Walter Steinweden

Walter Steinweden (born July 9, 1900 in Leipzig , † March 13, 1990 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German entrepreneur.

youth

As the son of a Leipzig paper goods wholesaler family, Walter Steinweden completed his military service on the Western Front in 1917 to study economics at the University of Leipzig. At the same time he became a member of the Ghibellinia Leipzig fraternity , to which he belonged until the student unions were banned in 1935 and also actively supported them beyond that. So he was last federal leader in the striking connection and in 1933 initiated the purchase of a representative connection house with 15 rooms in Schwägerichenstrasse. 29 in Leipzig. In February 1936 the fraternity was dissolved by the Gausturmbannführer and the fraternity was sold in January 1937.

Company formation

At the age of 21, he founded the steel wholesaler Walter Steinweden in Leipzig on October 1, 1921 - before completing his studies as a business graduate. The colors of the city coat of arms of the city of Leipzig will be part of the company logo that will exist until 2014. As the youngest German steel trader, Steinweden quickly expanded its business: The company initially supplied craft and industry in the region. Customers included a. Quarries that were supplied with chisel steel and machine builders for whom a steadily growing range of bright steel was built up in the period that followed.

The 1920s and 1930s

In 1923 Steinweden traveled to the USA for the first time and visited the production facilities of the US automotive industry in Detroit to collect new ideas for further business development. He recognized that customer orientation and speed are important criteria for success and therefore relied on his own extensive warehousing in order to be able to meet these criteria. Despite inflation and the global economic crisis, he managed to keep expanding the new company and successfully implement the know-how he had gathered in the USA. At the end of the 1930s he already had several warehouses in the Leipzig area and was active nationwide.

At the same time, he made a name for himself in Leipzig society as an art collector and business promoter. So he was with several artists such as B. Ernst Frommhold and Paul Souchay known and was an admirer of the work of Max Klinger and Otto Greiner . At the same time he was friends with the Beckmann family . He was a member of the German-Japanese Society and was elected to numerous honorary posts. So he was u. a. Chairman of the commercial association and commercial judge in Leipzig. From 1934 to 1937 advisory board member of the Leipzig Chamber of Commerce and Industry and from 1937 to 1945 second deputy president of the Leipzig Chamber of Commerce and Industry . He was active in business development early on and founded the Association of Promoters of Wholesale and Foreign Trade Studies at the Leipzig University of Commerce .

In the technical field, together with Ernst Schiebold , he created the Association for the Promotion of X-ray Raw and Material Research at the University of Leipzig , a forerunner of the German Society for Non-Destructive Testing founded by Schiebold . V. (DGZfP).

The 1940s and the post-war period

In the course of integrating industry into the structures of the Third Reich, he was appointed to the Presidium of the Reich Association of Iron in 1936 , to which he belonged until 1945, which resulted in his subsequent arrest by the Allies. In the early 1940s he married his third wife, Magdalena Urlass. The couple has two sons, Wolfgang and Roland Steinweden.

After the end of the war, he was first arrested by the Americans, along with other industrialists such as Hermann Röchling and Alfried Krupp , who were also organized in the Reichsvereinigung Eisen , and then released when they withdrew from Leipzig, only to be arrested again by the Soviets who were advancing. During this time the city managed the company. After a year he was released from Allied internment as a "minor burden". Steinweden succeeded in making a successful new start as an entrepreneur after the so-called "zero hour". This u. a. Due to good contacts to manufacturing plants in England and Sweden, which led to investigations by the State Security (Stasi), which opened a file about him and put informants on him.

The 1950s and 1960s

In 1952 the SED provided an authorized signatory for the company. The company is threatened with nationalization of the newly established company. As a result, Steinweden decided to flee to the west with the family before the wall was built. He came to Frankfurt am Main with his family over several stages. At the age of 52, he built up the company again. Thanks to his continued good contacts with long-term suppliers, he made another successful new start - this time in Frankfurt am Main, where parts of the befriended Beckmann family were also staying. He participated in the economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s and expanded the company at the new Hemmerichsweg location, until 1966 a large new building complex was built in the east of Frankfurt on Orber Straße, which is still the company's headquarters today.

Over the years, Steinweden has maintained a close network with numerous plants, dealers and in the industry and he was active in numerous branch organizations. These include u. a. the Federal Association of German Steel Trade ( BDS), the Working Group for Bright Steel Trade ( ABH) and the Federal Association of German Wholesale and Foreign Trade (BGA). From 1954 to 1974 he was a member of the board of the RKW ( Rationalization and Innovation Center of the German Economy ), which u. a. supported the implementation of the Marshall Plan in Germany.

The 1970s to 1990s

The company expanded with the cooperation of the two sons and positioned itself as a full-range supplier in the bright steel and bright drawn profiles sector. The hall area was doubled to 2000 m² in 1974 to keep up with the growth. At the end of the 1970s, the stainless steel segment was further expanded, so that at the end of the 1980s, around 5000 items in the range can be stocked for the first time.

Steinweden worked in his company until shortly before his death. He was considered "Germany's oldest active steel trader". After his death in 1990, his sons Dipl. Kfm. Wolfgang Steinweden and Dipl. Kfm. Roland Steinweden took over the company, which has since been continued as Walter Steinweden Stahlgrosshandlung GmbH . After the death of managing director Wolfgang Steinweden on May 12, 2012, the company was sold by the remaining managing director Roland Steinweden with effect from July 1, 2014 to Alois Schmitt GmbH & Co. KG, based in Karlsruhe. Since then, the company has continued to operate as the Frankfurt branch under this new name.

Others

Parts of the Steinweden art collection are still owned by the family today. These include u. a. Works from the estate of Paul Souchay and the main work by Ernst Frommhold “Windkraft10”. Otto Greiner's painting “Hercules near Omphale” from this collection, which Steinweden rescued from the destroyed Leipzig at the end of the war, has been part of the collection of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart since the end of 2010.

swell

• Archive Walter Steinweden Stahlgrosshandlung GmbH
• German Society for Non-Destructive Testing e. V.
• File extracts from the Federal Commissioner (BStU)
• Festschrift for the 100th anniversary of Ghibellinia Leipzig, published by the Hannoversche Burschenschaft Ghibellinia-Leipzig, Hanover.
• Press release from the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart from 2010

Individual evidence

1. ^ List of members of the Frankenburg-Bau-Verein eV Berlin 1940, p. 35.
2. ↑ Painting Hercules near Omphale ( Memento of the original from November 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. State Gallery Stuttgart