Werner Otto (entrepreneur)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Memorial plaque on the house where he was born in Seelow, Frankfurter Strasse 57, in October 2017

Werner Otto (born August 13, 1909 in Seelow , Brandenburg ; †  December 21, 2011 in Berlin ) was a German entrepreneur . As the founder of a mail order company, he was involved in the rebuilding of the German economy after the Second World War and is considered one of the economic pioneers of the Federal Republic of Germany . Otto was married three times and had a total of five children.

The Otto family regularly occupies one of the first places on the list of the richest Germans because of the wealth they have acquired ; In 2010, her fortune was estimated at US $ 18.7 billion.

Life

The headquarters of Otto-Versand has been in Hamburg-Bramfeld since 1960
Grave site in the Ohlsdorf cemetery
Sculpture Werner Otto by Bernd Stöcker in front of the AEZ in Hamburg-Poppenbüttel

Werner Otto was born the son of the retailer Wilhelm Otto and his wife Frieda. His mother died shortly after he was born. He attended school in Schwedt , later the grammar school in Prenzlau ( Uckermark ). He had to leave the grammar school before graduation because his father could not afford the school fees after the bankruptcy of his business. Otto began a commercial apprenticeship in Angermünde . Finally he started his own business as a retail salesman in Szczecin .

Otto Strasser was sentenced to two years in prison in 1934 for distributing leaflets for the Nazi ideologist and Hitler opponent Otto Strasser , which he served in Plötzensee prison. When his apartment was searched, not only the leaflets but also two manuscripts of unpublished time-critical novels were confiscated, which to this day have not been found. After his release from prison, Otto initially ran a cigar shop near Berlin's Alexanderplatz . In 1939 he married his first wife Eva, born Haffner, and moved with her to the straight from the German Reich annexed and the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia slammed Kulm on the Vistula over and opened a shoe store there. Their daughter Ingvild was born in 1941, and son Michael was born two years later . He was drafted into the Wehrmacht shortly before the end of the war. His wife Eva continued the business alone. Otto experienced the end of the war with a head injury in a hospital.

As a penniless refugee Otto came to Hamburg with his wife and two children after the war , where he founded a shoe factory. In 1948 he got divorced. After he filed for bankruptcy with his company , he opened a mail order company for shoes in Hamburg-Schnelsen in 1949 with start-up capital of 6,000 marks and three employees . From this the Otto-Versand developed , one of the largest mail order groups in the world, with a turnover of more than 15 billion euros and more than 55,000 employees. The company is still owned by the family today.

In 1952 he married Jutta Becker, and in 1957 his second oldest son Frank was born as the only child from his second marriage.

In 1963 he married Maren Stücken, 30 years his junior. His third and last wife gave birth to Werner Otto's youngest children Katharina and Alexander in the 1960s . Katharina is a filmmaker in New York, Alexander was entrusted with the real estate company ECE by his father.

In 1965 Werner Otto founded ECE Projektmanagement GmbH & Co. KG , which is run independently of the Otto company. Today, ECE is one of the most important developers, realizers, landlords and operators of large commercial properties in Europe. In the early 1960s Werner Otto extended his real estate activities to North America. In Toronto, Canada, he began to set up the Sagitta Group . This real estate group currently manages over 8,000 apartments and around 140,000 m² of commercial space. New apartment buildings have also been built in recent years. It also developed industrial parks. The Sagitta Group is one of the largest companies of its kind in Canada.

At the age of over 60, Werner Otto began building up a US real estate group, the Paramount Group, in New York in 1973 .

Werner Otto was buried at the beginning of 2012 on the grave of his family in the Ohlsdorf cemetery , grid square P 8/9.

Social Commitment

Otto used part of his fortune for social purposes, in particular for foundations or institutions that have since carried his name, as well as for political donations.

The Werner Otto Foundation , which he founded in 1969, provided a total of € 19.7 million to promote medical research at Hamburg's hospitals in the 40 years or so until the end of 2010. The Werner Otto Institute , which is dedicated to the early detection and treatment of children and adolescents with developmental disorders, and the scientific treatment center for childhood cancer at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf benefited from this . This foundation also raised the funds for the “ Werner Otto Scholarship for the Promotion of Young Medical Scientists at the University of Hamburg” and for the prize of the “ Werner Otto Foundation for the Promotion of Medical Research”, which is awarded every two years for outstanding scientific achievements researchers and doctors working in Hamburg are awarded. For 2011 it is endowed with € 8,000 each for two winners.

In 1997, the topping-out ceremony for the church tower that was destroyed in the war was celebrated in Werner Otto's birthplace in Seelow. He had donated the money for the reconstruction.

In Berlin-Neukölln was Werner Otto House opened in the former hearing-impaired children and young people using a cochlear implant to learn to hear again. In 2001 the extension of the Werner Otto Institute was opened, for which Otto donated more than four million marks. In 2003, the reopening of the Belvedere by Federal President Johannes Rau was celebrated on the Pfingstberg in Potsdam . Werner Otto donated 6.5 million euros for the repair. In the same year, the Werner Otto Hall was opened in the Konzerthaus Berlin , for the repair of which Werner Otto had donated 4.5 million euros. In 2006, the renovation of the Hamburg Jungfernstieg, supported by Werner Otto with a donation of five million euros, was completed. Otto donated a new museum building, the Werner Otto Hall , to the American Harvard University to house the art of German-speaking expressionists from the Busch-Reisinger Museum .

In 2009, on the occasion of the celebrations for his 100th birthday, Otto founded the Werner and Maren Otto Foundation , which, with endowment capital of five million euros, is dedicated to supporting poor and elderly people in Berlin and Brandenburg.

Awards and honors

Werner Otto received various awards and medals for his entrepreneurial and social commitment, including a. the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the medal of honor in gold of the Hamburg Senate and the honorary title of Professor of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Ernst Reuter plaque of the Berlin Senate and the Social Market Economy Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for his entrepreneurial activities. Werner Otto was an honorary doctor and honorary senator of the University of Hamburg and laureate of the “Hall of Fame” in the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn. The Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg awarded him the Medal for Art and Science in 1969 and the Mayor Stolten Medal in 2005 . 2006 he was awarded Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck in Potsdam for his services to the Brandenburg state orders . In 2008 Werner Otto and his wife Maren received the James Simon Prize from the James Simon Foundation for exemplary social and cultural commitment in Germany. On August 11, 2009 he was awarded the honorary citizenship of Berlin. At the funeral service on January 19, 2012 for the deceased at the age of 102, former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt gave a speech in which he described Werner Otto as a “benefactor” and the “ideal of a European entrepreneur”.

Web links

Commons : Werner Otto  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mail order company founder Werner Otto is dead. In: Bild . December 27, 2011, accessed December 27, 2011 .
  2. ↑ The king of the mail order company turns 100 years old. In: Die Welt , accessed on August 11, 2009
  3. ^ The World's Billionaires. In: forbes.com , October 3, 2010
  4. ↑ From tobacco dealer to mail order king. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , August 10, 2009, p. 9
  5. ↑ Otto - With the catalog to success ( Memento from July 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Press release of the Werner Otto Foundation. Accessed March 15, 2011 (PDF; 133 kB)
  7. ↑ Werner Otto founds a foundation for the elderly. In: Focus Online , August 11, 2009, accessed December 9, 2009
  8. ↑ Honorary Senators of the University of Hamburg ( Memento from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Platzeck awards Werner Otto Brandenburger Order of Merit. In: stk.brandenburg.de , August 11, 2006
  10. ↑ James Simon Foundation, 2008 Prize Winner. July 3, 2012
  11. ↑ 100 years, more than 100 guests ( Memento from August 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Berliner Zeitung , August 12, 2009
  12. ^ Speech by former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. In: bild.de
personal data
SURNAME Otto, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Seelow
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 2011
Place of death Berlin