Reinhard Mohn, 88, Of Bertelsmann, Dies
Bertelsmann AG patriarch Reinhard Mohn, a towering figure in Germany's postwar economic revival who created Europe's biggest media company from the ashes of a wartime propaganda publisher, died on Saturday. He was 88 years old.
During a career that spanned more than a half-century, Mr. Mohn oversaw the expansion of his family's company away from its core book printing and publishing business into magazines, music and television. He leaves behind a company that straddles a broad swath of the European media landscape, from RTL Group, Europe's leading commercial broadcaster, to Gruner + Jahr, its biggest magazine publisher. Bertelsmann also owns U.S.-based Random House, the world's largest book publisher.
Mr. Mohn prided himself as a management theorist and philanthropist. He wrote many works on business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Bertelsmann's success was only possible, Mr. Mohn stressed, because "ethical considerations have always managed to take priority."
Yet Mr. Mohn was known not always to practice what he preached. Though he expounded on the importance of giving executives freedom to run a business as they saw fit, he often clashed with his own executives. In 2002 he unexpectedly fired Bertelsmann's then-Chief Executive Thomas Middelhoff, who had tried to modernize Bertelsmann, preparing it for a public listing and shifting the focus away from some traditional businesses. Plans for an initial public offering were subsequently dropped.
Born in 1921 in Gütersloh, a rural town in northwest Germany where Bertelsmann is based, Mr. Mohn had hoped to become an engineer. The outbreak of World War II dashed those plans. During the war, Mr. Mohn served in the German air force until he was captured in 1943 and sent to a prisoner camp in Kansas. He returned home in 1946. With his father ill and the company in a shambles, he was recruited to help run it.
Bertelsmann's breakthrough came in 1950 with the introduction of its first book club, an idea championed by Mr. Mohn. Bertelsmann dispatched legions of sharply dressed young men across Germany to hawk books, using advertising that promised war-weary Germans a literary world of adventure and sophistication...
Read entire article at WSJ
During a career that spanned more than a half-century, Mr. Mohn oversaw the expansion of his family's company away from its core book printing and publishing business into magazines, music and television. He leaves behind a company that straddles a broad swath of the European media landscape, from RTL Group, Europe's leading commercial broadcaster, to Gruner + Jahr, its biggest magazine publisher. Bertelsmann also owns U.S.-based Random House, the world's largest book publisher.
Mr. Mohn prided himself as a management theorist and philanthropist. He wrote many works on business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Bertelsmann's success was only possible, Mr. Mohn stressed, because "ethical considerations have always managed to take priority."
Yet Mr. Mohn was known not always to practice what he preached. Though he expounded on the importance of giving executives freedom to run a business as they saw fit, he often clashed with his own executives. In 2002 he unexpectedly fired Bertelsmann's then-Chief Executive Thomas Middelhoff, who had tried to modernize Bertelsmann, preparing it for a public listing and shifting the focus away from some traditional businesses. Plans for an initial public offering were subsequently dropped.
Born in 1921 in Gütersloh, a rural town in northwest Germany where Bertelsmann is based, Mr. Mohn had hoped to become an engineer. The outbreak of World War II dashed those plans. During the war, Mr. Mohn served in the German air force until he was captured in 1943 and sent to a prisoner camp in Kansas. He returned home in 1946. With his father ill and the company in a shambles, he was recruited to help run it.
Bertelsmann's breakthrough came in 1950 with the introduction of its first book club, an idea championed by Mr. Mohn. Bertelsmann dispatched legions of sharply dressed young men across Germany to hawk books, using advertising that promised war-weary Germans a literary world of adventure and sophistication...