He was 96 years old
Former Daimler boss Edzard Reuter is dead
Updated 10/29/2024 – 10:20 amReading time: 3 min.
Edzard Reuter, former boss of Daimler, is dead. He wanted to radically renew the car company.
The former boss of Daimler, Edzard Reuter, is dead. This was announced by the press spokesman for the Helga and Edzard Reuter Foundation. He died on October 27th in Stuttgart at the age of 96. “The death of Edzard Reuter fills us with great sadness,” said Dr. Susanne Eisenmann, Chairwoman of the Helga and Edzard Reuter Foundation.
Reuter was chairman of the board of Daimler-Benz AG from 1987 to 1995. The new headquarters in Stuttgart was built under him. Reuter is the son of the legendary Berlin mayor Ernst Reuter. The non-profit Helga and Edzard Reuter Foundation is committed to peaceful coexistence between people of different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds.
Under his leadership, Reuter tried to turn the car company into a much broader technology empire and helped the Stuttgart-based company to establish its own aerospace subsidiary, DASA. Even though it brought the boss a lot of attention, the vision ultimately failed. Daimler returned to its core business. What remained was a loss of billions – and Reuter was never able to shake off the label of the greatest destroyer of capital of all time, which was placed on him by critics.
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.” Back then, people were already thinking about what the future of the auto industry might look like and how the company should prepare for it.
The studied mathematician and lawyer came to Daimler-Benz in 1965 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 told him, you have to endure something like that if you are convinced that your actions are right.
Of course there was always a Mercedes in the garage
Despite everything, Reuters’ heart lay with 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 may have found it difficult to reconcile this with his former position as a powerful business boss.
The son of the legendary Berlin mayor Ernst Reuter, an SPD member for decades, appeared not only as a champion of 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 promotes peaceful coexistence between people from different cultures.
“We have to learn that strangers who come to us and live with us can enrich our lives and 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 is based could one day erode to such an extent.
However, falling into despair, 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.”