On the Trail of the Founder

“Imagine the founder of a startup who has just become a father for the third time and, in the middle of a revolution, buys a small insolvent business with the financial help of his father in law,” suggests Freudenberg Archivist Julia Schneider. This is an admittedly simplified image of Carl Johann, but it shows he had no shortage of confidence. He was also lucky to be able to assemble the right ingredients for a step-by-step rise from apprentice to co-owner and eventually sole proprietor of his own company. What were these elements? What led him, as a 30-year-old father and family man, to look ahead to success during a period of such uncertainty? “The right character traits are part of the answer. So are the right associations in his business and personal life,” Schneider says.

It all begins with an early, fateful event. Carl Johann was just nine years old when he lost his father, a man who had a hard life. Georg Wilhelm Freudenberg ran “Zum Löwen,” an inn in Hachenburg, a town between Cologne and Frankfurt. But all was not well in the severe poverty of the early industrial era. In early 1829, the inn had to be closed, and the innkeeper had to make a drastic career change. He found a job at the customs house in Weilburg an der Lahn, but he soon died there. The date was March 9, 1829. His son Carl Johann had accompanied him from Hachenburg and was the only one with him at the time. His childhood was over. His family mourned and struggled for financial survival. His mother took him and his five siblings to Neuwied, where relatives made sure they would not starve. At 14, Carl Johann had to stand on his own two feet. He began an apprenticeship in his uncle’s leather shop in Mannheim, 200 kilometers (about 124 miles) away, a long distance to travel for the time. “The family’s hardship certainly triggered something in Carl Johann and gave him the urge to make something of himself,” Schneider says. “We see this in his later years when he rose to become a kind of self-made man – thanks to his ambition, industriousness and thrift.”

Carl Johann was on his own. But he quickly found himself. He discovered his strengths. He supported himself as an apprentice to his uncle Johann Baptist Sammet and partner Heinrich Christian Heintze in Mannheim, which was a vibrant, large city and quite a contrast to his hometown. “At this time, he notices the positive impact of his own performance and his own capabilities on his life. This gives him the self-confidence to continue the mission of making something of himself,” Schneider says. His industriousness and ambition drove him on. The young man not only served customers from behind the trading house’s counter and made deliveries – with the help of earnings from the leather business, he was also able to operate a cigar store, improving his finances. Freudenberg, who never attended secondary school, learned French and English, attended the Nationaltheater Mannheim, moved with growing confidence in respected and international circles, and continued to shine in his uncle’s company. The result: In 1844, he was allowed to invest his money into the firm and acquired 20% of its shares as a silent partner.

What was happening on Carl Johann’s doorstep in Mannheim? At stake was nothing less than press freedom, trial by jury and a German national state with a freely elected parliament. Until that point, the country was a patchwork of independent territories, including the Grand Duchy of Baden, where Mannheim was located. The revolutionaries were divided into two camps, one liberal-constitutional and the other radical-democratic. Disorder reigned in Mannheim. There were calls for radical change. Thousands attended revolutionary peoples’ assemblies, and countless more of them were held across the entire country. There were pitched battles. “Businesspeople who generally want stable political conditions viewed the events anxiously. That was true for our founder as well,” Schneider says. He may have suspected that fate was about to put him to the test – again.

Then things began to move fast. The plan worked out. Over the next three years, revenues quadrupled, and the staff grew from 50 to 170. “Three aspects play an important role here,“ Schneider says. The first is quality. “In Germany alone, there were about 10,000 companies making leather products. Freudenberg knows that he and Heintze are setting themselves apart with quality products.” Secondly, it was clear to him that he had to internationalize the business quickly to buy skins and sell leather. It was either “go big or go down,” as the saying goes. The two businessmen built up relationships in the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France and Turkey (still the Ottoman Empire at the time.) And last but not least, Freudenberg recognized the importance of innovation early on, picking up on a trend from France and gearing his production operations to patent leather. To make this change, he had to win his partner Heintze over. “If you make patent leather, you get to ride in the carriage. If you make regular leather, you walk,” he once said. He had demonstrated his farsightedness once again. The product from Weinheim was a prizewinner at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and secured the company’s success for many years.