Former railroad boss Heinz Dürr dies at the age of 90
The entrepreneur and former railroad boss Heinz Dürr is dead. He died in Berlin on Monday evening at the age of 90, as announced by the mechanical and plant engineering company Dürr AG in Bietigheim-Bissingen near Stuttgart on Wednesday.
The entrepreneur Dürr became head of Deutsche Bundesbahn in 1991. He took up the post at the request of then Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU). With the railroad reform, he drove forward the merger of the Bundesbahn and Reichsbahn as well as the conversion of the public authority railroad into a private company. In 1997, the then 64-year-old moved to the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bahn, which he chaired until 1999.
The current head of Deutsche Bahn, Richard Lutz, paid tribute to the Swabian's achievements. As Chairman of the Board, he had brought together the railroads from East and West in reunified Germany. "He stands like no other for the emergence of the railroads in Germany into a new era," said Lutz.
Baden-Württemberg's Minister President Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) said that Dürr embodied the Swabian entrepreneurial spirit par excellence - down-to-earth, ambitious, resourceful, meticulous, a tireless creator. "For me, however, he was also always characterized by his courage to look ahead and his entrepreneurial foresight, because he advocated energy efficiency and a greater focus on the common good in business at an early stage and beyond any zeitgeist fashions."
Born in 1933, Dürr first completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith and then studied mechanical engineering in Stuttgart. He joined the family business in 1957 and drove its internationalization.
In 1980, he gave up his position as head of the family company Dürr and moved to the top of the electrical group AEG, which was in financial difficulties. This then found a new home under the umbrella of the then Daimler-Benz AG.
Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Economic Affairs Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut (CDU) said that with Dürr's death, the state had lost one of the most influential corporate personalities of the past decades. According to the company, the 29.7 percent shareholding in Dürr AG will remain in the hands of the Dürr family. The company has more than 20,000 employees. It went public in 1990.
Dürr was also active in collective bargaining. In 1975, he succeeded Hanns Martin Schleyer as Chairman of the Metalworkers' Union in North Württemberg - as a counterpart to the later IG Metall boss Franz Steinkühler. Dürr had a decisive influence on industry, collective bargaining policy and social partnership over many years, said Südwestmetall boss Joachim Schulz.
Despite his departure from the railroad sector, Dürr's influence extended to managing traffic efficiently. His tenure as the chairman of Deutsche Bahn's Supervisory Board even included overseeing the integration of East and West German railroads.
In his early career, before his involvement in railroads, Dürr demonstrated his skills in managing traffic as a locksmith apprentice and later as an engineer working for the family business, which spearheaded international expansion.
Source: www.dpa.com
