“Waldorf teacher rescues long-established German company”: when he took over the camera manufacturer Leica, Dr. Andreas Kaufmann generated headlines above all on the business pages of the press. But who is the person behind this fairy tale? NNA correspondent Cornelie Unger-Leistner went to Salzburg to investigate.

As soon as you enter the boardroom of the project development company ACM in Salzburg, where Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, the supervisory board chairman of Leica, has his office, things are not quite the same as in other companies. Book shelves line one wall and historical camera models are displayed in two illuminated display cabinets which also contain the “World Entrepreneur of the Year 2014” award which Kaufmann has just received. In the opposite corner there is a photo of the Columbian revolutionary Che Guevara.

This ambience already gives an inkling that in these company headquarters the words of the American economist Milton Friedman, according to whom the sole purpose of a firm is to  make money for its shareholders, tend not to apply. Talking to Dr. Andreas Kaufmann confirms this assumption: obligation, responsibility and creativity are terms which often occur when he is asked about the unusual course of his life, a life which took the literary scholar and political scientist from his classroom at the Göppingen Free Waldorf School to the executive floor of Leica.

Decisions

For a time he led a parallel life, on the one hand working in the management of an inherited Austrian company in the paper and pulp industry, on the other hand teaching in the upper school of the Göppingen Waldorf school. By the late 1990s he could no longer avoid making a choice between them: “These two parallel lives could no longer be reconciled. You can either have people manage your inherited wealth, enjoy the fruits of it, remain a Waldorf teacher and travel the world – or you can create something with it.”

That the former was not an option for Kaufmann is down to his background, but also his teenage years. Growing up in a family of anthroposophists in Schwäbisch Gmünd in Germany – his father was head of the medical department at Weleda AG – Kaufmann became familiar with the ideas of social threefolding at an early age.

While others in the student movement of 1968 sought answers in the writings of Marx und Engels, the Waldorf pupil Andreas Kaufmann in the 1970s school student movement concerned himself with the works of Rudolf Steiner and his pupils in the milieu of the Achberg Cultural Centre and Forum3 in Stuttgart.

Changing the world was just as much on his agenda as it was for the whole of his generation – but with a different starting point. “What influenced me a great deal, for example, was Wilhelm Schmundt’s concept of money. According to this, money has two functions, a dual character: it contains the right of consumption, but also the obligation to make use of our abilities. That is one conclusion in Steiner’s course on economics.” Against this background he had seen his inherited wealth above all as a responsibility, as something with which to create the future, Kaufmann explains.

A new direction

That this would entail the sale of the family business was clear to Kaufmann and his two brothers from the beginning: “We were looking for other opportunities because the paper and pulp industry is very capital intensive. That is not easy for a family business.” Advice from a consultant led the brothers to Wetzlar about 40 miles north of Frankfurt where they began by taking over a precision engineering company.

The crisis-ridden German camera manufacturer Leica was located nearby. Kaufmann and his brothers were interested and in the summer of 2004 acquired shares in the company. Within a year it became clear that the need for action in the company was significantly greater than initially assumed. His brothers bailed out but Kaufmann persevered: “If you knew beforehand what you are letting yourself in for you might as well give up the ghost right away.”

It turned out that the company needed complete restructuring. In this connection Kaufmann also rejects the commonly held idea that Leica had come too late to digital photography: “That is not how it was. Digital camera models were developed as early as the 1990s. What was missing was a clear idea of where the company was heading.” The takeover of Leica thus became a hard test of resolve for fledgling entrepreneur Kaufmann.

Because while the company was still being restructured, the financial crisis of 2007/08 struck, knocking the world economy sideways. During this period Kaufmann himself took the helm at Leica for a time as CEO: “I wanted to show staff that our family is involved during these difficult times.” The changes in the camera industry also caused problems for the camera manufacturer, dependent as it is on the constantly shrinking number of specialist retailers. Kaufmann responded with the concept of the 180 Leica shops which meanwhile exist in major cities around the world, placing his faith in direct contact with the customers.

Ready to listen

In product development he is always ready to listen to Leica staff who came up with the idea of a black and white camera. “These are good staff in a company with a long tradition who are very proud of the quality of their products. I always speak regularly with all of them if possible,” he emphasises. Kaufmann therefore took the suggestion for the new product seriously. The black and white camera which was then produced to the astonishment of the whole camera industry turned out to be a best-seller.

Kaufmann does not take the success of Leica, which has meanwhile brought annual turnover of 330m euros and a growth in the number of staff from 950 to about 1,500, for granted. “It is not a simple matter to respond to demand.” In this context he does not rate market research all that highly: “If Henry Ford had asked people at the time what they needed, he would have developed a stronger horse and not an automobile.”

So here we have an entrepreneur who combines vision with the deliberate assumption of responsibility. But how is that done?

“You have to know where you want to go,” he emphasises. And you must not be afraid. Here, too, Kaufmann has benefited from his anthroposophical background because – as he describes – he adheres to the rule from one of Rudolf Steiner’s supplementary exercises for meditative work: “Create moments of inner calm and learn to distinguish the inessential from the essential.” This old rule could be applied to everything, he says, also in business.

A great future

Kaufmann does not see the process which he went through with Leica as a model that can be generalised: “There are no  models. You have to keep up the creative process and when you then look three years later things have changed again.” And what has become of his youthful dreams in which he wanted to change the world? “I’m still trying to do that – in the context in which I can. After all, it is not a bad goal to to assert the position of a company with a long tradition which is unique in Europe against the competition from the Far East.”

His respect for the company in which he has now taken on the succession is palpable: “It embodies the work of generations of the Leitz family. The company has a great future if we do it right. You don’t run away from a task like that.”

One of the display cabinets in the boardroom in Salzburg also contains the small East German camera with which Andreas Kaufmann learnt photography as a boy. Today the smallest of the new digital Leicas is his constant companion. He takes up to 20 pictures a day with it, he says: “I always snap scenes from my life.” What kind of motifs those might include is revealed by the company’s new slogan, which sounds as if it might also have arisen in the moments of inner calm of its supervisory board chairman. It says: “Leica – Focusing on the essential”.

END/nna/ung/cva

Item: 141215-03EN Date: 15 December 2014

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