PORTRAIT

Friedrich (Frieder) Rehm was born on December 13, 1944, in Planegg near Munich. His father had fallen as a soldier in the Second World War. His mother died when he was ten years old. As an orphan, Frieder Rehm spent his childhood and youth in various boarding schools. This time also marked his first contact with the SOS Kinderdorf (Children’s Village) in Dießen am Ammersee in the state of Bavaria, the first in the Federal Republic of Germany. Then and to this day, the concept behind the social institution inspired him, and at times he envied children with the good fortune to grow up in a family.

Possessing little else at the time, Friedrich Rehm relied on his ambition, precision and deep-rooted determination. He apprenticed as a business and tax consulting assistant and proceeded to move up the ladder with courage and diligence. In 1971, he got his degree from the University of Göttingen in business management and business law, focusing on civil, commercial and corporate law. In Göttingen, he also met and married Claudia-Susan Findel, Curt Mast’s granddaughter. From their marriage, children Florian and Christina Rehm were born. In 1975, the Munich native Rehm joined W. Mast Kommanditgesellschaft and two years later became a member of the management board of Jägermeister-Spirituosenfabrik, Wolfenbüttel. As head of technical operations, Rehm was responsible for the innovative machine technology and, amongst other things, commissioned the construction of the Linden warehouse.
Jägermeister’s unique jersey advertising for the German football team Eintracht Braunschweig also happened in this era. Overnight, the herbal liqueur producer under the managing director of Mast-Jägermeister AG, Günter Mast, became a household name worldwide. The advertising claim “I drink Jägermeister because…” was another ingenious marketing stunt born during those years.

The experience gained at Jägermeister in the 1970s, already a modern family-run company, helped Friedrich Rehm considerably in his further career. Even then, flat hierarchies, big innovations, and an unconventional approach were some of the Wolfenbüttel-based business’s great strengths.
On leaving the company in 1981, Frieder Rehm became a director of Bayerische Vereinsbank Munich a year later. After the German reunification, the native of Bavaria went to the Treuhandanstalt Berlin in 1991 under Detlev Rohwedder as a loan manager. In 1992, he became a board member of Leuna-Werke AG and in the following six years played a major role in the successful turnaround of the largest East German chemical company

After leaving this position, the recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany worked from 1998 as a self-employed management consultant specialising in corporate restructuring and held various supervisory and advisory board mandates.

Back to the Roots

After stepping back from his professional career, Friedrich Rehm decided to fulfill his life-long wish of giving part of his private fortune back to the community. With the establishment of the Klaus Friedrich Foundation, Frieder Rehm, a man known to this day for his extraordinary love of detail, extreme diligence and excellent sense of humor, realised that wish together with his second wife Renate. Their shared mission: to support people with disabilities, the socially disadvantaged and those in need across all age groups.

Working from their adopted home in Munich’s Pasing district, Frieder and Renate Rehm are deeply committed to the SOS Children’s Villages worldwide, among others in Togo and Sri Lanka, supporting the “Clinic Clowns”, the “Streichelbande” and promoting the training of assistance dogs for people with disabilities.