Kurt Lotz

Who was Kurt Lotz?

Dr. Kurt Lotz was the second post-war Chief executive officer of the Volkswagen automobile company in Germany. He was nominated in April 1967 to succeed the legendary Heinrich Nordhoff at the end of December 1968. Sadly, promotion arrived early when Nordhoff died in April 1968.

Lotz was the son of a farmer from the German state of Hesse. During World War II, he became a Luftwaffe general-staff Major, assigned to assessing needs for the military, which Lotz later looked back on as his first experience with industrial planning on a major scale.

After the war, Lotz worked as a clerk in Mannheim with the German subsidiary of the Swiss electrical company Brown, Boveri & Cie, which makes all kinds of electrical equipment from home appliances to locomotives. Within twelve years, Lotz rose to chairman. He attempted to diversify the firm, by investing in a small computer company to compete with American computer companies, but when it lost money, a rift between Lotz and his Swiss superiors ensued, and he left. By the time he agreed to become Nordhoff's successor at Volkswagen, he was thought of as a wunderkind of German industry for his rapid rise to the top.