When Berthold Huber moves into the small apartment in the Leipzig hotel “Astoria” next to the train station, he feels a bit lost. But he did that for himself. It is the year 1990 and his IG Metall had actually intended to take over the members of the GDR sister organization just like that – a coup, which was common in the turnaround times. The young functionary Huber saw it differently. A free union needs free entry, he told the leadership. Well, then stop over there and found offices, suggested him.
He does that promptly. In the real capitalist reunification, for example, Huber learns the profession of the pragmatist, who struggles for operational interests and jobs alike. This time has been his “final incarnation,” he says. “I swore to myself then: You will never behave opportunistically.”
Today, Berthold Huber (69) proves that non-conformists can do more than the masses. As chairman (from 2007 to 2013) he has the IG Metall modernized and made socially acceptable. As a supervisory board, he took on responsibility in the Siemens corruption affair as well as in difficult times at VW. He demonstrated a politically ambitious format in the financial crisis that would have raged longer and harder in Germany without him.
Birgit Steinborn (59), general works council chairman of Siemens, appreciates “the dear Berthold” for years. In her laudation on the occasion of his admission to the Hall of Fame of manager magazin at the end of May, she honored him as a crisis manager, visionary, thinker and taboo breaker in series.