Wolfgang Ritter (entrepreneur)
Wolfgang Ritter (born April 4, 1905 in Bremen ; † March 25, 1993 in Baar , Switzerland ) was a Bremen entrepreneur .
biography
Ritter was the son of the tobacco entrepreneur and Senator Hermann Ritter (1878–1949). He was married to Elisabeth Fischl since 1946; both had two sons.
He attended high school up to secondary school. In 1921 he was a volunteer and apprentice in his father's company, the Martin Brinkmann tobacco factory , which was converted into the Martin Brinkmann AG stock corporation in 1929 . In 1924 he made his first trip to the USA and visited tobacco farms in the southern states . He organizes the first direct purchase in the USA. In 1929 he and his brother Helmut (1907–1968) took on leading positions in the company. At that time, the company was Europe's largest tobacco factory with around 2500 employees. In 1931 the company started producing cigarettes. In 1933, when his father became a senator, he took over the management. The father was able to support the company through his role as head of the tobacco industry in Berlin at the Reich government. In 1937 the administration moved from Bremen to Berlin. With an interruption from 1945 to 1948 ( denazification procedure ), he successfully ran the company until 1968 .
After the Second World War , the company was a GmbH and in 1963 became a stock corporation again . Ritter took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board . In 1963 he commissioned Oskar Kokoschka to paint the Bremen market. Peer Export and Lord Extra were some of the successful cigarette brands of the time. In 1966 the South African Rupert Group took over a minority stake in Martin Brinkmann AG and in 1967 Brinkmann was merged with the Rupert Group. In 1968 Ritter ended his active professional life. He moved to Switzerland for tax reasons. In 1972 the Rupert Group indirectly took over the remaining share capital of Martin Brinkmann AG.
The Martin Brinkmann Foundation was established in 1970 and renamed the Wolfgang Ritter Foundation in 1981 . It has supported the University of Bremen , the University of Bremen and the International University Bremen with grants and also finances the annual Wolfgang Ritter Prize .
Ritter had been a commercial member of the Haus Seefahrt Foundation since 1954 . He was Honorary Consul of Peru and President of the Bremen Regional Group of the Olympic Society . He was also committed to tennis. From 1959 to 1960 he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation .
literature
- Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
- Dieter Leuthold : Entrepreneur and patron: Wolfgang Ritter (1905–1993). In: Ronald Mönch (Ed.): In memoriam Wolfgang Ritter. The rector of the university, Bremen 1995, ISBN 3-929089-10-6 , pp. 3-18.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Haus Seefahrt website: 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.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ritter, Wolfgang |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German businessman and entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 4, 1905 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bremen |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 25, 1993 |
| Place of death | Baar , Switzerland |