Alfred Toepfer

Alfred Carl Toepfer (13 July 1894 in Hamburg – 8 October 1993 in Hamburg) was a German entrepreneur, owner of the company Toepfer International and founder of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation. He helped to shape the original internal markets of the European Coal and Steel Community, and was a philanthropist known for his celebration of the arts, sciences, and nature.

Early life Site of the Free German Youth Day in 1913 which Toepfer attended. After acquiring the land, in 1963 Toepfer held an anniversary marking the event, and at the 75th anniversary in 1988, encouraged the youth to embrace European unity. Toepfer was born in 1894 in Lüneburg Heath, the son of a merchant. In 1979, Toepfer International was founded in Hamburg. He would also start the JWG Foundation, and in 1936 created the Hanseatic Scholarships, which allowed British students to study in Germany.

By 1973, his foundations awarded 30 cultural prizes and 75 scholarships.

Legacy In 1959, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Kiel.

The Alfred Toepfer Foundation founded an independent commission of historians in 1997, led by Hans Mommsen, which published a 488-page anthology in 2000 with a critical inventory of Toepfer Foundation biography and history. The commission concluded Toepfer had not shared the key objectives and motives of National Socialism, not even anti-Semitism, and was not enriched by the war.

In 2007 Hans Mommsen praised Toepfer as an exemplary European. He was in accord with the establishment of West Germany, having close contact with leading representatives. The Alfred Toepfer Academy for Nature Conservation was founded in 1981 as part of Lower Saxony's Ministry of Environment.

Toepfer once said “after the terrible World Wars with the enormous sacrifices of human life and material loss, I am committed to European unity, the promotion of peace, general welfare and to cultural development.”