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 chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization.
CEOs find roles in variou ...
) of the
BMW Group
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, trading as BMW Group (commonly abbreviated to BMW (), sometimes anglicised as Bavarian Motor Works), is a German multinational manufacturer of vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The ...
, between 1970
and 1993.
Biography
Kuenheim was born in
Juditten () near
Bartenstein, (
East Prussia
East Prussia was a Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1772 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1871); following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's ...
). His father died of a riding accident in 1935,
his mother died in a
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
camp after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
.
Kuenheim fled the advancing
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
in early 1945 and was
evacuated via
Pillau
Baltiysk ( ); ; Old Prussian: ''Pillawa''; ; ; is a seaport town and the administrative center of Baltiysky District in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the northern part of the Vistula Spit, on the shore of the Strait of Baltiysk separ ...
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 the ...
.
[
He studied ]mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...
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; ) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences.
Established in 1868 by King Ludwig II ...
, which named a building at the mechanical engineering faculty after him.
References
External links
*
www.kuenheim-stiftung.de
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuenheim, Eberhard Von
1928 births
Living people
People from Sępopol
People from East Prussia
German business executives
Chief executives in the automobile industry
BMW people
Grand Crosses 1st class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany