The entrepreneur Günther Fielmann is dead. The founder of the optician chain of the same name died on Wednesday at the age of 84 in his home town of Lütjensee in Schleswig-Holstein, as the Fielmann Group announced on Friday. He fell asleep peacefully surrounded by his family.
“The thoughts of our more than 23,000 employees in Europe, Asia and the USA are with the relatives of Günther Fielmann these days. Our sincere condolences and deep sympathy go out to his family, friends and companions. We will all remember Günther Fielmann as a pioneer in ophthalmic optics with his customer-oriented philosophy, his creativity and his visionary spirit,” it continued.
Fielmann has changed the eyewear business in Germany. There is now a branch of his optician chain in almost every pedestrian zone. Fielmann AG had a total of 977 branches at home and abroad, more than 22,000 employees and 27 million customers at the end of March 2023. Annual sales were most recently (2022) at almost 1.8 billion euros.
Fielmann withdrew from the company in 2019 and handed it over to his son Marc. In addition to his entrepreneurial successes, Fielmann was active as an organic farmer. Fielmann also bought and renovated Plön Castle; Opticians are trained there for the entire industry. Fielmann donated a lot to education, science and culture, ecology and nature conservation. He gave his employees shares in the company and planted a tree for each of them every year.
The chairman of the Fielmann Group supervisory board, Mark Binz, paid tribute to the deceased as a “century entrepreneur and visionary. With strategic foresight, a clear focus on the wishes of customers and an exemplary commitment to the common good, he has shaped the German economy far beyond the boundaries of ophthalmic optics and hearing acoustics.” (dpa)