Walther J. Jacobs

Walther Johann Jacobs (born March 17, 1907 in Bremen - Borgfeld ; † June 4, 1998 in Bremen) was a Bremen coffee merchant , promoter of horse racing and German thoroughbred breeding .

Live and act

Walther J. Jacobs was the son of the farmer Jacob Jacobs from Borgfeld and the nephew of the company founder Johann Jacobs . He attended secondary school in Bremen and then completed an apprenticeship in a Bremen import / export business.

Coffee trade

Then he worked in a coffee roastery in Braunschweig. After a stay in the USA, he joined the company of his uncle Johann Jacobs & Co in 1929 . He brought his marketing experience, which he had gained in the USA, to the company which, at the end of the 1930s, was one of the most important roasters in Germany with a turnover of 9.5 million Reichsmarks .

When the roastery building fell victim to an air raid on Bremen in October 1944 , coffee substitutes were produced in a former potato flake factory - this plant was also destroyed. After the surrender in 1945, Jacobs and some employees began to rebuild the production facility. When import restrictions ceased to apply after the currency reform in 1948 and coffee could be freely bought again, the first twelve sacks of green coffee passed the Bremen customs on August 9, 1948.

In 1954 Jacobs invented the slogan: " Jacobs coffee ... wonderful ".

He became head of the company in 1958 after the death of his uncle. This was followed by the transformation into a stock corporation with corporate headquarters in Zurich, of which he was Chairman of the Board of Directors until he left the company in 1983. In 1982 Jacobs merged with the Swiss company Interfood AG under the management of his son Klaus J. Jacobs .

further activities

Jacobs was a member from 1960 to 1976 and from 1966 and 1967 President of the Bremen Chamber of Commerce .

He had been a commercial member of the Haus Seefahrt Foundation since 1962 ; In 1964 he was one of the organizers of the Schaffermahlzeit .

Equestrian sport

Jacobs came into contact with horses at an early age on his father's farm in Bremen- Borgfeld , which largely determined his later life. In 1958 he acquired the ferry yard in Sottrum and initially bred Hanoverians there , and from 1961 only English thoroughbred . The basis of the Fährhofer thoroughbred breeding was made up of six dam mares, which he acquired at an auction in Newmarket , England .

The stallion Surumu , trained by Adolf Wöhler and voted Bremen Sportsman of the Year 1977 by the Bremen sports journalists, became the figurehead of the Bremen training center in the Vahr . Surumu's best son was Acatenango , whom Jacobs named after a mountain in Guatemala . Acatenango was voted horse of the year three times and was also a good stallion .

Honors

• On November 23, 1986 Jacobs was honored at the Bremen racecourse by Walter Scheel , the then president of the umbrella organization, for his services to thoroughbred breeding and his commitment to racing with the Golden Medal of Merit of the Gallop Board of Directors .
• In 1986 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in the Bremen town hall .

literature

• Svenja Kunze and Alexander Schug : Jacobs Coffee ... wonderful - A coffee story from Bremen (PDF; 939 kB), accessed on May 14, 2012
• Louise Jacobs: Cafe Heimat . Ullstein, 2006.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heimbs ?
2. ↑ jacobs.de - history ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2006 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. 
3. ↑ presseportal.de
4. ^ Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . Volume 1: A-K. 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X , p. 432.
5. ↑ Creator of the merchants and guests of honor - guest list 1952 - 1966 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Weser-Kurier  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (from March 17, 2007)  
7. ↑ Nina Körner: Review ( Memento from October 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), in: "Jüdische Zeitung", October 2006