On the Deceleration of Money
Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 21, 2007
Ernst Freiberger represents a new generation of philanthropists.
Gone are the times when the philanthropist, the patron, the millionaire who held visions used to be an heir, with the family’s history behind him and a keen eye on the future. Now, in a bold and cheeky way, the self-made man has joined the club, he whom the old aristocracy disdainfully considers a social climber. Yet, wealth generated within the short span of one generation also calls for being used sensibly. This is why Europe will soon widely face the phenomenon of a new generation of charity founders and patrons of the sciences, as they have already become reality on the other side of the Atlantic. Ernst Freiberger jr. is neither a Bill Gates, nor a Warren Buffet from Bavaria. But he is still a pioneer.
When Freiberger, aged 55, enters the living-room of his villa in Munich’s district Bogenhausen and firmly walks towards the table that carries silver tea cans his body language expresses the language of power. After a short period of time he makes a comment that could have been voiced by the public relations officer of Germany’s left-wing party PDS: “The system of Western capitalism frequently has to conquer new markets. Variety is lost, opportunities are ignored. For how long can a system dependent on constant growth continue to exist?” So this is how the man talks who brought the Germans frozen pizza and made a fortune out of it; the man who in the 1990s was Berlin’s biggest private investor and on whose property the Ministry of the Interior is located; the man who owns a group of medical clinics and who, after a trip around the world, decided that the world would have to find peace – and that he would have to make a contribution.
This contribution is called ‘Ernst Freiberger Foundation’. It is intended to solidify the insights gained on a trip to the Massai and the Dogon. The trip around the world lasted for two and a half years, starting on September 1, 1998, and covering 85 countries. “Before that I had been programmed on pizza from morning until evening, for 22 years”. The experiences in far-away countries are documented in a film, with Achim Höppner citing Freiberger’s sentences in a grave and ponderous manner, and in a diary of seven large-format volumes – thick paper, bound in leather, with photographs and texts, all in a dark blue slipcase. When Freiberger turns their pages, his head that usually gives a little forward jerk when using nouns, for a short moment rests still. “These faces”, he utters as he points to people living in the bush or those in Mongolia, “these faces…”.
A tangible result of his travels is a chapel, the foundation of which was laid the first of September, 2001, of all days. “Because we all receive warmth from one and the same sun”, the chapel is dedicated to the five world religions. Here, in Freiberger’s home town Amerang, in the midst of Chiemgau, all believers of the world are meant to come together, symbolically. At its end wall, the little house of God has an altar of Mary, flanked to the left by a Torah roll and to the right by a Quran that is opened at Sure 14: “The infidels say to their apostles, we will expel you out of our land”. Nearer to the entrance sits a Buddha, looking straight ahead at the Elephant God Ganesh. On the floor a sun shines and on the ceiling the stars. “Peace” can be read in all sorts of languages. The white chapel stands silently on the outskirts of the village. It is located on those premises, sheltered by a wall, where Freiberger together with his wife and children lives, with farm houses from the early 20th century: the arrangement of an idyllic setting including waterfalls as well as a combined heat and power station. This is where the ‘1st Amerang Dispute’ took place: ‘Religion – Humanity’s Blessing or Curse? The World at Crisis’. Each of the world religions was represented by two delegates: an Imam from Hamburg declared the teachings of Muhammad, Jesus and Moses to be identical. Michael von Brück, professor of religious studies, asked that the idea of “love as a motif for social agency” be taken seriously. Roman Herzog, patron of the ‘dispute’, criticized “the white man’s arrogance”, Christoph Stölzl praised “the Occident’s capacity to engender cultural values”.
He is no Peter Pan
With formulations of this kind many speakers will have touched upon the spirit of homely overall fraternisation that the host is bound to enthuse about. Freiberger expects from these disputes on a regular basis as well as from workshops and research assignments nothing more and nothing less than a worldwide establishment of peace. The participants – this year the organisers hope to be able to welcome Nelson Mandela – are intended to depart from Amerang with a new image of themselves as well as their counterparts and thereby influence the real living conditions in their own countries. The “Dispute” is the most ambitious offspring of the Ernst Freiberger Foundation. One has to witness the initiator in order to understand his unclouded optimism, one has to see how in his manner of speech, his gaze, his gestures he transforms back into the boy who once left Amerang to change the world.
But Freiberger is underestimated if he is reduced to a do-gooder Peter Pan. What appears to be dreaminess has a hard core made up of convictions. Also in his philanthropic ventures the businessman is a shaker and mover. Without enormous confidence in his own powers he in 1976 (as a 25-year-old who had just finished his studies in business relations) would have hardly managed to transform the nearly bankrupt ‘Pizza Versandbäckerei’ in Berlin into Europe’s biggest pizza factory. When he sold ‘Freiberger Lebensmittel GmbH’ (FLG) to Südzucker AG in 1998 the company had around 2000 employees. Today, two million products of frozen food are manufactured every day in Germany, Austria and Great Britain and are sold in twenty European countries plus Russia as brands of large food chains. At one point, FLG created its own brand, the ‘Alberto’ pizza, advertised by means of an Italian with a moustache and a bright red Piaggio.
While the Dispute looks towards a future without hatred, another activity focuses on the past. Year after year, Freiberger intends to unveil a monument, not far away from the Reichstag and the Museumsinsel, in a location where he has already constructed a large-scale office building. A ‘Road of Recollection’ is to be constructed – including witnesses to ‘a different mother country’, witnesses to ‘a good 20th century Zeitgeist’. The interest in and turn towards the people honoured so far – Hitler’s adversary Albrecht Haushofer, the engineer Konrad Zuse, the ‘freedom fighter’ Walter Rathenau – is also a result of his travels.
Whether in a helicopter over the Philippines or in the ‘Eastern Oriental Express’ across Thailand – as soon as Freiberger had mentioned his home country, his interlocutors went, “Ah, Hitler…”. Therefore, the ‘heroes without a sword’ are meant to “recall an image of Germany that differs from Germany’s mainly negative image across the world”. Hope is placed onto the shoulders of Haushofer, Zuse and soon also Thomas Mann by the man from Amerang who confesses: “I come from a village”. The village is also where his father came from who carried the same name and whose ice-cream factory EFA (‘Ernst Freiberger Amerang’) once laid the foundations.
The Germany Freiberger dreams about would consist of Amerang, Berlin and West African Mali. There, among the Dogon people, he found what he misses back home: large families that support each other, old people who are treated with respect. The Germany of his dreams would barely feature American components. “The missionary zeal of Western countries, headed by the USA” enrages him. You cannot impose America’s conception of democracy on the whole world. In some places, hierarchical structures have been proven successful. The “system anyone against anyone” forestalls societies that are intact. Rather, it would be necessary to strengthen the tie between the generations. Hence, Freiberger’s foundation has established the ‘Sunflower Meeting Point’, a venue for elderly and young people.
Ernst Freiberger is a child of growth but at the same time he is a critic of growth and the establishment. Having born the burden of time for decades and encumbered others with it, now his key term is deceleration. To reflect on what is essential to oneself is what he now propagates. And all of these tensions come together and are discharged as Ernst Freiberger says goodbye to his visitor with a firm, alluring handshake. When the visitor looks back on the Munich villa and the Alpine village of Amerang, the dark blue diaries and the Massai, a phrase by Thomas Brasch comes to his mind: “I’d like to stay where I have never been”.
