Fuchs Led OHB's Rise to Prominence

摘要

Manfred Fuchs, who with his wife, Christa, transformed OHB of Germany from a small naval repair shop into Europe's third-biggest space hardware prime contractor capable of besting the region's established giants, died April 26 in Altenburg, Italy, where he had a vacation home, OHB announced April 28. He was 75. Fuchs' engineering sense, coupled with his political acumen in working the corridors of power in Germany, grew Bremen, Germany-based OHB into a company that, along with Airbus Defence and Space and Thales Alenia Space, is capable of taking on system-level work on large programs. The Fuchs couple's effect on OHB can be compared, on a smaller scale, to Ray Kroc's arrival at McDonald's. There was an OHB before Christa Fuchs purchased it in 1981 and Manfred joined in 1985, just as there was a McDonald's before Kroc. But both companies blossomed into businesses that bore little resemblance to what they were previously.