Helping hands and hearts lend much-needed support in so many parts of society, yet they receive little public attention. Often, these unsung stories take place close to home – precisely where the Klaus Friedrich Foundation sets its focus.
Founded in 2007 by Friedrich Rehm, the non-profit foundation provides all-volunteer support to people in difficult circumstances to lessen their burdens.
The board of directors (Friedrich Rehm and Manja Puschnerus) works hand in hand with the board of trustees, which consists of various Mast family members and their close personal contacts.
“I know from experience that empathetic caregivers who make it their business to nurture and guide children set the course for a life filled with confidence and success. Showing gratitude to these people is my greatest motivation.”
Friedrich Rehm
“Paths are made by walking.”
Franz Kafka
Projects
Your Support
If you would like to support the foundation’s work with a donation or endowment, your contribution is most welcome.
Please direct your donation to:
Bankhaus C. L. Seeliger
IBAN: DE78 2703 2500 0000 0141 06
BIC: BCLSDE21
Or you can support our foundation on bcause:
Klaus-Friedrich-Stiftung on bcause
The Klaus Friedrich Foundation is recognised by the German tax authority as a non-profit and charitable corporation and can issue donation receipts.
All work is done on a voluntary basis.
Contact
Klaus-Friedrich Foundation
Neuer Weg 9
38302 Wolfenbüttel
Tel.: +49-5331–881380
E-mail: info@klaus-friedrich-stiftung.de
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.
Despite the enormous practical and emotional support that assistance dogs provide, there is no funding body to provide these animals to disabled people in Germany. The cost of a trained assistance dog is €20,000, with each new dog owner having to contribute 10% of these costs.
Through the “APPORTE” association, the Klaus Friedrich Foundation finances assistance dogs for motor-impaired children, young people, and adults looking for a faithful helper and reliable friend. People with disabilities can thus regain their independence. The dogs help their owners in everyday situations and improve both quality of life and security. They also give their owners a boost in self-confidence, promote social contacts, and of course smiles.
The assistance dogs are trained by the Austrian association “Partner-Hunde e. V.”, which is also supported by the foundation.
For further information, please visit www.apporte-assistenzhunde.de and www.partner-hunde.org.
When recovering from an illness, laughter is one of the best medicines – because mind and body are ultimately inseparable. For several years, the Klaus Friedrich Foundation has supported the association Clowns in Medicine and Care, whose “clinic clowns” visit children and adults in hospitals and care facilities throughout Germany, bringing cheer and warmth into quiet places with compassion and sensitivity. Patients of all ages experience empathetic and personal care and attention.
Further information available at www.dachverband-clowns.de.
Animals see with their hearts, and they don’t see handicaps as impairments. This clarity lets them form a bridge between people, break down barriers and help people focus on the moment – more than enough reasons for the Klaus Friedrich Foundation to support the association “Die Streichelbande” (or the Pet Crew).
Association volunteers visit children and adults in therapy settings, senior centres and assisted living communities, bringing joy, variety, and above all, the gift of touch – for body and soul, and humans and animals alike.
For details, visit www.streichelbande.de.
The Klaus Friedrich Foundation has cooperated with international SOS Children’s Villages ever since the foundation’s inception.
In addition to various sponsorships with children in different SOS Children’s Villages, the foundation strives to provide complete financing to independent projects.
It raised substantial contributions for the construction of a social centre in Lomé, Togo, and the construction of four single-family houses and a vocational training centre in a new SOS Children’s Village in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.
The foundation also assumes the maintenance and renovation costs for various SOS Children’s Villages facilities worldwide, often for several years, due to the great need.
For more information, please visit www.sos-kinderdoerfer.de.
Beyond the projects above, the Klaus Friedrich Foundation supports non-profit organisations such as UNICEF or Greenpeace, in several ways in realising their vital work.
Together with the kinderherzen Stiftung München, we have a heart for small hearts and support the univentricular heart center. As a contact point for affected families and patients with a univentricular or otherwise very complex heart defect, the team at the Univentricular Heart Center, consisting of Dr. Julia Lemmer, a specialist in paediatric and adolescent medicine with a focus on paediatric cardiology, and paediatric nurse Birgit Beckmann, supports children with a univentricular heart and with a shunt or ductus stent from prenatal diagnosis through to adulthood and offers comprehensive care.
The need for advice after diagnosis, but also before operations and after long stays in hospital is particularly high. For children who require more intensive monitoring after discharge, a special home monitoring program offers important support to accompany the child and parents over the next few months and to be there in the background for all questions and problems, to offer appointments for upcoming examinations, further operations or even a check-up in the center’s outpatient clinic.
Further information can be found at Zentrum univentrikuläres Herz und andere komplexe Herzfehler – Angeborene Herzfehler und Kinderkardiologie – DHM (deutsches-herzzentrum-muenchen.de)
When a life-threatening or life-shortening diagnosis in one’s own child or parents turns a family’s entire life upside down from one day to the next, nothing is as it was before.
“Don’t fill life with days, fill the days with life” is the motto under which the Munich Outpatient Children’s Hospice Foundation (AKM) cares for families with terminally ill and life-threatening seriously ill unborn babies, newborns, children, adolescents and young adults as well as parents in Munich and throughout Bavaria. A team of full-time doctors, psychologists, nurses and social workers as well as around 300 volunteers is there for the entire family from the time the illness is diagnosed, in hospital and at home, until after death.
We support the valuable work of the AKM Foundation in the realization of heartfelt wishes and family sponsorships.
Further information can be found at Stiftung Ambulantes Kinderhospiz München – AKM (kinderhospiz-muenchen.de)
The Republic of Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa with a population of around 50 million*, of which around 22 million* are children under the age of 15. Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the nutritional situation is extremely difficult, especially in rural areas such as Butiru in eastern Uganda. We want to help the women and children in Butiru in particular and help them escape the vicious circle of poverty and poor nutrition. This is why we support the aid project “MoreMilk for Children in Uganda”, initiated by the Hamburg entrepreneur Volkmar Wywiol. As part of this initiative, dairy cows worth €300 each are purchased and given to mothers with many children on the condition that the first two calves are passed on to other women. With one cow, a mother can give 8 children half a liter of milk a day. The morning maize porridge is enriched with valuable milk instead of water.
More information about the project and the opportunity to become a cow ambassador yourself can be found here: flyer
*) Source: German Foundation for World Population – Country Database 2024
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For over 40 years, the members of the Friends of Nepal Association have been supporting various projects in different regions of Nepal through private initiatives.
Nepal is a poor country, and the remote areas beyond the cities often have little access to good education and medical aid.
This makes the tireless work of the Friends of Nepal all the more valuable. Among many other project initiatives, they ensure that even children in the most remote and impassable regions can go to school, promote the preservation of Tibetan culture in the Himalayan regions and set up mobile “eye camps”, which have already provided thousands of people with glasses or carried out urgently needed eye operations.
We are happy to assist the Friends of Nepal and support the various projects of this association.
More information at https://freunde-nepals.de/
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