling - a chronicle. (No longer available online.) HDI, archived from the original on May 2, 2014 ; Retrieved April 29, 2016 . 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.hdi.de
  7. ↑ Single-family house Im Dol 48. Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment, accessed on April 29, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Personal . In: German Association for Insurance Science (Hrsg.): Journal for the entire insurance science . tape 39 . Berlin 1939, p. 85-89 (87) .
personal data
SURNAME Forstreuter, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Forstreuter, Walter Max (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German insurance manager and CEO of the Gerling Group
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1960
Place of death Berlin