A Legacy of Trust
Gerhard Sturm’s entrepreneurial spirit is closely interwoven with his home region and the people whose ideas he supported.
When Frankfurt’s skyline glitters in the sunlight, the Northern Lights reflect in the facade elements of Copenhagen’s Axel Towers, or the penthouse of Warsaw’s Cosmopolitan Tower illuminates the night sky, a company from Hohenlohe is involved: FKN.
In 1978, Fenster Keller from Neuenstein was on the brink of closure. The fact that the company, now known as the FKN Group, successfully clads skyscrapers today can be traced back to Gerhard Sturm’s urgent need for suppliers to support the rapidly growing ebm at the time. Without hesitation, a new company was established to take over the business. Alongside the management, Annemarie Sturm and Helga Ziehl, the youngest daughter of Gerhard Sturm’s mentor Heinz Ziehl, held majority stakes. This approach was typical for Sturm: First, he skillfully ensured that the Mulfingen operation received—and continues to receive—sheet metal parts for their fan housings. Second, he always involved his partners.
A similar story unfolds with PVS in Niedernhall. It bears the names of its founders and shareholders: Philippiak, Vogel, and Sturm. While in search of a supplier to further develop the insulation of stators for ebm motors, Gerhard Sturm and Thomas Philippiak came across Jürgen Vogel. PVS went on to become a success story: Jürgen Vogel, who was given free rein by his co-shareholders, flourished. Not only did he thrive on good business with the Hohenlohe fan manufacturers, but he also accompanied them around the world and continuously sought new customers locally. Today, PVS employs almost 500 people and is another global player on the Hohenlohe map.
Other suppliers owe their vibrant growth—or even their existence—to the enterprising wind maker from the Jagst Valley. “From the beginning, people were important to my father—in the company, in collaboration with others, and also in investments,” says Ralf Sturm. Sometimes, he would write letters to local banks and put in a good word for his suppliers.
His word carried weight, as reported by Helmut M. Jahn, who accompanied ebm-papst’s history for almost two and a half decades as Hohenlohe District Administrator. Many companies in the region benefited from Gerhard Sturm’s “massive support,” he says. When Hohenlohe’s second-largest company after Würth was a business partner, things usually worked out with the banks as well.
Additional Investments
”Gerhard Sturm’s entrepreneurial spirit and his approachable, unpretentious manner continue to impress me to this day,” says Walter Döring, a former Baden-Württemberg State Minister for Economic Affairs, who still observes the Hohenlohe business scene from neighboring Schwäbisch Hall. Speaking shortly before Gerhard Sturm’s 90th birthday, he added, “You only reach the top of the world through continuous innovation.” And with a functioning ecosystem, which has developed around Ziehl-Abegg and ebm-papst.
For Gerhard Sturm, ebm was always at the center. But the ecosystem had positive effects early on. In the 1970s, ebm worked closely with Ziehl-Abegg and operated joint sales organizations in many countries. This led to an investment in Sweden, in which Gerald Engström, the former sales director of ebm and Ziehl-Abegg in Sweden, still holds a significant stake today.
Engström’s idea was to sell complete duct fans rather than just individual components. Kanalfläkt became Systemair AB—an important partner and customer of ebm-papst. The German branch of the Swedish stock-listed company, which would not exist without Sturm’s initial support, is in Boxberg.
Throughout his active entrepreneurial life, Gerhard Sturm built additional investments alongside his one-third stake in ebm-papst, which are now managed by the Sturm Family Office in Bad Mergentheim. Since 2015, it has served as a platform to carry Gerhard Sturm’s values and entrepreneurial legacy into the future. The Family Office consolidates all entrepreneurial activities and family assets, which are being developed internationally and led into the future under the leadership of Gerhard Sturm’s two children, together with the third managing director, Dr. Marc-Olaf Grumann. The manager, who holds a doctorate in law, has been advising the family for more than two decades and has been managing director of the Family Office alongside Ralf and Heide Sturm since 2017.
Good Neighbors
The fact that Gerhard Sturm named his Jagstmühle holding company Jagsttal GmbH speaks volumes: His heart belongs to his home region. Despite their strong regional roots, the family sought to diversify risk with investments beyond Hohenlohe. This has been achieved through real estate and numerous other ventures in the USA. Yet another significant investment still went to a business from the immediate neighborhood—largely because Gerhard Sturm prefers to trust people he knows well, and this trust is also reciprocated.
In this case, it was Rudi Sprügel, who founded the sportswear company Jako in 1989, not far from ebm’s headquarters. In the late 2000s, Sturm happened to hear that Sprügel wanted to push his business more ambitiously and needed money for this. He sought a conversation. “The two shared the same values, and they came to an agreement,” says Ralf Sturm. Thus, the Sturm family acquired a 30 percent stake in Jako in 2010.
However, Gerhard Sturm never interfered in his neighbor’s business, resulting in the company’s impressive development. Jako’s turnover has tripled to 180 million euros in the 13 years since the investment. Throughout Germany, clubs and companies get their clothing from Jako. Among others, VfB Stuttgart plays in the Bundesliga wearing Jako jerseys. The fact that the investor is a Gladbach supporter doesn’t matter at this point.
”Mr. Sturm, I have a problem”—these were essentially the words in a letter Gerhard Sturm received several years later from Ralf Hofmann, the usually energetic CEO of Neckarsulm-based Kaco New Energy. Changes in the regulatory environment were making life difficult for the German solar industry at the time. Sturm was convinced by the case. The newly established Family Office acquired a stake of just over 30 percent in the manufacturer of inverters for photovoltaic systems. The renewable energy business continued to be challenging, and in 2019, Kaco New Energy was sold to Siemens. “All parties involved could be satisfied with the result,” says Marc-Olaf Grumann, the co-managing director of the Family Office.
Hohenlohe Cultural Heritage
The cooperation with Kaco New Energy has led to another engagement: Together with Ralf Hofmann and his long-standing co-shareholder Rainer Heinrich, the Sturm family supports the solar park project developer Viridi RE, particularly in the USA. Here, personal connections and the sustainability theme so important to Gerhard Sturm come together.
The Jagstmühle holds a special position among the investments, which Sturm gave himself as a retirement project when he stepped down from ebm-papst management in 2007: a traditional Hotel/Restaurant in the Mulfingen subdistrict of Heimhausen. “Isn’t it beautiful here?” says Annemarie Sturm enthusiastically when she visits. The purchase was more than an intuitive decision: The family wanted to preserve this piece of Hohenlohe cultural heritage for the region. Today, a dedicated team runs the mill, with management now in the hands of Ralf Sturm.
Without “ebm,” as they still often say at headquarters, none of this would have been conceivable. To this day, the names Gerhard Sturm and ebm-papst are inseparably linked. And of course, it remains the family’s central investment, which the next generation also wants to lead into a successful future. Ralf Sturm and his sister Heide Stober-Sturm see the associated wealth as an obligation to continue working with the money in a value-oriented way, in keeping with their father’s spirit. Gerhard Sturm recognized early on that with success comes growing responsibility towards other people. Now his children and grandchildren are taking on this responsibility. “We invest in the future and in people with ideas,” says Ralf Sturm. “And we stand together as a family,” adds Heide Stober-Sturm.
Gerhard Sturm has passed on a few principles to them. For example: “When everyone is jumping on a bandwagon, look twice. Always maintain foresight and don’t just follow short-term trends.”
This entrepreneurial vision is implemented today by the Sturm Family Office in a diversified, international investment strategy. The investment in AI startups like H+F Solutions illustrates this strategy. The stake in the futuristic aviation company Volocopter from Bruchsal (near Heidelberg) also shows that the family is willing to take risks and invest in the future—but only, when they truly believe in the concept.
Shareholders at ebm-papst
Because capital, machinery, and know-how from Ziehl-Abegg and its shareholders were transferred to ebm at the founding of the company, there were three shareholders from the beginning: In addition to Gerhard Sturm, the daughters of the Ziehl-Abegg proprietors Heinz and Günther Ziehl were also involved. The one-third parity has remained unchanged. Today, the families are represented at ebm-papst by Chloë McCracken, granddaughter of Günther Ziehl, Jan Philippiak, grandson of Heinz Ziehl, and Gerhard Sturm’s son Ralf.
Background Story
Regional Development and Strategic Partnership
Part of the commitment to the region was the decision to build a new plant for ebm-papst in the village of Hollenbach, part of the Mulfingen municipality. The factory began operations in 2007, but the connecting road between the main plant and the new location left much to be desired. The so-called Hollenbacher Steige was a bottleneck. Its expansion became a masterpiece of Hohenlohe-style ingenuity. Although the road was in poor condition and not designed for delivery traffic, the state government initially saw no way to accelerate the necessary upgrades. Gerhard Sturm and his tennis friend, then-District Administrator Helmut Jahn, were frequent visitors to the State Ministry of Transportation and the Regional Council in Stuttgart.
This was how the newly appointed Regional Council President, Johannes Schmalzl, first met the Hohenlohe entrepreneur in 2008. “It was a tricky task for me,” Schmalzl recalls today. Sturm had clear ideas about how responsibilities should be divided between businesses and the state, Schmalzl remembers. “The Hollenbacher Steige was a prime example of why the state must focus on creating proper framework conditions.” Ultimately, which administrative level was responsible for upgrading the road did not matter to Sturm; he simply wanted a solution.
Schmalzl, Jahn, Transport Minister Winfried Hermann, and other administrative and political officials found one: reclassifying the state road as a district road to secure the necessary funding. This change ensured the small road in Hohenlohe would no longer compete with projects across the state of Baden-Württemberg, turning the seemingly impossible into reality. This outcome was also due to the respect Sturm had earned in Stuttgart. ”He is an exemplary model entrepreneur,” says Schmalzl. “That impressed everyone at the time.”
Jahn remembers the battles they fought together. “Gerhard brought entrepreneurial thinking to our joint work and was always a positive and constructive partner.” He also admired Sturm’s commitment to education and innovation. “He saw that his company needed many engineers, so he supported the local university and became heavily involved in the Hohenlohe Innovation Region. This private-sector initiative pioneered the promotion of science and technology education long before such efforts became widespread elsewhere.”
🔹A 90th Birthday Conversation: How Annemarie and Gerhard Sturm.
🔹A conversation with CEO Dr. Klaus Geißdörfer
