A major contributor to this article appears to have a
close connection with its subject. (September 2019) |
Reinhard Mohn | |
---|---|
Born | 29 June 1921 |
Died | 3 October 2009
Steinhagen,
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany | (aged 88)
Occupation | Businessman |
Spouses |
Reinhard Mohn (29 June 1921 – 3 October 2009) was a German billionaire businessman and philanthropist. [1] Under his leadership, Bertelsmann, once a medium-sized printing and publishing house, established in 1835, developed into a global media conglomerate. [2] [3] In 1977, he founded the non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung, [4] which is today one of the largest foundations in Germany, with worldwide reach. [5] [6]
Mohn received numerous domestic and international awards, including the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Spain's Prince of Asturias Award. [7] [8]
Born in 1921 as the fifth child of Agnes Mohn (née Seippel) and Heinrich Mohn , [9] Reinhard represented the fifth generation of the shareholding families of Bertelsmann. [10] In 1887, his grandfather, Johannes Mohn , had taken over the management of the printing and publishing house from his father-in-law, Heinrich Bertelsmann , son of Carl Bertelsmann. [11] [12]
Raised in a strict Protestant family, [1] Mohn earned his German baccalaureate ( Abitur) at the Evangelisch Stiftische Gymnasium Gütersloh in 1939 and went on to complete his Reichsarbeitsdienst, the official labor service of the Third Reich. [13] [14] Afterwards, he volunteered for military service with the Luftwaffe, originally with the aim of becoming a pilot. [14] After serving in an air-base command on the Western Front, Mohn was stationed with an anti-aircraft unit, advancing in rank from private to sergeant, and in 1942 achieving the rank of lieutenant. [15] [16] From France, via Italy, his regiment was moved to Tunisia. [17] On 5 May 1943, Mohn became a U.S. prisoner of war, [14] and in mid-June, he was taken across the Atlantic to Camp Concordia, an internment center in Kansas for German prisoners of war. [18] According to Mohn's accounts, he was profoundly influenced by this experience; [19] as one example, he began reading American management literature for the first time. [20]
In January 1946, Reinhard Mohn returned to Gütersloh. [1] His oldest brother, Hans Heinrich Mohn, had died in 1939, and Sigbert Mohn, his second-oldest brother, was still a prisoner of war. Reinhard initially took an apprenticeship as a bookseller, and later joined his father's business. [21] His father, Heinrich Mohn, had come under the scrutiny of British occupation authorities because he was a supporting member of the SS, because he had donated to other Nazi organizations, and for other reasons. [22] In April 1947, Heinrich Mohn transferred his publishing license to his son Reinhard, who managed the publishing business from then on. [23] [24]
In 1948, Mohn married Magdalene Raßfeld, whom he knew from his school days. [25] The couple had three children: Johannes, Susanne and Christiane; [26] they divorced in 1982. [27] [28] Later that year, Mohn married Elisabeth Scholz, [29] with whom he had had an affair since the 1950s and fathered three children in the 1960s. [30] After the wedding, Mohn adopted their three mutual children: Brigitte, Christoph and Andreas. [31]
In 1947, Mohn took over the management of the C. Bertelsmann publishing company, which had been largely destroyed by bombing raids during World War II. [32] In 1950, he established the Bertelsmann Lesering book club, which formed the basis for the fast growth of the company in the decades that followed. [33] [34] From the beginning, he closely involved employees, e.g. through the loan participation program introduced in 1951. [35] In 1969, he launched an employee profit-sharing model, viewed as exemplary throughout Germany. [36] [37] [38] As a businessman, Mohn was consistent in his efforts to grow the traditional publishing business into a media conglomerate: Thus, he entered music and film production, invested in the magazine business, and promoted international expansion. [39] A merger of Bertelsmann with the Axel Springer group planned in the years 1969/70 did not come to fruition. [40]
In 1971, Mohn transformed the family company into a joint stock corporation. [4] [41] In this way, he created another structural prerequisite for Bertelsmann's rise to one of the world's leading media groups. [10] Mohn became chairman of the executive board, and in this position continued a corporate culture based on partnership, [42] the essential component of which involves dialogue between management and employees. [39] In 1976, he had a new corporate headquarters built, where Bertelsmann's home offices are still located today. [43] During this time, Mohn also began an entry into the U.S. publishing business, of vital importance to Bertelsmann. [44] The acquisition of Bantam Books (1977/1980) and Doubleday (1986) created the largest trade-book publishing group in the United States, at the time. [45] [46]
In 1981, Mohn moved from the executive board to the supervisory board, which he chaired for another ten years, [47] [48] still remaining involved in business operations. [49] At 70, he finally stepped down from his duties, and remained honorary chairman of the supervisory board. [50] From then on, he dedicated his efforts primarily to the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation. [9] [1] In 1999, Mohn transferred his sole control over the voting rights of roughly 90% of Bertelsmann shares to the Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft, [51] [52] a move designed to ensure the continuity of his company. [53] [54] [55]
In 1977, Mohn established the non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung, [56] initially endowed with capital of 100,000 Deutsche Mark. [57] Mohn supported the management-driven concept of an operating foundation, independently developing and managing projects. [58] He directed the Bertelsmann Stiftung to help fund the improvement of the Gütersloh City Library and established the Carl Bertelsmann Prize (today the Reinhard Mohn Prize). [59] [60]
In the 1980s, the Bertelsmann Stiftung became the key focus of Mohn's corporate citizenship activities. [61] In 1993, the majority of shareholdings in Bertelsmann was transferred to the foundation, [62] making the Bertelsmann Stiftung the largest shareholder in the group. [63] Capital shares and voting rights were strictly separated in the gift agreement, so that neither the foundation nor the group can exert any significant controlling influence over the other. [63]
Mohn massively increased the Bertelsmann Stiftung's budget in the 1990s. [64] [65] In addition to projects in Germany, he supported projects in Spain, such as the Fundació Biblioteca d'Alcúdia Can Torró on Mallorca. In 1995, he founded the Fundación Bertelsmann , now based in Barcelona and Madrid, as an independent subsidiary foundation [66] that works to promote dual training to reduce youth unemployment. [67] Founded in 2008, the Bertelsmann Foundation North America, headquartered in Washington, D.C., deals with transatlantic cooperation, among other issues. [68]
In the early years, the founder was the sole Executive Board member of the Bertelsmann Stiftung. In 1979, a managing director was hired; from 1983, Mohn was supported by an Advisory Board, and in 1993, the Executive Board was also expanded. [69] After 1998, Mohn withdrew from executive management: Initially, he stepped down from his position as Chairman of the Executive Board, and a year later also withdrew as the Chairman of the Advisory Board. [70] As a result of several structural and personnel changes, Mohn held the interim chairmanship of both Bertelsmann Stiftung executive bodies again from the end of 2000 until mid-2001, when he was succeeded by Gunter Thielen as Chairman of the Executive Board. [71] [72] [73] In 2004, he permanently stepped down from the Executive Board of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, but as the founder, according to the statutes, he remained a member of the Board of Trustees until he died in 2009. [74]
From the late 1980s on, Reinhard Mohn was also involved in journalistic activities as an essayist and nonfiction book author. [95] He wrote several books and magazine articles in which he dealt with topics concerning society and business. [96] [97] In 1985, he published an essay on "Vanity in the Life of the Executive", in which he decried the archetype of a self-centered managerial class. [98] With his statements on this topic, Mohn's perspectives repeatedly drew controversy. [38] [99] In 1986, with the worldwide publication of his book "Success through Partnership", he laid out the principles of corporate culture at Bertelsmann. [100] [101] In "Humanity Wins", published in 2000, he strongly advocated an executive style in a spirit of partnership as a paradigm of a modern organizational structure. [102] [103] "An Age of New Possibilities" from 2001, defined a regulatory framework, which at its core is defined by entrepreneurship. [104] [105] In 2008, his last work was published as "A Global Lesson", in which Mohn provided an autobiographical account of the formative elements of his own life. [106] [107] [108] It was written with author Andrea Stoll , who also wrote the script to the film "Es müssen mehr Köpfe ans Denken kommen" (More minds need to start thinking) from Roland Suso Richter. [109] This film was the gift from the Bertelsmann Executive Board to Mohn on his 85th birthday in 2006. [110]
In 1991, on the 70th birthday of Reinhard Mohn, the Bertelsmann Executive Board established a Reinhard Mohn Endowed Chair for Corporate Governance, Business Ethics and Social Evolution at the private University of Witten/Herdecke. [111]
In 2006, Mohn created the Reinhard Mohn Foundation , an eponymous foundation bearing his name, which has been run since 2010 by his son, Christoph Mohn. [112] [113] After the senior Mohn's death, the foundation gained shareholdings in Bertelsmann, which Reinhard Mohn had held via an intermediary company. [114]
In 2010, the University of Witten/Herdecke honored Mohn by establishing an Institute for Corporate Management and Corporate Governance, [115] [116] today known as the Reinhard Mohn Institute of Management. [117] It also houses the Reinhard Mohn Chair of Management, endowed in 1991, and two professorships, one for strategy and organization and one for research. [118]
In 2011, the Bertelsmann Stiftung awarded the first Reinhard Mohn Prize, [119] which upholds and advances the tradition of the Carl Bertelsmann Prize. [120] This award honors internationally renowned individuals for forward-looking solutions to societal and political challenges. [121]
Mohn was criticized for how he dealt with the National Socialist past of Bertelsmann. [122] [123] After questions arose in the 1990s as to the company's role in the Third Reich, [124] Bertelsmann, with the support of Mohn, established an independent historical commission, seeking to come to terms with its involvement in the Nazi era. [125] The commission presented its final report in 2002 and found that the decades-long account of its alleged involvement in a publishing company for the resistance could not be substantiated. [126] [127] On the contrary, Bertelsmann was the largest book producer for the Wehrmacht. [128]
In 2010, author and journalist Thomas Schuler criticized a "tax-saving interrelationship" between Bertelsmann and the foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung. The structures set up by Mohn were alleged to have saved his family billions in inheritance tax. [129] However, this tax would not have been owed, according to the prevailing legal view at that time. [130] [131]
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A major contributor to this article appears to have a
close connection with its subject. (September 2019) |
Reinhard Mohn | |
---|---|
Born | 29 June 1921 |
Died | 3 October 2009
Steinhagen,
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany | (aged 88)
Occupation | Businessman |
Spouses |
Reinhard Mohn (29 June 1921 – 3 October 2009) was a German billionaire businessman and philanthropist. [1] Under his leadership, Bertelsmann, once a medium-sized printing and publishing house, established in 1835, developed into a global media conglomerate. [2] [3] In 1977, he founded the non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung, [4] which is today one of the largest foundations in Germany, with worldwide reach. [5] [6]
Mohn received numerous domestic and international awards, including the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Spain's Prince of Asturias Award. [7] [8]
Born in 1921 as the fifth child of Agnes Mohn (née Seippel) and Heinrich Mohn , [9] Reinhard represented the fifth generation of the shareholding families of Bertelsmann. [10] In 1887, his grandfather, Johannes Mohn , had taken over the management of the printing and publishing house from his father-in-law, Heinrich Bertelsmann , son of Carl Bertelsmann. [11] [12]
Raised in a strict Protestant family, [1] Mohn earned his German baccalaureate ( Abitur) at the Evangelisch Stiftische Gymnasium Gütersloh in 1939 and went on to complete his Reichsarbeitsdienst, the official labor service of the Third Reich. [13] [14] Afterwards, he volunteered for military service with the Luftwaffe, originally with the aim of becoming a pilot. [14] After serving in an air-base command on the Western Front, Mohn was stationed with an anti-aircraft unit, advancing in rank from private to sergeant, and in 1942 achieving the rank of lieutenant. [15] [16] From France, via Italy, his regiment was moved to Tunisia. [17] On 5 May 1943, Mohn became a U.S. prisoner of war, [14] and in mid-June, he was taken across the Atlantic to Camp Concordia, an internment center in Kansas for German prisoners of war. [18] According to Mohn's accounts, he was profoundly influenced by this experience; [19] as one example, he began reading American management literature for the first time. [20]
In January 1946, Reinhard Mohn returned to Gütersloh. [1] His oldest brother, Hans Heinrich Mohn, had died in 1939, and Sigbert Mohn, his second-oldest brother, was still a prisoner of war. Reinhard initially took an apprenticeship as a bookseller, and later joined his father's business. [21] His father, Heinrich Mohn, had come under the scrutiny of British occupation authorities because he was a supporting member of the SS, because he had donated to other Nazi organizations, and for other reasons. [22] In April 1947, Heinrich Mohn transferred his publishing license to his son Reinhard, who managed the publishing business from then on. [23] [24]
In 1948, Mohn married Magdalene Raßfeld, whom he knew from his school days. [25] The couple had three children: Johannes, Susanne and Christiane; [26] they divorced in 1982. [27] [28] Later that year, Mohn married Elisabeth Scholz, [29] with whom he had had an affair since the 1950s and fathered three children in the 1960s. [30] After the wedding, Mohn adopted their three mutual children: Brigitte, Christoph and Andreas. [31]
In 1947, Mohn took over the management of the C. Bertelsmann publishing company, which had been largely destroyed by bombing raids during World War II. [32] In 1950, he established the Bertelsmann Lesering book club, which formed the basis for the fast growth of the company in the decades that followed. [33] [34] From the beginning, he closely involved employees, e.g. through the loan participation program introduced in 1951. [35] In 1969, he launched an employee profit-sharing model, viewed as exemplary throughout Germany. [36] [37] [38] As a businessman, Mohn was consistent in his efforts to grow the traditional publishing business into a media conglomerate: Thus, he entered music and film production, invested in the magazine business, and promoted international expansion. [39] A merger of Bertelsmann with the Axel Springer group planned in the years 1969/70 did not come to fruition. [40]
In 1971, Mohn transformed the family company into a joint stock corporation. [4] [41] In this way, he created another structural prerequisite for Bertelsmann's rise to one of the world's leading media groups. [10] Mohn became chairman of the executive board, and in this position continued a corporate culture based on partnership, [42] the essential component of which involves dialogue between management and employees. [39] In 1976, he had a new corporate headquarters built, where Bertelsmann's home offices are still located today. [43] During this time, Mohn also began an entry into the U.S. publishing business, of vital importance to Bertelsmann. [44] The acquisition of Bantam Books (1977/1980) and Doubleday (1986) created the largest trade-book publishing group in the United States, at the time. [45] [46]
In 1981, Mohn moved from the executive board to the supervisory board, which he chaired for another ten years, [47] [48] still remaining involved in business operations. [49] At 70, he finally stepped down from his duties, and remained honorary chairman of the supervisory board. [50] From then on, he dedicated his efforts primarily to the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation. [9] [1] In 1999, Mohn transferred his sole control over the voting rights of roughly 90% of Bertelsmann shares to the Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft, [51] [52] a move designed to ensure the continuity of his company. [53] [54] [55]
In 1977, Mohn established the non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung, [56] initially endowed with capital of 100,000 Deutsche Mark. [57] Mohn supported the management-driven concept of an operating foundation, independently developing and managing projects. [58] He directed the Bertelsmann Stiftung to help fund the improvement of the Gütersloh City Library and established the Carl Bertelsmann Prize (today the Reinhard Mohn Prize). [59] [60]
In the 1980s, the Bertelsmann Stiftung became the key focus of Mohn's corporate citizenship activities. [61] In 1993, the majority of shareholdings in Bertelsmann was transferred to the foundation, [62] making the Bertelsmann Stiftung the largest shareholder in the group. [63] Capital shares and voting rights were strictly separated in the gift agreement, so that neither the foundation nor the group can exert any significant controlling influence over the other. [63]
Mohn massively increased the Bertelsmann Stiftung's budget in the 1990s. [64] [65] In addition to projects in Germany, he supported projects in Spain, such as the Fundació Biblioteca d'Alcúdia Can Torró on Mallorca. In 1995, he founded the Fundación Bertelsmann , now based in Barcelona and Madrid, as an independent subsidiary foundation [66] that works to promote dual training to reduce youth unemployment. [67] Founded in 2008, the Bertelsmann Foundation North America, headquartered in Washington, D.C., deals with transatlantic cooperation, among other issues. [68]
In the early years, the founder was the sole Executive Board member of the Bertelsmann Stiftung. In 1979, a managing director was hired; from 1983, Mohn was supported by an Advisory Board, and in 1993, the Executive Board was also expanded. [69] After 1998, Mohn withdrew from executive management: Initially, he stepped down from his position as Chairman of the Executive Board, and a year later also withdrew as the Chairman of the Advisory Board. [70] As a result of several structural and personnel changes, Mohn held the interim chairmanship of both Bertelsmann Stiftung executive bodies again from the end of 2000 until mid-2001, when he was succeeded by Gunter Thielen as Chairman of the Executive Board. [71] [72] [73] In 2004, he permanently stepped down from the Executive Board of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, but as the founder, according to the statutes, he remained a member of the Board of Trustees until he died in 2009. [74]
From the late 1980s on, Reinhard Mohn was also involved in journalistic activities as an essayist and nonfiction book author. [95] He wrote several books and magazine articles in which he dealt with topics concerning society and business. [96] [97] In 1985, he published an essay on "Vanity in the Life of the Executive", in which he decried the archetype of a self-centered managerial class. [98] With his statements on this topic, Mohn's perspectives repeatedly drew controversy. [38] [99] In 1986, with the worldwide publication of his book "Success through Partnership", he laid out the principles of corporate culture at Bertelsmann. [100] [101] In "Humanity Wins", published in 2000, he strongly advocated an executive style in a spirit of partnership as a paradigm of a modern organizational structure. [102] [103] "An Age of New Possibilities" from 2001, defined a regulatory framework, which at its core is defined by entrepreneurship. [104] [105] In 2008, his last work was published as "A Global Lesson", in which Mohn provided an autobiographical account of the formative elements of his own life. [106] [107] [108] It was written with author Andrea Stoll , who also wrote the script to the film "Es müssen mehr Köpfe ans Denken kommen" (More minds need to start thinking) from Roland Suso Richter. [109] This film was the gift from the Bertelsmann Executive Board to Mohn on his 85th birthday in 2006. [110]
In 1991, on the 70th birthday of Reinhard Mohn, the Bertelsmann Executive Board established a Reinhard Mohn Endowed Chair for Corporate Governance, Business Ethics and Social Evolution at the private University of Witten/Herdecke. [111]
In 2006, Mohn created the Reinhard Mohn Foundation , an eponymous foundation bearing his name, which has been run since 2010 by his son, Christoph Mohn. [112] [113] After the senior Mohn's death, the foundation gained shareholdings in Bertelsmann, which Reinhard Mohn had held via an intermediary company. [114]
In 2010, the University of Witten/Herdecke honored Mohn by establishing an Institute for Corporate Management and Corporate Governance, [115] [116] today known as the Reinhard Mohn Institute of Management. [117] It also houses the Reinhard Mohn Chair of Management, endowed in 1991, and two professorships, one for strategy and organization and one for research. [118]
In 2011, the Bertelsmann Stiftung awarded the first Reinhard Mohn Prize, [119] which upholds and advances the tradition of the Carl Bertelsmann Prize. [120] This award honors internationally renowned individuals for forward-looking solutions to societal and political challenges. [121]
Mohn was criticized for how he dealt with the National Socialist past of Bertelsmann. [122] [123] After questions arose in the 1990s as to the company's role in the Third Reich, [124] Bertelsmann, with the support of Mohn, established an independent historical commission, seeking to come to terms with its involvement in the Nazi era. [125] The commission presented its final report in 2002 and found that the decades-long account of its alleged involvement in a publishing company for the resistance could not be substantiated. [126] [127] On the contrary, Bertelsmann was the largest book producer for the Wehrmacht. [128]
In 2010, author and journalist Thomas Schuler criticized a "tax-saving interrelationship" between Bertelsmann and the foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung. The structures set up by Mohn were alleged to have saved his family billions in inheritance tax. [129] However, this tax would not have been owed, according to the prevailing legal view at that time. [130] [131]
{{
citation}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)
{{
citation}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)
{{
citation}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)