A manager from East Prussia: Wilhelm Krumm

Great ideas are not a recipe for success. They remain castles in the air as long as there is no one to implement them. It is not uncommon for these key people to remain in the background, although without their reliability, perseverance and creativity, the work would not have come to fruition. In Wilhelm Krumm, we encounter such a personality – professionally competent and reliable, someone who never put himself at the center of attention and always saw himself as just an employee. Perhaps this is why he has often been overlooked in the past. His name only appears in passing in Friedensau historiography.

Wilhelm Krumm was one of the first Adventists in East Prussia. He was born here in 1861. At the age of 33, he and his wife joined the Adventist church in Gumbinnen and were soon elected elders of the church. He was a leading personality. In 1901, he received a call to come to Friedensau as an estate manager. He did not hesitate for long and gave up his thriving business. In return, many new and challenging tasks awaited him as the future administrator and estate manager of Friedensau. He arrived at a time when the nutrient factory was facing major legal problems. After barely a year in office, the factory's production manager had absconded with the recipes, separated from the community and was now claiming the right to manufacture some of the products in his own factory. Good advice was expensive. Wilhelm Krumm's first working days in Friedensau began with patenting the products of the food factory. Since then, the logo of the German Association for Health Care (DVG) has been adorned with the addition "registered trademark".

In addition to managing the nutrient factory, the new estate manager had other tasks on his plate: the sanatorium was nearing completion and further plans for the construction of large buildings had been decided. Now a person was needed who was able to work strategically and manage and coordinate the various tasks.

When Wilhelm Krumm came to Friedensau, Otto Lüpke as principal and Dr. Andreas Hoenes as head of the sanatorium were able to devote themselves entirely to their tasks and left the entire organization and technical management to Wilhelm Krumm. They could rely on him. Anyone asking about the reason for the rapid growth in Friedensau in the first decade of its existence will always come back to Wilhelm Krumm. When the nutrient factory was relocated to Hamburg in 1914, before the outbreak of war, the Krumm family also moved to Hamburg because a plant manager was needed. In general, Ludwig Richard Conradi seems to have thought a lot of the East Prussians. From his arrival in Friedensau in 1901 until the end of the European Division's existence in 1921, he was a member of the DVG's supervisory board, which at that time regulated all financial, personnel and content-related matters of the community in Germany.

After the newly built health food factory in Hamburg had established itself and made a profit, Ludwig Richard Conradi brought Wilhelm Krumm back to Friedensau, which had been struggling to get back on its feet since the end of the war. Until 1923, Wilhelm Krumm once again managed the affairs of the missionary seminary as managing director. He was instrumental in Friedensau becoming an independent political community in 1922. It is understandable that Wilhelm Krumm was now given the responsibility of mayor/community leader. At the same time, he also took over the management of the old people's home in 1923. A stroke forced him to resign from all his duties in 1929. Three years later, on July 23, 1932, he suffered a second stroke and died.

An additional facet completes Wilhelm Krumm's personality. His sister Auguste was married to the first director of the old people's home, Julius Lillig. However, as she died in 1913 and her husband was killed in the war in 1915, as were two of her sons-in-law, Wilhelm Krumm and his wife took the widowed nieces and their children into their family as a matter of course. The daughter of one of the nieces – Marianne Fritzsching – was appointed the first female pastor of the Friedensau Adventist Church in November 1990 ... Doesn't that close the circle in a wonderful way? (Text: Dr. Johannes Hartlapp).