Reinhard Mohn E-Book

Joachim Scholtyseck

• Herausgeber: Penguin Verlag
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 243

Beschreibung

On the 100th birthday of the visionary entrepreneur

Reinhard Mohn (1921-2009) is regarded as one of the most important German entrepreneurs of the 20th century. Returning home from World War II, he took over his parents’ publishing company in 1947 and in the decades that followed, beginning with the founding of the Bertelsmann Lesering in 1950, set the course for Bertelsmann’s development into an international media group with a corporate culture based on social partnership. The economic success of Bertelsmann AG, which Mohn managed from the East Westphalian provinces, was accompanied by a high reputation as one of the most attractive and progressive employers in the Federal Republic. In 1977, Mohn established the Bertelsmann Stiftung, which is dedicated to promoting a democratic civil society and is today considered the most important of Germany’s foundations.

Leseprobe

Reinhard Mohn

Entrepreneur – Leader – Visionary

Joachim Scholtyseck

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First published in 2021

© Penguin Verlag, Munich 2021

A member of Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe GmbH

Neumarkter Strasse 28, 81673 Munich

Cover design: Büro Jorge Schmidt, Munich

Translation: Lara Wagner

Editing: Nicholas Latimer, Alissa Nordmeier

Typesetting: Uhl + Massopust, Aalen

ISBN 978-3-641-28917-1V003

www.penguin-verlag.de

Contents

Who Was Reinhard Mohn?

Who Was Reinhard Mohn?

Childhood, Youth, Military Service, POW Years: Early Influences

Reconstruction in a Society of Ruins – Reinhard Mohn in the ›Land of the Economic Miracle‹

Entrepreneurial Leadership as a Lifetime Responsibility

›What Makes Reinhard Run?‹ – The Attempt to Separate Entrepreneur and Personality

›What Makes Reinhard Run?‹ – The Attempt to Separate Entrepreneur and Personality

Internationalization

Publisher or Entrepreneur?

Codetermination and Its Limits

The Supervisory Board and Succession Issues

A Reformer, a Liberal, a Conservative

A Reformer, a Liberal, a Conservative

»Red Mohn,« »Social Capitalist,« Closet Manchester Entrepreneur, »Fake Leftist«

Foundation as Legacy

Foundation as Legacy

Farewell to the Day-to-Day Business?

Notes

Bibliography

Timeline

Index

Image Credits

Who was Reinhard Mohn?

Reinhard Mohn in 1967 in front of the portraits of his grandfather Johannes Mohn (1856–1930, on left) and his father Heinrich Mohn (1885–1955). In 1947, Reinhard Mohn took over C. Bertelsmann Verlag in the fifth generation.

Who was Reinhard Mohn?

Without the entrepreneur Reinhard Mohn, one of the founding civic leaders of the Federal Republic of Germany, there would perhaps still be a medium-sized publishing house called C. Bertelsmann, but not the Bertelsmann media group of today with its global operations. The 100th anniversary of Reinhard Mohn’s birth provides an ideal opportunity for a portrait that also analyzes the value horizon that guided the entrepreneur, founder and citizen. The developments of companies, as Werner Plumpe once convincingly noted, »can only be understood through the actions of individuals under specific conditions.« These actions are »always part of a complex overall context […] that eludes causal judgments, and certainly eludes mono-factorial explanations.«1 A biography of Reinhard Mohn is not an easy undertaking, because surprisingly there is hardly any preliminary work. Bertelsmann, the company, has been comprehensively acknowledged or reviewed in commemorative publications and critical academic works, and Reinhard Mohn’s contributions have been duly acknowledged. But there is no separate biography. Although Mohn himself had considered writing down significant events in his life as early as the 1950s, he never got around to it in the hectic postwar years.2 He didn’t write a memoir, and he didn’t want a »character portrait« written about himself. He rejected the idea of an official or authorized biography,3 and in interviews spoke of not wanting to create »a monument« to himself.4 When, with his approval, a history of 150 years of Bertelsmann was published in 1985, the year of the company’s exuberantly celebrated anniversary, it was also intended to serve as a lasting »image booster« for the company,5 and he may have felt this was justified. However, it was not a matter of personal priority, because he did not want to put himself in the limelight. While the company »bore the mark of Reinhard Mohn’s signature,«6 he himself, a true Protestant in this respect, attached more importance to his work than to the portrayal of his own life. And he didn’t live to see the publication of »175 Years of Bertelsmann. The Legacy for Our Future« (2010), which honored his work as an entrepreneur.

So, who was this entrepreneur who placed great value on modesty, who nevertheless radiated awe-inspiring authority and, directing matters from behind the scenes, created a global corporation? Why would he be an »entrepreneur par excellence,« as the German newspaper »Die Zeit« put it?7 Revealing the person behind a business personality is one of the most difficult tasks of a biographical study. W. Somerset Maugham summed up the problem of authorship beautifully when he said, »There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.«8 Perhaps this is why it happens that corporate histories largely ignore personalities and examine structure instead. And yet it has been proven time and again that theoretical questions, e. g., about Bourdieu’s categories such as »forms of capital,« while relevant, are of little help when it comes to properly understanding individuals, their life paths, and their decisions. Often what remains are »mostly merely metaphorical speeches« with which the »empirical findings are to be given a kind of higher consecration«.9 In other words, life histories, now that the time has passed when they could be regarded as an outdated form of historiography,10 once again form a cornerstone of corporate history, at least when they comply with the requirements of a modern biography.

Childhood, Youth, Military Service, POW Years: Early Influences

Reinhard Mohn was born into a traditional, middle-class publishing family. The Bertelsmanns, rooted in Gütersloh in eastern Westphalia, were shaped by the proverbial spirit of a pastor’s household strongly influenced by the Minden-Ravensberg revivalist movement. Founded in 1835, the publishing company C. Bertelsmann served as the publishing home of this devout lay movement, to which future generations of publishers remained committed well into the 20th century. In 1881, the granddaughter of company founder Carl Bertelsmann, Friederike, married Johannes Mohn, also from a pastoral family, who took over the publishing house in 1887 after the death of his father-in-law. Reinhard Mohn’s father, the publisher Heinrich Mohn, in turn married a pastor’s daughter, Agnes Seippel, in 1912. Except for a four-year period in Braunlage, where the family lived in »a simple townhouse made of plain bricks,« the small town of Gütersloh remained the real center of their home lives.11 The home Heinrich Mohn built there in 1928 on Kurfürstenstrasse had a five-hectare garden, but otherwise it lacked the luxuries that characterized other industrialists’ mansions. According to Reinhard Mohn, his parents »brought him up to be thrifty,« and there were no »Persian carpets.«12

The children of Agnes and Heinrich Mohn around 1928: Ursula, Sigbert, Gerd, Hans Heinrich, Reinhard and Annegret (from left). There were large age gaps between the six Mohn siblings, who were born between 1913 and 1926. As the firstborn, Hans Heinrich (»Hanger«) played a special role in the family structure and with a view to his later management of Bertelsmann. There was nothing to indicate that Reinhard, the second-youngest, would in the future be entrusted with the task of steering the company’s fortunes.

Reinhard Mohn was born on June 29, 1921, the fifth of six children and the third-eldest son. He first went to Gütersloh’s Protestant elementary school before transferring to the local Evangelisch-Stiftisches Gymnasium (Protestant high school) in 1931, in keeping with family tradition. Looking back, he always emphasized that he was the second youngest: his siblings had set the standard at school, which had »rather negative consequences« for him because he felt he was by no means as gifted as they were.13 Throughout his life, he considered his admired eldest brother Hans Heinrich, older by eight years, to be particularly capable. In interviews, Reinhard occasionally mentioned his brother’s outstanding talents and intellectual esprit. On the other hand, Reinhard »demanded a lot of himself.«14 While his school performance wasn’t bad, he remembered throughout his life his mother’s discreet suggestion that he become a carpenter. In retrospect, school was an »arduous path« for Mohn.15 This statement probably wasn’t simple coquetry on the part of a man looking back on a successful life.

Engagement photo of Agnes Seippel and Heinrich Mohn, Reinhard Mohn’s parents, dated 1911. A year after he joined his father’s publishing company, Heinrich Mohn and Agnes Seippel – a friend of his sister Sophie – who was four years younger, announced their engagement. Agnes was the eldest of six children of a Gütersloh pastor and his wife, who came from a merchant family in the city. The couple celebrated their wedding in June 1912.

The »spirit of a Protestant parsonage« in a rural region dominated his years growing up.16 The developments in a disunited church, whose imperial head, the Kaiser, had abdicated in 1918, influenced the home, too. Economically, things were looking rather good for the publishing house, because its characteristic mixture of theological literature and – since the late 1920s – popular folk fiction was in demand during the Weimar Republic. Politically, after the fall of the Empire, the father Heinrich Mohn remained committed to the typical national Protestantism, in which people voted for the DNVP and read the conservative »Kreuz-Zeitung.«17 Although his father left his mark on the family home as publisher and master of the house, Reinhard Mohn has always gratefully remembered his mother, who was forced to assume responsibility for the children at an early age: »Growing up in a parsonage and later marrying my father, who came from a very religious/church-oriented publishing house,« were as important to her as »regular attendance at church services, morning and evening devotional prayers at home, grace at table, evening prayers at the children’s bedside.«18 In keeping with the times, his mother remained in the background and was responsible for the family, especially since – at least as her children tell it – she was not a particularly sociable person. In her down-to-earth demeanor, luxury, unnecessary expense, and striving for recognition were »completely alien« to her.19 Asked about his mother’s influence, Reinhard Mohn’s answer was: »Religiousness, strict morality, orderliness, punctuality, cleanliness, accuracy, and a sense of duty definitely characterized my mother. She loved her family and was always helpful and caring.«20 These were values, enriched by organized thinking and analytical aptitude, that were also to define his own life, even if, in the conflicting priorities of business and morality, the concept of »Protestant ethics«21 increasingly faded into the background. Nevertheless, Mohn, a »Westphalian with Prussian virtues,«22 would later recall an upbringing that was both loving and strict: his mother would look over his shoulder while he was doing his homework, and she would grumble when his school performance was poor and his report cards less than stellar. Then she would float the subtle question about whether he wouldn’t rather learn a »practical profession.«23 Nevertheless, from the age of 16, he no longer had to attend the usual prayers and devotions, having distanced himself from the church and from ecclesiastical beliefs. Although he did undergo a process of secularization, he never managed or wanted to shake off his religious side, asking questions of morality and the need for corporate values. Mohn was part of the Protestant educated middle-class milieu, in which economic profit-seeking was traditionally associated with a social and civilizing consciousness. The role of religion and the church was largely limited to formal aspects, and the Bible, which he was obviously familiar with since childhood, remained a decorum of his life and world, so that it is difficult to construct a Protestant business spirit from Mohn’s religious references.24 And yet he was a modern man of business in the sense of Max Weber, if one uses as a reference his model of a Protestant work ethic: a certain bourgeois structure, a rational and process-oriented business organization and a strict separation of business and personal life as its essential characteristics.25

Reinhard Mohn’s memories of his mother Agnes, written in 1984 (excerpt). As part of the preparations for Bertelsmann’s 150th anniversary celebration, Reinhard Mohn recorded sections of his family’s history for the author Walter Kempowski. He characterized the personality of his mother Agnes in particular detail. Her life was shaped by her religious anchoring in Protestantism, self-discipline, and familial duty – »My mother lived in the world of her family.«

Group picture of the Mohn family in 1933 in front of grandmother Friederike Mohn’s (née Bertelsmann) »Ivy House« in Gütersloh with (from left) parents Heinrich and Agnes with his brother Gerd, grandmother Friederike, siblings Hans Heinrich, Ursula, Sigbert and Annegret, and Reinhard Mohn on the far right.

He cherished the church’s message for society, even if he had little time for everyday Protestantism. In 1966, he wrote: »Form of leadership of the church not adequate. Unsatisfactory effect, overworked pastors, declining influence.«26 And when asked much later, in an interview with the Austrian journalist Peter Schier-Gribowsky, whether he was a »devout man,« he evaded the question with the partial answer that religion had always been a component with the Bertelsmanns.27

The family’s lifestyle was spartan. There was no smoking and no drinking, he later reported.28 The family didn’t purchase its first car, a modest small vehicle from the now forgotten manufacturer AGA, until 1927.29 The emphasis was not on flaunting luxury, but on conveying inner values. In a school essay from January 1938 on the subject of »My Thoughts in Choosing a Career,« 16-year-old Reinhard wrote with astonishing circumspection about responsibility and a sense of duty, without naming a specific career goal: »For I would rather take upon myself all the doubts and questions that will come to one otherwise, and struggle to solve them, than to merely be a dead tool while I am alive.«30 Mohn added in his essay, which was completely free of National Socialist rhetoric: »I have resolved to always be ready to learn and to acknowledge when something is better, even if I would have to give up everything I have believed up to now and see it as wrong.«31

Reinhard Mohn’s homework essay on »My thoughts on choosing a career,« written between fall 1937 and January 1938 (excerpt). Even as a 16-year-old pupil, Reinhard Mohn was very circumspect about the opportunities of his career choice and his expectations for the future. In an essay, he dealt intensively with the question of the fulfillment of duty and responsibility to the community. At the same time, he attached great importance to personal disposition and individual independence.

Hans Heinrich Mohn in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The good relationship that Reinhard Mohn had with his eldest brother was marked by admiration for his ambition and extraordinary perceptiveness. Hans Heinrich Mohn, a Wehrmacht company commander, was killed in action in Poland in the very early days of the war in September 1939, at the age of 26.

During the »Third Reich,« whose ideology offered Germans a temptation many succumbed to, Heinrich Mohn was close to the »Bekennende Kirche« (Confessional Church), which kept its distance to the regime. He kept his beliefs separate from his business, which enabled the publishing house to generate profits even under Hitler. Reinhard Mohn was influenced by the zeitgeist, and as a youth, while keen on sports, became a leader of a »Jungenschaft,« a group of 10–15 boys in the Hitler Youth organization from May 1933, and he eventually became a »Gefolgschaftsführer,« being in charge of more than 100 boys.32 That might have seemed harmless in itself, but considering the family company’s involvement in the Nazi regime, these youthful sins lost the innocence they might have had in normal times. His eldest brother Hans Heinrich, whom Reinhard Mohn admired for his determination and scholarship, was more easily seduced by the regime. He passed his German high-school diploma exams, the »Abitur«, with flying colors, achieving the best possible score, then studied law and decided to become an officer so that he could later enter politics, perhaps via the route of a military attaché. In retrospect, the fact that Hans Heinrich was killed as a company commander during the Wehrmacht’s invasion of Poland in the first few days of World War II seemed to Reinhard Mohn to be a tragic consequence of his personality. »His dedication and his early death were certainly in keeping with his nature.«33

Students from the graduating class of the Evangelisch Stiftisches Gymnasium in Gütersloh in 1939 with Reinhard Mohn (bottom row, 3rd from left). Reinhard Mohn had attended the Protestant humanist school, which was founded largely on the initiative of his great-great-grandfather, the company’s founder Carl Bertelsmann, since 1931.

Undated report from the Evangelisch Stiftisches Gymnasium in Gütersloh. Like all his brothers, Reinhard Mohn was a student at the Evangelisch Stiftisches Gymnasium from 1931. On December 1, 1938, as a primary school student, he submitted an application to the school’s examination board for admission to the school-leaving exam. In this application, he emphasized his interest in the natural sciences and flight physics, and announced his decision to become an engineer. Mohn passed his Abitur, the German high-school diploma exams, at the ESG around Easter 1939.

Reinhard Mohn on assignment with the »Reichsarbeitsdienst,« a mandatory Labor Service for young men in 1939. After graduating from high school, Reinhard Mohn, too, had to complete the six months o f service, which he did at the Lippborg camp in Westphalia.

Reinhard Mohn, who was interested in technology,34 had other plans for the future. On his application for the Abitur examination, he said he wanted to become an engineer. This met with approval from his teachers, but a terse yet typical aside from one of them added that he was characterized by a »vacillation between shyness and a pleasing openness« and could be »prone to strong self-confidence.«35

After graduating from high school on March 3, 1939, Reinhard Mohn first completed the compulsory »Reicharbeitsdienst«, the Reich Labor Service36 at the Lippborg camp in Westphalia from April 1 to September 10, 1939. He later acknowledged that at the time he »was firmly convinced« that the war was justified. He always emphasized the regime’s ability to manipulate the German people, and he admitted that he himself only »came to his senses« much later.37 On October 1, 1939, he volunteered for the Wehrmacht »out of a sense of duty,« as he later said. Following his inclinations, he wanted to join the Luftwaffe. As a member of the National Socialist Flying Corps, he joined the »Flieger-Ausbildungs-Regiment 62« in Quedlinburg to be trained as a pilot. After three months, in January 1940, he was transferred to an anti-aircraft artillery unit on the Western Front while the war was still in its »drôle de guerre« or »Phony War« phase, during which there was only occasional military action. In the course of the »Western campaign« beginning in May 1940 he was deployed in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. After the end of the six-week »Blitzkrieg,« he attended the Wehrmacht Weapons School from November 1940 to February 1941. Promotions – from Private to NCO to Officer – were part of his modest military career, especially since his evaluations were favorable. In February 1941, the officer candidate’s instructors in Amersfoort in the Netherlands, full of praise, attested to his ability as an aviator and battery officer: »Can inspire people and assert himself. Spirited soldier. Fresh, open nature. Upright, honest character. Is reliable, conscientious and determined.« However, the fact that Mohn was not a born military man also came up. His »demeanor at the front« would have to become »even more proper and definite.«38

Reinhard Mohn as a Luftwaffeensign during his training at an officer candidate school in Amersfoort near Utrecht in December 1940. Deployed initially to France and Italy in the summer of 1942, he was wounded in May 1943 during his deployment to Tunisia and became an American prisoner of war.

In January 1942, Mohn was promoted to lieutenant and, beginning in June 1942, served as platoon leader at an anti-aircraft battery of the Hermann Göring Regiment in Wehrmacht-occupied western France. From November 1942 to March 1943, he served in fascist Italy, with which the »Third Reich« was allied. When a mission to protect the Göring estate Carinhall was nearing, he asked for a transfer to the front, he later said, although this cannot be verified in the files. In early April 1943, Mohn was airlifted from Sicily to a tank reconnaissance section of his regiment in Tunisia as part of the Afrikakorps’ operations.39 Although he was only in the service for a few weeks, he received the Africa sleeve ribbon, the Luftwaffe ground combat badge, the Italian »Medaglia commemorativa della campagna italo-tedesca in Africa settentrionale,« and the »Verwundeten-Abzeichen,« the Wounded in Action Badge in black.

On May 5, 1943, about 70 kilometers northwest of Tunis, the World War came to an end for him, as he later crisply reported: »I was shot through my sleeve, shot through my shirt and shot through my leg, so I thought: ›It might be time to start unwrapping your first-aid kit‹. While I was still busy doing that, a Texas boy appeared in front of me and ordered me to put my hands up.«40 As a U. S. prisoner of war, he was taken to Algeria in June 1943, and in September 1943 from there by troop transport via Norfolk in the U. S. state of Virginia to the Concordia POW camp in Kansas in the Midwest, which operated as an officers-only camp starting in mid-1944.41

Mohn’s »American« time left a lasting impression on him. Like many of his generation, he was impressed by the spirit of freedom he felt in the U. S.: by the discovery of individualism as opposed to the Nazi »Volksgemeinschaft« (»National Community«) as well as by the possibility of the »Pursuit of Happiness.« While interned at the camp, he not only learned English, but also prepared himself for work as an engineer – which as we know he would have liked to pursue – at the camp’s university.42 Discussions with American officers in Kansas and the experience he gained in some 30 companies left a deep impression on him. The U. S., he confessed decades later, had »decisively influenced« him: »Instead of an exaggerated community mentality, I was won over by the promise of freedom and self-realization for individuals that is enshrined in the U. S. Constitution. I learned about the theory and functioning of democracy, as well as about the dynamic forces of a liberal economic order. If there had been an opportunity for me to stay in the U. S. after the war, I certainly would have done so.«43

However, this opportunity did not come up for the young POW. When the guns fell silent, he remained temporarily interned at Camp Atterbury in the state of Indiana for a few more weeks beginning in September 1945, and he was then transferred back to Le Havre via New Jersey in mid-November 1945. An interlude in a tent camp near Paris followed in December 1945. This »very bitter time« did not end until January 7, 1946, when he was released from captivity. Mohn returned to Gütersloh at the end of January 1946.44

Mohn was completely cured of anything to do with National Socialism, surely a result of his self-reflection and American »re-education.« In a lecture on the transformation of Bertelsmann from a patriarchal-theological publishing house to a modern, large-scale publishing company, Mohn looked back at the »failure of a social order,«45 that he also extended to his own background: On the one hand, his father had been a member of the »Bekennende Kirche;« on the other hand, he had been a businessman who earned good money selling millions of copies of »Feldpost« literature in the »Third Reich« and as a supporting member of the SS. The publishing house was forced to close in 1944. This was the result of legal proceedings against it concerning illegal paper procurement 46, among other things. These, however, did not include its religious-theological orientation or publications that were critical to the regime. For years, Reinhard Mohn went along with the widespread and reassuring version that his father had been a man of the resistance; there was no proper examination of the company’s history during the Nazi era, even in the commemorative publication for the company’s 150th anniversary.47 However, when this master narrative was publicly challenged in the 1990s by historians, Reinhard Mohn changed his mind, as the reputation of his own company was in danger of being damaged. He soberly realized that the days were over when entrepreneurs could burnish their corporate-historical images with »public relations« and hagiographic publications.48 In 1998, with his explicit support, an independent study was commissioned which involved interviewing contemporary witnesses, for which he agreed to make himself available as well. The glorifying, apologist picture that the publishing house had painted of itself for the years from 1933 to 1945 was decisively corrected.49

Closure order issued by the President of the »Reichsschrifttumskammer« (Reich Literature Chamber) for the publishing house C. Bertelsmann on August 26, 1944. A few months before the end of World War II, it was no longer possible to avert the closure of the publishing house, which had been headed by Heinrich Mohn and had grown into a high-turnover company. All remaining resources were now mobilized for the war effort of the German Reich; moreover, Bertelsmann was embroiled in investigations of illegal dealings for paper procurement.

Mohn didn’t learn a lot from his time as an officer in the Wehrmacht; for him, they were wasted years, even if, as he once said, one at least had gained »knowledge of human nature.«50 He did, however, take away one further impression from this time: the »relative importance« of possessions and a standard of living.51 When Mohn returned from captivity, he knew that he was not destined to become the successor in the family business. But his father was already in poor health and was considered by the British occupying authorities to be »tainted« by National Socialism.52 His older brother Sigbert had gone missing; a letter from him written while he was in Soviet captivity brought no certainty, and it would ultimately take until April 1949 for him to return to Gütersloh. Reinhard Mohn therefore bowed to the demands of succession and gradually took over responsibility for the publishing operations, which were now somewhat limited. In an interview with Walter Kempowski, Reinhard Mohn later described the situation when he returned to Gütersloh and was confronted with the company’s mounting problems: »That’s when I said, ›All right, then let’s do it!‹ It wasn’t a systemized professional decision; it was simply a matter of tackling the matter at hand.«53 This view became part of the narrative that was also later cultivated in the sense of a »zero hour.« Reinhard Mohn was indeed thrust into responsibility: Not his two older brothers, who were actually destined for it, but him, who was so aware of being »No. 5 in the family.«54 It was he who was forced to take on this burden. The feeling that he had to live up to this task served as a lifelong motivator and driving force.

Letter from the denazification committee of the city of Gütersloh to Reinhard Mohn, dated February 10, 1947. Immediately after his return to Gütersloh in January 1946, Reinhard Mohn had helped with the work of rebuilding Bertelsmann. As part of the denazification process that was underway at the same time, the authorities confirmed that the British military government had classified him as politically inoffensive. Following the withdrawal of his father Heinrich – who had initially concealed his supporting membership in Nazi organizations – in April 1947, this cleared the way for Reinhard Mohn to take over the management of the publishing houses C. Bertelsmann and Der Rufer.

At first, there were still hurdles to overcome, especially in dealing with the »Personal Questionnaires« and other demands by the British occupying authorities.55 On August 15, 1946, Reinhard Mohn submitted his documents to the Denazification Committee in Gütersloh and asked to be allowed to work as a »bookseller apprentice.« On February 10, 1947, the committee informed him that the military government headquarters in Minden had confirmed his political neutrality with the rating »Can be employed.«56 To formally obtain the license, Mohn went to the newly founded bookseller school in the Cologne suburb of Marienburg for a few months in the summer of 1947, and then completed a few months of practical training at the long-established Akademische Buchhandlung (Academic Bookstore) Calvör in Göttingen.57

Reconstruction in a Society of Ruins – Reinhard Mohn in the ›Land of the Economic Miracle‹

A widely reproduced photograph from 1947, which shows Reinhard Mohn as the young boss addressing the workforce while still dressed in a soldier’s overcoat, has become almost iconographic for representing his beginnings as an entrepreneur. The photograph, whose sparse atmosphere conveyed or was intended to convey the spirit of optimism of West Germany’s »rubble society«, has become etched in Bertelsmann’s collective memory as »the real founding act« of the postwar period.58