Heinz Dürr passes away at the age of 90

Under Heinz Dürr's leadership, the family company Dürr, founded by his grandfather in 1896, developed into one of the world's leading mechanical and plant engineering groups. Since the 1970s, Heinz Dürr has been known throughout Germany as the chief negotiator for the metalworking employers, Chairman of the Board of Management of AEG, head of Deutsche Bahn and Commissioner of the Carl Zeiss Foundation. The 29.7% shareholding in Dürr AG remains in the hands of the Dürr family even after Heinz Dürr's death. Born in Stuttgart in 1933, Heinz Dürr initially completed a metalworking apprenticeship in Uerdingen after leaving school and then studied mechanical engineering in his home town. In 1957, at the age of 24, he joined the family business to stand in for the sick senior engineer in the design department. His father Otto Dürr was the managing director at the time, while his mother Betty acted as the "commercial conscience" overseeing the finances. Heinz Dürr's beginnings in the family business coincided with a period of major change: In the post-war period, the sheet metal processing specialist Dürr became an industrial company specializing in apparatus engineering and surface treatment. This laid the foundation for today's global market leadership in painting technology. At the age of 27, "HD", as Heinz Dürr was known in the company, joined the management. The business with the automotive industry was expanded. In 1964, he founded the first foreign subsidiary in Brazil - an unusual step for a medium-sized Swabian company at the time. Under the direction of the junior boss, Dürr built a complete car paint shop for Volkswagen in São Paulo for the first time. Further company foundations abroad followed. Heinz Dürr and his wife Heide put a modern stamp on the corporate culture. In the 1960s, Dürr was one of the first industrial companies with an employee newspaper, library, art in the buildings and theater and concert performances in the factory.

In the early 1970s, the ever-curious entrepreneur made a name for himself in business circles. At the suggestion of Hanns Martin Schleyer, Heinz Dürr became Chairman of the Employers' Association of the Metal Industry in North Baden/North Württemberg in 1975. He negotiated innovative wage agreements with Franz Steinkühler, head of the Baden-Württemberg metalworkers' union. "The fact that I fought together with Franz Steinkühler for a modernization of the world of work irritated some in the employers' camp," Heinz Dürr later said with a grin. In 1980, Heinz Dürr handed over the management of his company and became head of the ailing electrical group AEG. In addition to the entrepreneurial challenge, he was attracted by AEG's technological potential. The surprising change had been arranged by the then Bosch boss Hans Lutz Merkle. Heinz Dürr led AEG through a settlement and in 1985 under the umbrella of Daimler-Benz AG, where he joined the Board of Management in 1986. Heinz Dürr floated his own company, Dürr AG, on the stock market in 1990. The proceeds were used to acquire the application technology specialist Behr, from which Dürr's successful painting robot division emerged. In 1991, Heinz Dürr took over as Chairman of the Board of Management of Deutsche Bundesbahn at the request of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In 1997, the then 64-year-old moved to the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bahn, which he chaired until 1999. From 1999 to 2003, Heinz Dürr was Commissioner of the Carl Zeiss Foundation. From 1990 to 2013, Heinz Dürr was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Dürr AG. Since 2006, Prof. Dr. Dr. Alexandra Dürr, one of Heinz and Heide Dürr's three daughters, has represented the family on the Supervisory Board with a 29.7% shareholding. Heinz Dürr was closely associated with the company until the end as Honorary Chairman of the Supervisory Board. The entrepreneur, who lived in Berlin, frequently visited locations in Germany and abroad. With passion and a wealth of memories and anecdotes, Heinz Dürr was committed to celebrating the 125th anniversary of "his" company in 2022. In recent years, Heinz Dürr has worked intensively on the topics of energy efficiency, digitalization and artificial intelligence. Heinz Dürr worked in his office at Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt until his old age and was just as well connected in the German capital as he was in his Swabian homeland.