2007 Award Winners
Appreciation of personal commitment to Steinbeis
Special Prize Winner Senator E.h. Dr.-Ing. Wilhelm Schmitt
The jury of the Löhn Prize honours the commitment of Senator (honorary) Dr.-Ing. Wilhelm Schmitt as a long-standing member of the Board of Trustees of the Steinbeis Foundation.
Wilhelm Schmitt is a man who, alongside his professional dedication and success – most recently as a general partner at Freudenberg & Co. KG, Weinheim – also devotes himself to numerous honorary roles and plays an active part in shaping them. Wilhelm Schmitt has enthusiastically applied his in-depth knowledge, including in international business, and his talent for developing visions for the future to numerous honorary posts and committees.
He served as a full member of the Steinbeis Foundation’s Board of Trustees for fifteen years, from 1991 until his departure in 2006, and was also a member of the Board of Trustees’ Executive Committee from 1998 onwards. With his outstanding entrepreneurial expertise, he made valuable contributions in the areas of the market and technology as well as finance, and thus consistently supported the work of the Steinbeis Foundation with great dedication and success.
In addition to his commitment to Steinbeis, Wilhelm Schmitt, as Chairman of the Board of Trustees (1991–2003) and Chairman of the University Council (2000–2006), played a particularly active role in promoting the university in Mannheim, which appointed him ‘Honorary Senator’ in 1997. With his characteristic dynamism, he drove the university forward. The Steinbeis Foundation also benefited from his in-depth knowledge of the state’s higher education policy – not least in his capacity as former head of the Conference of University Council Chairpersons.