Establishment
This Foundation is the Riesenkampff family’s oldest foundation. It was registered in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as a charitable foundation on 29 March 2001.
Dr Georg Riesenkampff was born in Riga, Estonia. Due to the historical ties of the Riesenkampff family with the Baltic States, and in particular with the Republic of Estonia which had regained its independence, he had the idea of promoting exchange between the two countries in both the cultural, technical and economic fields. The awarding of internships in Germany to young Estonian students struck him as an ideal starting point for this. He was able to inspire his cousin Carl-Otto Riesenkampff who was himself born in Tallinn (Reval), with this idea. Together they established the foundation and through Georg Riesenkampff´s good contacts in the business world, he succeeded in persuading a couple of German companies to provide the appropriate internships.
Since then, 65 interns from the University of Tartu (Dorpat) have been able to complete a two-month internship in Germany, thus contributing to the exchange between the two countries.
Every year BARMENIA in Wuppertal has provided an internship. The Estonian interns were well looked after by the Barmenia employees and were thus able to gain their first important professional experience. For one trainee, this proved to be decisive for her later career – today she is working as a department manager at a large insurance company in Estonia.
Düsseldorf, March 2001
The Riesenkampff family has also established another foundation, the “Riesenkampff-foundation”, which was founded in 2016, also being involved in Estonia.
THE FOUNDERS
Dr. Georg Riesenkampff (1935 – 2009)
Georg Riesenkampff was born in Riga in 1935 before the family was resettled in Germany from the Baltic States at the end of 1939.
After graduating from high school in Regensburg, he completed an apprenticeship at Siemens in Erlangen and Berlin, this being followed by studies in industrial engineering at the Technical University in Berlin leading to completion of a doctorate.
After holding various positions in his career, between 1985 and until his retirement in 2001 he acted as President and Chief Executive Officer of Gebrüder Becker GmbH, an internationally active medium-sized company in Wuppertal,. He was also chairman of the company’s advisory board until his death in 2009. In addition, he served as a commercial judge at the Wuppertal Regional Court and was chairman of the board of the Vereinigung Bergischer Unternehmerverbände (VBU) (a regional Association of employers’ associations), whose public relations committee he chaired. In his function as chairman of the VBU, he served on the executive committee and the board of directors of Metall NRW, the regional association of employers’ organisations in the metal and electrical industries in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Until shortly before his death, he was a chosen senior elder of the Brotherhood of Blackheads from Reval.
Carl-Otto Riesenkampff (1917 – 2013)
Carl-Otto Riesenkampff was born in Reval in 1917 and attended the traditional cathedral school there. After his Estonian military service, he joined the Estonia Corps, one of the oldest German-Baltic student corporations dating back to 1821, of which he became the last president (senior).
The resettlement in 1939 and the Second World War, interrupted his law studies at the University of Tartu (Dorpat).
Wounded and decorated several times, he was released from American captivity at the end of the war as a cavalry lieutenant. He later worked as an advisor in the Hessian Ministry of the Interior and for a large automobile company.
Carl-Otto Riesenkampff, also an elder of the Brotherhood of Blackheads from Reval, was the last living member of the Corps Estonia and the last Riesenkampff who grew up speaking Estonian as his mother tongue.
Dr Jochen F. Kirchhoff
(Iserlohn, 1927 – 2019)
Since its foundation in 2001, Dr. Jochen Kirchhoff has supported the Foundation, whether by establishing contacts with the University of Tartu, hosting interns from Estonia in his company – the Kirchhoff Group in Iserlohn – or as an experienced advisor on the Board of Trustees.
Until his death, he never missed a meeting of the Board of Trustees, because as Honorary Consul of the Republic of Estonia in NRW for many years, the commitment of the Carl-Otto and Georg Riesenkampff Foundation in Estonia was also very important to him.
The Foundation owes him a great debt of gratitude for all the years in which Dr Kirchhoff accompanied the Foundation with his helpful, reliable and warm-hearted manner.