Entrepreneur Reinhold Würth believes that training in trades is underestimated among young people. “The young people all want to study today,” Würth told the German Press Agency. It’s just a fashion, said the 87-year-old. If the parents wanted the offspring to go to university and all their classmates to go to university too, you should consider going to university yourself.
According to Würth, the old adage “craft has golden soil” is still valid. Germany is known worldwide for its good craftsmen and women. A skilled craftsman can earn as much as a university professor, especially now that he has the opportunity to take over a business when the so-called baby boomers retire.
Würth himself would probably also study today. “Mathematics or space exploration, that would interest me.” He was interested in the unimaginable dimensions of space. “You just have to bow down in humility and feel humbly for what you actually are: a very small sausage.”
The Würth Group, known for its screws, achieved sales of around 17.1 billion euros and an operating result before taxes of around 1.3 billion euros in 2021. The group employs more than 83,000 people worldwide. At the age of 14, Reinhold Würth began an apprenticeship in his father’s company, which was still small at the time, before taking over the business after his death in 1954 at the age of 19. Today he is Chairman of the Foundation’s Supervisory Board. The billionaire is one of the richest Germans.
