Heinz Hermann Thiele saved Knorr-Bremse and led the company to the top of the world.
He also brought money to Lufthansa - but for the unions he was an enemy.
Munich - Heinz Hermann Thiele was certainly not particularly pleased with the sudden nationwide celebrity.
The Munich entrepreneur and patron had invested a lot of money in the shares of the largest German airline.
And now he stood there as the evil billionaire who was about to snatch Lufthansa.
But there is little more suited to Heinz Hermann Thiele than to define him in terms of his undoubtedly impressive wealth.
The 79-year-old long-time major shareholder and boss of Knorr-Bremse, who surprisingly died on Tuesday with his family, described himself as an entrepreneur “right down to the last breath”.
His pride was not his wealth, but rather the entrepreneurial achievement on which he could look back.
Thiele and the Lufthansa rescue: He would have liked to have actively participated in the renovation
And that is how his entry at Lufthansa was to be understood.
He saw a company that he knew well from traveling to the far corners of his global corporate empire.
A company in trouble, but with potential.
No doubt he would have been very active in the redevelopment had it not been for the state.
The airline, which was about to go bankrupt due to the de facto travel ban by Corona, was saved in this way, which actually deprived Thiele - the airline's largest shareholder.
It was one of his rare defeats.
Thiele struggled for a long time with the entry into the state, which he then had to approve in the end.
The call for the strong state does not at all fit the man who, in an existence-threatening situation, took the traditional Knorr-Bremse company and with it the responsibility for the fate of thousands of employees into his hands and turned it into an unparalleled entrepreneurial success.
Knorr-Bremse: Thiele took the opportunity to take over - "Nothing was right here"
After studying law, Heinz Hermann Thiele began his career at Knorr-Bremse as a clerk in the patent department and was promoted to the board of the family company when, in 1985, the then company inheritance wanted nothing more than to sell.
But nobody wanted the company.
The then 44-year-old was faced with the decision of his life.
He managed to convince the banks to lend him the money necessary for the takeover and restructuring.
The manufacturer of railway brakes was still cautiously described with the term renovation case.
“Nothing was right here,” Thiele wrote later.
Consultants recommended that he give up his core business of braking.
Thiele, who was enthusiastic about technical details, did not do exactly that and made the Munich-based medium-sized company the world market leader for railway and commercial vehicle brakes.
From China to Latin America, there is hardly a railway company in the world that wants to do without technology from Munich.
Ultimately, Thiele's path was hard, entrepreneurial hard work.
This also explains why it was not always easy to work under him.
Even when he retired from operational business to the Supervisory Board in 2007, hardly any decision passed him by.
It is difficult to count the number of board members who gave up or had to give up their posts because they ultimately did not meet Thiele’s standards.
Heinz-Herrmann Thiele: For IG Metall, the entrepreneur was a kind of enemy
For IG Metall, the entrepreneur who let his 30,000 employees work not 35 but 42 hours a week for the same money was an enemy.
But even with harsh criticism from trade unionists, there was always an undertone of admiration for the entrepreneur who gave nothing out of his hands - except perhaps money that he made available willingly and out of conviction for a variety of charitable purposes.
+
Heinz Herrmann Thiele: The majority owner of Knorr-Bremse died at the age of 79.
© dpa
As an entrepreneur, he was stubborn, one can also say stubborn.
He was tough - not just on himself - and he could be resentful too.
But in the end the success proved him right.
Even if it probably did not play a major role for him to be one of the richest - if not the richest - Munich residents, the $ 20 billion that the Bloomberg agency estimated Thiele's fortune is a reflection of his life as a company.
And the hardship that characterized him as an entrepreneur was just one side.
Friends describe him as an attentive and compassionate listener.
The Knorr-Bremse share price crashed on the news of death.
A sign that investors saw the company in good hands with Heinz Hermann Thiele.
It will be missing - not just at the headquarters and at the more than 100 Knorr-Bremse locations.
