Helmut Niedermeyer

Helmut Niedermeyer ( born February 28, 1926 in Opava, Czechoslovakia, † February 3, 2014 in Tenerife, Spain) was an Austrian entrepreneur and founder of the eponymous electronics retail group Niedermeyer.

Life

Helmut Niedermeyer was born in 1926 in Moravia- Silesia. His Vienna-born mother died shortly after birth. His father, a successful cafe owner was interned in the era of National Socialism for "political reasons " for seven years in a concentration camp. At the age of 17 years Niedermeyer was drafted into the army and came for five years in Soviet captivity, he spent in Siberia. Of 83 patients suffering from paratyphoid inmates he was one of three survivors. By the expulsion from the Sudetenland in the course of implementation of the Beneš decrees Niedermeyer came after the return from captivity to Vienna.

A job at the Vienna Photo House Herlango from 1949 promoted Niedermeyer's commercial talent to light. In 1957 he founded his own company Niedermeyer AG as X-ray, photo and film products business in the Vienna Mariahilferstrasse. More stores opened Niedermeyer in the following years. He developed through acquisitions in the late 1980s and early 1990s from the Niedermeyer Group as an electronics trading company. In 1997, Niedermeyer retired from the Supervisory Board of the company. 1999 sold his son Christian, the electric chain of the mobile operator max.mobil. After changing hands several times, the company went into bankruptcy in 2013. Beginning in February 2014 died Niedermeyer 87 -year-old from a heart attack on the Spanish island of Tenerife.