Werner Reimers

Werner Reimers (born August 3, 1888 in Yokohama in the Japanese Empire , † June 11, 1965 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German entrepreneur who was also involved as a founder and art collector .

life and career

Reimers came from a merchant family in Altona . His father was the overseas merchant Otto Reimers (1849–1925), who lived with his wife Elisabeth, born in 1874. Muhle, came to Japan to work for the Paul Heinemann insurance and trading agency . During this time Reimers was born in Japan. In 1891 the family returned to Germany, where Reimer's father set up his own trading company.

Although he would rather study Reimers followed the commercial tradition of his family and went 1907 back to Japan, where he initially for the trading company H. Ahrens & Co was involved. In 1912 he took over the power of attorney for the Japanese business of his father's company. He lived in Yokohama, Kyoto and Tokyo . During the First World War , Reimers was banned from doing business in Japan. After the end of the war, most of the business assets were confiscated by the Japanese government. In order to bring the approximately 5,000 German prisoners of war , including Reimer's father, from Japan to Germany as quickly as possible, Reimers used his contacts from 1919 to procure cargo ships for passenger transport services and have them converted. For the subsequent repatriation he received the Cross of Merit for War Aid in 1920 . From 1920 to 1922 Reimers brokered research projects with his own company at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes for mines in Japan, Korea and Manchuria . In the same year Reimers returned to Germany.

After founding his own trading company unsuccessfully, Reimers came across the British invention of a continuously variable transmission ( PIV ). He bought the patent and in 1928 founded an English-German gear company in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe . In 1931 Reimers took full ownership of the company as PIV Antrieb Werner Reimers KG . The number of employees in the company increased continuously during the 1930s. The company was known for promoting employee benefits. The gears produced were mainly used in the textile, food, wood, paper, metal and chemical industries and production was an important part of the war economy . Reimers, who joined the NSDAP at the time of National Socialism , was temporarily banned from working in 1945, but was finally classified as a follower and was able to run the company again from 1948.

Since 1960 the company has been called PIV Antrieb Werner Reimers GmbH & Co. KG . By the time Reimer's death, the number of employees grew to 1,800, making it the largest company in Bad Homburg. After Reimer's death, however, the company's success story did not continue and so the company was bought by an Italian group of companies in 2001.

Reimers as donor and art collector

From a young age Reimers had the goal of promoting art and science, and he continued to be interested in research into the origins of man. Since he did not have the time for his own research due to his professional activity, he used his wealth to support research projects and to collect research objects.

As early as 1935 he became a member of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research , in 1956 he was elected to the board of directors of the society and in 1957 he was awarded the Senckenberg Medal. For several years he was in talks with society in order to finance the establishment of a (paleo) anthropological research department.

As the head of a successful company in the post-war years, he therefore decided to set up a foundation to promote the science of the origins of mankind, which was to be closely linked to the Senckenberg Society. The foundation was to be maintained from the profits of his company, which was also the case from 1968.

On his 75th birthday, on August 3, 1963, Reimers announced the establishment of the Werner Reimers Foundation for anthropogenetic research to the workforce of his company . Before his death, however, only the statutes and the basic guidelines for funding activities could be laid down.

In accordance with these basic principles, after Reimer's death in 1968, the Reimers Foundation acquired one of the most important collections on the history of the creation of mankind, the Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald Collection. The collection offers a large amount of evidence from human prehistory, such as the approximately 1.5 million year old skull roof Sangiran II , which Koenigswald found in 1937 during excavations on Java . As a permanent loan to the Senckenberg Society, it was supplemented by further funding and has since formed the basis for the paleoanthropology department founded there in 1965. Parts of the collection are exhibited in the Senckenberg Nature Museum.

In accordance with these statutes, the Reimers Foundation concentrates on developing and processing the collection scientifically together with the museum.

Furthermore, Reimers put on an important collection of Japanese and Chinese art , which shows Reimer's connection with the East Asian region. The core holdings of the collection - including ceramics , fan leaves from the 15th and 18th centuries and a Chinese stone buddha from the 8th century - are handed over to the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Arts . An additional focus of the Reimers Foundation is therefore also to promote the scientific dialogue between Germany and East Asia together with additional partners.

After the dissolution of PIV Antrieb Werner Reimers GmbH & Co. KG , the foundation initially lost its funds, but survived the crisis and is still active today. The seat of the foundation is Bad Homburg.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Otto Reimers' curriculum vitae at www.schleswig-holstein-und-japan.de
2. ↑ Short biography of Werner Reimers on the Meiji Portraits homepage
3. ↑ http://www.brevini.de/de/ueber-uns-deutschland/geschichte-zukunft/

Web links

• Short biography of Werner Reimers on the homepage of the Werner Reimers Foundation