Wirtz (family)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wirtz is the name of a German entrepreneurial family from Stolberg in the Rhineland , which has achieved international recognition as the founder of the cosmetics manufacturer Mäurer & Wirtz , the detergent factory Dalli-Werke and the pharmaceutical company Grünenthal GmbH , but also through the Contergan scandal . Based on their total assets of around 2.5 billion euros, the Wirtz family and their companies were ranked 40th in the list of the 500 richest Germans in 2013 .

Family business chronology

The beginnings

The rise of the family began with Andreas August Wirtz (1822–1884), the son of the widow Maria Catharina Wirtz's first marriage, who was apprenticed to his stepfather Michael Mäurer, who ran a bakery and a grocery store in Stolberg. After his marriage to Apollonia Marx, Andreas August Wirtz became a partner in his father's business, which from then on operated under the name Mäurer & Wirtz . Now August Wirtz expanded the company to include a soap factory and received a license for this from the Prussian government on May 19, 1851.

Second generation

Headquarters of the Wirtz family at the Kupferhof Grünenthal

Franz Maria Wirtz (1859–1930), the youngest son of Andreas August and Apollonia Wirtz, joined the family company in 1875 as a trained chemist and began producing the so-called Dalli soap in 1885 and one year after his father's death , whose name was legally protected as a Dalli branded article (DMA) from 1899 onwards when it was registered with the imperial patent office . After the previous production facilities were no longer able to cope with the growing demands, the now widowed mother Apollonia and Franz Wirtz acquired the Kupferhof Grünenthal in 1887 and at the same time gave up their grocery store . Apollonia Wirtz, the sole owner of the soap factory Mäurer & Wirtz at the time , concluded a contract with the mayor of Stolberg on December 22, 1888 for the purchase of a larger area “in Grünenthal”. The soap factory moved after Franz Wirtz had received approval for the new location from Otto von Bismarck in the autumn of 1888 , until the autumn of 1889. Years later, however, this premises also proved to be too small and therefore Franz Wirtz bought from the in 1909 The Prym family called the Dollgarten . This English garden in the Vicht valley, once laid out by the Prym family , was part of the Dollartshammer copper yard , where their brass factory William Prym & Co KG was located. Wirtz now gradually relocated its production facilities from the Kupferhof Grünenthal to the factory premises in Dollgarten, which also had an economically necessary rail connection. In addition, Franz Wirtz also took over the office of President of the Aachen Chamber of Commerce and Industry until his death in 1930 after the First World War .

Third generation

Dalli-Werke Stolberg

In the early 1920s, Franz Wirtz's three sons, the businessman Hermann Wirtz (1896–1973), the engineer Alfred Wirtz (1896–1963) and the perfumer Artur Wirtz (1902–1940), joined the company in the third generation a. In the following years they set up branches and sales offices in Cologne and Essen, among others, and took over Doering-Werke AG in Berlin and the Riva soap factory in Vienna before the outbreak of World War II . The number of employees was now around 700. During the war, Mäurer & Wirtz produced standardized soap for the German army and new fat-free Dalli products for the German civilian population. This production could be maintained until the American invasion in autumn 1944, then it was temporarily stopped due to the lack of raw materials, although the production facilities themselves were largely spared from destruction by bombing.

The early death of Artur Wirtz in 1940 forced the company to reorganize the business areas after the war and also to separate from the branches in Berlin and Vienna. Hermann Wirtz, who had been managing director of the DMA products division since his father's death in 1930 , also became a managing partner of Mäurer & Wirtz in 1946 and at the same time founded Grünenthal GmbH as a further mainstay for the pharmaceutical sector based on the vacant Kupferhof Grünenthal. A year later, he was the first German company to receive approval rights for penicillin . Finally, in 1950, the joint production facility at Dollgarten was separated into the now independent company Mäurer & Wirtz for soaps and body care products and the Dalli-Werke for DMA products . As a result, a total of three company divisions had formed, the management of which was now divided between the three tribes. In addition, the descendants of these family lines were intertwined with each other through mutual acquisition of shares or temporary assumption of management and supervisory board positions.

None of the three brothers has so far been able to prove membership in or cooperation with Nazi organizations based on publicly available sources . What is undisputed, however, is that Grünenthal GmbH hired chemists and doctors exposed to the Nazis, for example IG Farben board member Otto Ambros , typhus researcher Heinrich Mückter , concentration camp doctors Heinz Baumkötter and Ernst Günther Schenck, and racial ideologist Martin Staemmler .

The three sole proprietorships increased sales and the number of employees in the following decades. The product ranges were expanded, competing companies and new brands were taken over.

At the beginning of the 1960s Grünenthal GmbH hit the headlines with the over-the-counter sleeping pill Contergan, which has been available since 1957 . As it turned out, the intake of Contergan in pregnant women resulted in damage to the fetuses, so that the children were born with multiple deformities. These incidents triggered the so-called Contergan scandal , which, after years of legal disputes, ended in 1970 with a settlement. In this context, the managing partner Hermann Wirtz resigned from his offices, handed over the management of the company to his son Michael Wirtz (* 1939) and at the same time founded a foundation for financial support of the Contergan victims with a volume of initially 100 million DM. which was increased several times by further three-digit million amounts of the federal government. This funding pot was topped up by the company and the Federal Republic of Germany by 50 million euros each in 2009 - after protests by the approximately 2,800 survivors and a public appraisal, including in the documentary One Single Tablet . After these funds have also been used up, the state pays the additional costs for the victims who are still alive. As a further consequence of the thalidomide scandal, the Drugs Act in Germany was tightened in 1976 and new test requirements for pharmaceuticals were issued.

Fourth generation

Grünenthal GmbH in Eilendorf

While in the next generation, the cousins ​​Richard (1933–1992), Andreas (1934–2018) and Hermann Wirtz the Younger (* 1944) started their work at Mäurer & Wirtz and the Dalli factory , Hermann's son Michael Wirtz managed the Grünenthal GmbH , which expanded worldwide under his management in the following years. Towards the end of his service, he arranged for the company to move gradually to the Eilendorf industrial area . Furthermore, Michael's other cousin Franz A. Wirtz (1932–2017) was a member of the executive board of Grünenthal GmbH for more than 35 years and was responsible for research and development. After he had retired from Grünenthal GmbH in 2000 due to age , he founded the new biopharmaceutical company Paion in Aachen together with other scientists in the same year, and was elected to the supervisory board until he left in 2007. In addition, he had been a member of the supervisory board of the biotechnology company Qiagen since 1989 .

Of these five cousins, four have now left the operational business of the company management either for reasons of age or because of conflicts of interest. Only the younger Hermann Wirtz currently has the management of now to Dalli-Group summarized Dalli-Werke GmbH & Co KG and the Mäurer & Wirtz GmbH & Co. KG holds that since 1990 prepared as a 100% subsidiary in the Dalli Group integrated had been.

Fifth generation

From the next generation, only two family members were so far and they only worked for a relatively short time in the operational business of the Wirtz companies. Albrecht Wirtz (* 1967), son of Andreas and grandson of Artur Wirtz, was a member of the management team at Dalli and, together with his uncle Hermann Wirtz, was still on the management board of WIN AEROSOL Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH from 2002 . In 2006 he resigned from all offices and later opened a noble café in Hungary with his wife, the art historian Ágnes Wirtz. Sebastian Wirtz (* 1970), the son of Grünenthal managing director Michael Wirtz, succeeded his father in 2005, but left again in 2008 after the company decided to appoint an external chairman of the management board ( CEO ) .

Company links and operating figures

As already mentioned above, the individual tribes with different shares in their family businesses were intertwined over many decades. Until 2005 the brothers Michael and Hermann Wirtz junior together held approx. 73% of the shares in the Dalli Group and 51% in Grünenthal GmbH . Her cousins ​​Andreas and Franz Wirtz 24% shares in Grünenthal GmbH and the heirs of the late Richard (1933–1992) 27% shares in the Dalli Group and 25% in Grünenthal GmbH. To date, other smaller shares have gone to the various daughters and children-in-law of the respective cousins ​​and thus, according to Creditreform, there were a total of 19 people among the shareholders.

With the resignation of Albrecht Wirtz in 2005 at the latest, the division of the company's shares into the three family lines broke up and as a result the brothers Hermann and Michael Wirtz secured Albrecht's shares as well as those of Albrecht's uncle and Paion founder Franz A. Wirtz . Since the daughters of the Richard Wirtz tribe had already decided in the previous years not to work in the family empire, the entire free float fell to the brothers Hermann and Michael Wirtz. With this, Hermann Wirtz secured the management of both Mäurer & Wirtz and Dalli, which he exercised together with external shareholders and in 2008, against the will of his brother Michael, also succeeded in ensuring that Grünenthal GmbH after the resignation of Michael's son Sebastian Wirtz should be led by an outside CEO. Michael Wirtz brought numerous lawsuits against his family against the use of external shareholders in the three companies, as he saw this as a threat to the protection of trade secrets, but could not get his way. After Michael Wirtz had to give up his position on the advisory board for reasons of age in 2010 and is therefore no longer represented on any committee, only Hermann Wirtz is the last of the family to work in important positions in the company empire, which he is in the near future for reasons of age and contract Must give up the future.

With around 6,900 employees worldwide, the Wirtz family's entire group of companies generated around 1.79 billion euros, of which the Dalli Group with around 1,600 employees around 724 million euros (2009), and Mäurer & Wirtz with 400 employees around 162 million euros. Euros (2011) and around 910 million euros (2010) fell on Grünenthal with 4900 employees.

Social Commitment

In addition to their respective professional tasks and obligations, individual members of the family have performed numerous voluntary tasks in political and social life.

The wife of Franz Maria Wirtz, Josefine Wirtz, b. Brückmann, was made an honorary citizen of the city of Stolberg in 1948 for her social services , after she had organized, among other things, a meal for the needy at the Kupferhof Grünenthal between 1918 and 1925.

At the moment it is mainly Michael Wirtz and his cousin Franz A. Wirtz who have taken on a large number of offices and functions in business and politics as well as in society and who are particularly committed to new treatments and therapies with social components in the health sector .

Genealogical overview (excerpt)

Grave site of the Franz Wirtz family in Stolberg / Rhld.

The members of the family that are important for the various corporate groups include:

  • Andreas August Wirtz (December 5, 1822 - January 23, 1884), married. with Apollonia, b. Marx (February 8, 1821 - December 27, 1889)
    • Franz Maria Wirtz (May 9, 1859 - November 3, 1930), chemist and honorary doctorate from RWTH Aachen University in 1926, married. with Josephine, b. Brückmann (February 8, 1868 - October 15, 1957), honorary citizen of the city of Stolberg and founder of "Chemie Grünenthal"
      • Hermann (August) Wirtz (October 20, 1896 - December 19, 1973), businessman and honorary citizen of RWTH Aachen University, married. with Edith, b. Schniewind (April 29, 1908 - December 17, 1989)
        • Michael Wirtz (born January 1939), business economist and honorary senator of RWTH Aachen University
          • Sebastian Wirtz (* 1970), civil engineer
        • Hermann Wirtz (born November 12, 1944)
      • Alfred (Richard) Wirtz (October 20, 1896 - December 28, 1963), chemist and engineer, married. with Ruth Latten (born October 26, 1906)
        • Richard Wirtz (April 19, 1933 - January 20, 1992), businessman
      • Artur (Franz) Wirtz (November 17, 1902 - July 9, 1940), merchant and perfumer, married. with Hilde, b. Janus (July 17, 1907 - January 2, 1997)
        • Andreas Wirtz (January 28, 1934 - December 3, 2018), chemist
          • Albrecht Wirtz (born March 20, 1967)
        • Franz (Arthur) Wirtz (November 14, 1932 - July 22, 2017), chemist and honorary citizen of RWTH Aachen University

Further information, press reports and evidence on the Stolberg family Wirtz and their group of companies can be found at:

literature

  • Susanne Henrich-Ramm: From soap boiler to large industrialist from Stoiberger: Franz Wirtz (1859–1930) . In: Paul Thomes, Peter M. Quadflieg (ed.): Entrepreneurs in the Aachen region - between the Maas and the Rhine . Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2015, ISBN 978-3-402-13107-7 , pp. 153-188.
  • Klara van Eyll : From the copper farm to pharmaceutical research. The Grünenthal farm and the Wirtz family. In: the scales. Magazine of Grünenthal GmbH, Aachen. Volume 35, 1996, No. 2, pp. 48-57.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "The 500 richest Germans", manager-magazin special issue, October 2013, p. 28
  2. ↑ Klara van Eyll : From the copper yard to pharmaceutical research. The Grünenthal farm and the Wirtz family. In: the scales. Magazine of Grünenthal GmbH, Aachen. Volume 35, 1996, number 2 (pp. 45-88), pp. 48-57, here: pp. 48 f.
  3. ^ Jewish businesses in Berlin 1930-1945 [1] , chemistry and drugstore goods; last accessed on February 2, 2014
  4. ^ Gerhard Mauz: A hike on the razor blade , In: Der Spiegel from May 27, 1968
  5. ↑ Hayke Lanwert: How Nazi doctors got up at the Contergan company Grünenthal , derwesten.de, March 12, 2012, accessed on June 8, 2019.
  6. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 418
  7. ↑ Invoice without Wirtz , In: Der Spiegel from February 20, 1963
  8. ↑ 100 million for Contergan victims , on: süddeutsche.de of July 15, 2009
  9. ^ Conterganskandal: State pays the costs , In: Spiegel online from April 4, 2013
  10. ↑ Paion Annual Report 2004 - Brief CV Wirtz on p. 72 ( Memento of April 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.6 MB)
  11. ↑ WIN AEROSOL Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH ( Memento from September 9, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  12. ↑ Publications from the commercial register
  13. ↑ The founder inheritance resigns , In: manager magazin online from November 12, 2008
  14. ↑ Martin Noé: The Milking Stool Theory , In: manager magazin online from July 21, 2006
  15. ↑ Distribution of shares in 2005 , manager magazin online from July 21, 2006
  16. ↑ Dalli: Anxiety about the workplace goes around , In: Aachener Zeitung of March 7, 2013
  17. ↑ Sven Böll: The Pill War , In: manager magazin online from March 6, 2013
  18. ↑ Dalli company figures, 2009 , In Wer zu Wem company directory
  19. ↑ Company figures Mäurer & Wirtz, 2011 , In Wer zu Wem company directory
  20. ↑ Operating figures Grünenthal GmbH, 2010 , In Wer zu Wem company directory
  21. ↑ a b Complete Register of the German Family Archives , Volume 40, Pages 157, 159
  22. ↑ Klara van Eyll : From the copper yard to pharmaceutical research. The Grünenthal farm and the Wirtz family. In: the scales. Magazine of Grünenthal GmbH, Aachen. Volume 35, 1996, number 2 (pp. 45-88), pp. 48-57, here: pp. 50-53
  23. ↑ a b c Arens / Janssen: Club Aachener Casino , 2nd edition 1964, page 255, 256
  24. ↑ Life data on aachen-gedenken.de