If Edzard Reuter had his way, today’s car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz would be a completely different company. But it didn’t go his way. Reuters’ vision remained a vision. He was always convinced that it was the right path – until his death. On October 27th, Edzard Reuter, Daimler CEO from 1987 to 1995, died at the age of 96 in his hometown of Stuttgart. This was announced by the press spokesman for the Helga and Edzard Reuter Foundation. “The death of Edzard Reuter fills us with great sadness,” said Susanne Eisenmann, chairwoman of the foundation’s board of trustees. The former classic Daimler group no longer exists today. It split in 2021. The previous truck division was spun off as Daimler Truck. And the cars are now bundled in Mercedes-Benz Group AG. During his era, Reuter tried to turn the car company into a much broader technology empire. The manager helped the Stuttgart-based company to establish its own aerospace subsidiary, DASA. AEG, Dornier and MTU were also included. This brought the boss a lot of attention, but in the end the vision failed. Daimler returned to its core business. What remained was a loss of billions – and Reuter never got rid of the label that critics placed on him as the greatest destroyer of capital of all time. He himself always defended his course. “In detail, we made huge mistakes in our attempt to build a technology group – no doubt about it,” he once told the German Press Agency. “But I am firmly convinced that the fundamental approach was absolutely the right one.” Even back then, people were thinking about what the future of the auto industry could look like and how the company should prepare for it. Studied mathematician and lawyer The studied mathematician and lawyer joined Daimler in 1965. Benz came and became a board member there in 1976. He had already been interviewed twice as boss, but twice other candidates were preferred to him. Then in 1987 it worked. Reuter didn’t get a glamorous farewell – on the contrary. He once told “Zeit Magazine” that the reactions after his departure from Daimler were a severe, nasty humiliation. But, as his mother taught him, you have to endure something like that if you are convinced that what you are doing is right. Of course there was always a Mercedes in the garage. Despite everything, Reuters’ heart was attached to Daimler; of course there was always a Mercedes in the garage. In the years after his departure, however, there were other issues that came to the fore. Anyone who saw Reuter, heard him or read about him might have found it difficult to reconcile this with his former position as a powerful business boss. More on the topic The son of the legendary Berlin Governing Mayor Ernst Reuter, an SPD member for decades, resigned not only as a champion for more decency and morality in the economy, but also as a social and socio-political warning. From his house on the outskirts of Stuttgart, Reuter himself ran the foundation named after him and his wife Helga, which advocates for peaceful coexistence between people from different cultures. Reuter’s family fled the Nazis to Turkey in 1935. “We have to learn that strangers who come to us and live with us, can also enrich our lives, can also change them,” Reuter once told the dpa. He himself grew up in Turkey after his family fled there from the Nazis in 1935. He kept a close eye on the situation there as well as the nationalist tendencies in the European Union. He criticized that he could never have imagined that the common values on which Europe was based could one day erode to such an extent. Falling into despair over this, putting down all the newspapers and books and turning away was never an option. Just as he believed in his vision, Reuter also believed in the good in people. “I believe that we as humans have the ability to cope with the biggest problems, no matter how bad they are.”
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