Mads Clausen
Mads Clausen (born 21 October 1905 Elsmark ( parish Havnbjerg Sogn, later Nordborg ) on the island of Als, † August 27 1966 in the transport of Elsmark to Sønderborg ) was a Danish industrialist and founder of Danfoss, the largest industrial company in Denmark.
Life and Personality
Mads (Danish for " Matthias" ) Clausen was the son of the farmer and farm owner Jørgen Clausen ( 1875-1949 ) and Maren, born Frederiksen ( 1878-1948 ). At the time of his birth in 1905 his home region of Northern Schleswig was part of the German Empire; only with the vote of 1920, she became Danish again.
Mads Clausen's technical interest was aroused already in infancy by his great-grandfather, the wooden shoe and pump maker Jørgen Hansen (1821-1912), and after his death he inherited at age six whose tool. After graduating from high school in Sønderborg Clausen visited the Mechanical Engineering laboratory in Odense, where he graduated in 1927 as engineer. After working as an employee followed in 1933, the founding of his company Danfoss (see the second section).
Mads Clausen married on 13 May 1939 in the Cathedral of Haderslev Dorothea Emma Andkjaer, nee Hinrichsen ( born October 20, 1912 in Haderslev ), commonly called " Bitten Clausen ". From their marriage produced five children: Karin Clausen ( born 1940 ), Bente Clausen (1942 ), Jørgen Mads Clausen ( born 1948 ), Peter Johan Mads Clausen ( b. 1949 ) and Henrik Mads Clausen ( b. 1953 ). Bitten Clausen supported her husband actively in the company's management, and was after his death 1966-1971 itself CEO and chairman until 1988 second; Jørgen Mads Clausen her son since 1996 administrierender Director of Danfoss.
Mads Clausen made a point to take advantage of the evening hours, and he had worked on the night of his death until a clock in the morning at his desk. The next morning, he suddenly felt sick, a doctor diagnosed a heart attack, leaving Clausen bring an ambulance in the country in Sonderborg Hospital, but despite the move successful cardiac massage only his death could be found on his arrival. On August 31, 1966 Mads Clausen was buried with great interest of the population in the cemetery of Havnbjerg; on the route of the hearse were over 10,000 people.
Personally, Mads Clausen was a down to earth, home related, unpretentious and in no way be ingested by humans. Even at business meeting in Copenhagen he preferred, prefer to go to a hot dog stand than in a restaurant. For charity or regional cultural promotion, he donated millions of Danish kroner. Famous was his taciturnity. Even his marriage proposal in 1939 was quite unpoetic, as he left his then girlfriend Ask suddenly asked while drinking coffee after a pause in the conversation of several minutes, "When we want to get married "
Business creation and development
After he had worked from 1928 to 1933 in succession at three companies as an engineer, Mads Clausen returned in 1933 after Elsmark the north of the island of Als and started his own factory in an attic room of his parents' house. This was based on Clausen's business idea, automatic cooling parts, which had to be imported from the U.S. to Europe so far to establish itself. So its first product was a so-called expansion valve for refrigerators, and its modest initial equipment included a water tap and a bicycle pump with which he tested the valves. Through his ingenuity, which is also the nickname of " Mads patent" is wearing it, the products expanded resistant in the following period.
Originally Mads Clausen had named his company " Dansk Køleautomatik -og apparatus factory" ( Danish cooling automatic and apparatus factory ), but he named it in 1946 in " Danfoss " to a name that is different from " Denmark " (Denmark) and the verb " fosse " ( pass ) is derived. Until the late 1950s, Danfoss has developed into the largest factory in Europe for auto parts of cooling and heating systems as well as hermetic refrigeration compressors. 1951 began the construction of today's modern factory building in Elsmark, metropoloitan Nordborg, in the north of the island of Als on over 50,000 m2 floor area, which later doubled again.
The company's success is best illustrated by the rapidly growing number of employees: 1933: 1; 1935: 4; 1939: 26; 1943: 179; 1947: 316;, 1951: 764; 1955: 2321; 1958: 3000; 1965: 5200, of which 1700 employees on the global retail outlets that the company had at that time already in Danfoss Flensburg, London, Paris, Helsinki, New York, Toronto, Australia, Japan, India, Portugal and Spain. In 1961 the company Danfoss has been transformed into a joint stock company whose main shareholder of " producer Mads Clausen's Fund " and its executive director Mads Clausen was.
Mads Clausen's life achievement is of course primarily the construction of his world Danfoss. But also one has in his home region accounted to him as the most important employer high that he has never thought to move his factory to Copenhagen. So it is essential Clausen's merit that North Schleswig and especially the island of Als could work at a time when fewer and fewer people in agriculture, were spared a severe structural crisis and the extensive migration of the young population.