Wilhelm Becker (entrepreneur)

Wilhelm Becker (born December 31, 1913 in Osburg , Hunsrück ; † December 4, 1994 in Düsseldorf ) was the founder of the Auto Becker car dealership .

Life

Wilhelm Becker was the twelfth child of a small farmer from Osburg . Because he was the seventh son in a row, Kaiser Wilhelm II was an honorary godfather and he was given the name Wilhelm. Becker described his homeland as one of the poorest regions in Germany . As a child, he had to work on his parents' farm and at the age of 14 he had to take on a job because there was no money available for vocational training.

So Becker first became a lumberjack and worker in the vineyard, then a casual worker on a manor. In order to escape the meager life, he applied to the Reichswehr in 1930 at the age of 17, but did not have high hopes of being accepted. The Reichswehr consisted of only 100,000 men and staying there was popular because it was practically the only way to advance as an unskilled worker. To his surprise, Becker was accepted.

The Reichswehr assigned Becker to the first fully motorized German test unit, which was stationed in Meiningen in southern Thuringia . There he got to know the function and repair of all parts of vehicle technology. The transition from the Reichswehr to the Wehrmacht finally ended his military career, and Becker returned to civilian life as a private with all his driving licenses.

First Becker worked as a truck driver, then as a private driver until he read an advertisement for Opel in a newspaper . The company was looking for workers for the newly built Opel factory in Brandenburg . After working on the assembly line, there followed a position as foreman and finally the break-in of the vehicles produced. The end of an engagement finally caused Becker to leave Berlin in 1936.

Becker went to the police and was called to Cologne, where he found accommodation after training with the traffic police. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, his unit was ordered to Vienna. During the transport, the truck driver failed due to a faint attack. Becker stepped in, the superiors were impressed by the driving skills, so that followed a training as a police driving instructor in Berlin. Becker spent the war as a police fleet and workshop manager in Poland, Russia and finally Norway, where he stayed as a prisoner of war for two years until he came back to Germany.

Becker found himself in Düsseldorf and thought it would be better to stay there instead of going back to the Hunsrück, although the food supply in the countryside was less problematic. He tried to find accommodation at the local Opel subsidiary, but it first had to take on the previous employees and then went into business for himself. It began with a barter, a friend of a friend owned 17 "tires, but needed size 16". A man who lived in a house with Becker had the opposite problem and was able to be put through.

On September 27, 1947, Becker finally founded a used car dealership on a rubble site, from which the world-famous Auto Becker company developed in the following years.

In his book "Meine Freunde die Millionär", Bernt Engelmann tells us that he was Becker's first customer. In 1947 he had sold him with great eloquence a scrap-ripe - and, as it later turned out, stolen - Wanderer built in 1935.

Numerous celebrities were among the dealer's customers. One of Becker's friends was Walter Scheel , with whom he often played sports at the Hubbelrath Golf Club .

Wilhelm Becker had the sons Helmut (* 1942), Achim (* 1950) and Harald (* 1953), all three of whom joined the company. Achim and Harald founded Data Becker independently .

Honors

• 1979: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1991: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

• Wilhelm Becker: The man with the first name car. Experiences, tips and advice on everything to do with buying a car. 2nd Edition. Econ, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-430-11245-1 .

Web links

• History of the car dealership on the Auto Becker Consulting website