Dr.-Ing. E.h. Eberhard von Kuenheim (born 2 October 1928) is a German industrial manager. He was Chairman of the executive board (effectively
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
) of the
BMW Group, between 1970
and 1993.
Biography
Kuenheim was born in
Juditten ( pl, Judyty) near
Bartenstein, (
East Prussia
East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label= Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
). His father died of a riding accident in 1935,
his mother died in a
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
camp after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
.
Kuenheim fled the advancing
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
in early 1945 and was
evacuated via
Pillau
Baltiysk (russian: Балти́йск; german: Pillau; Old Prussian: ''Pillawa''; pl, Piława; lt, Piliava; Yiddish: פּילאַווע, ''Pilave'') is a seaport town and the administrative center of Baltiysky District in Kaliningrad Oblast, Ru ...
to Western Germany in March 1945 throughout the
Operation Hannibal
Operation Hannibal was a German naval operation involving the evacuation by sea of German troops and civilians from the Courland Pocket, East Prussia, West Prussia and Pomerania from mid-January to May 1945 as the Red Army advanced during th ...
.
[
He studied ]mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...
until 1954 at the Technical University of Stuttgart and joined the Quandt Group, BMW's largest shareholder since 1959, in 1965.[
On 1 January 1970, Kuenheim became the CEO of the BMW Group. When Kuenheim became CEO, BMW had 23,000 employees; when he left the post in 1993, the number had risen to 71,000. Kuenheim "transformed BMW from a small, unfocused manufacturer of cars and motorcycles into a world performance luxury icon".]Technical University of Munich
The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied science, applied and Natural sci ...
, which named a building at the mechanical engineering faculty after him.
References
External links
*
www.kuenheim-stiftung.de
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuenheim, Eberhard Von
German business executives
BMW people
Chief executives in the automobile industry
People from Bartoszyce County
People from East Prussia
1928 births
Living people
Grand Crosses 1st class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany