Otto Rieger Foundation

The Otto Rieger Foundation was founded in Aalen-Unterkochen on 19 December 1975 exclusively for charitable and benevolent initiatives to:

  • Help young people
  • Support our long-time employees and former RUD employees in their well-earned retirement
  • Support religious and cultural institutions in Aalen-Unterkochen, where our family-owned group has its headquarters
  • Contribute to other charitable institutions with purposes similar to those of to our foundation

Within the framework of the foundation’s defined purpose, we also provide ongoing external and internal support for educational and research projects. The foundation also pursues Otto Rieger’s aims with special foreign language classes for our young trainees and many of our employees, educational excursions and the many seminars offered by the company in our Center for Chain Knowledge each year, continuing to develop in accordance with the changing challenges and demands of the time.

The Otto Rieger Foundation’s actively applied sense of social responsibility also includes additional support for older former employees in the seniors division.

The head of the foundation’s family-oriented board of directors is Dr. Hansjörg Rieger
The head of the foundation’s family-oriented advisory board is Dr. Jörg S. Rieger

The Otto Rieger Foundation was inspired by the entrepreneurial legacy of Otto Rieger, the eldest of the "4 chain brothers" who laid the foundation for the success of the RUD family business in its third generation.

Otto Rieger's entrepreneurial character was based on a sense of Christian duty and social responsibility. His realisation that a family business can only grow into a true corporate family and enjoy broad, long-term success through the hard work, devotion and sense of solidarity shared by all generations of employees led to the creation of this foundation in 1975.

He had understood that the process of becoming a corporate family and thriving together depends as much on the younger links in this "family chain" as it does the older ones. Our younger employees' willingness to learn and the experience of our older employees is a secret to our success as a family business that goes beyond any prescribed theory. Otto Rieger believed in practical, hands-on, responsible entrepreneurial actions.

On this basis, the entrepreneur and visionary had the wisdom and foresight to help young people, starting with their training at the company and extending into further training outside of it, to start their professional lives with attractive prospects and a sense of fulfilment.

He also saw the vital importance of general respect, opportunities for further training and development, and dedicated support of long-time employees long after they finished actively working at the company as the gratitude owed to the company's employees, a debt of honour and a sustainable concept of values for responsible management of a family business.

The Otto Rieger Foundation is named after our long-time former managing director and senior manager Otto Rieger (22 June 1898 – 8 December 1987), who was called to take on responsibility for our RUD family business at a young age due to the turmoil of the First World War. As the oldest of the “four chain brothers” Otto, Ernst, Emil and Dipl.-Ing. Werner Rieger, the young Otto Rieger had to take on management of the company at a difficult time starting in 1929. After a brief period spent gaining experience in the U.S., he and his brothers succeeded in developing our plant on the Island of Peace in Unterkochen into an industrially oriented, modern manufacturing company.

In his many years at the company, Otto Rieger was constantly guided by his basic Christian beliefs. Within the company, he never lost sight of the basic principles, significance and goals of our family-oriented leadership of a growing number of employees, even during the chaos of the Second World war.

Quite the opposite: Otto Rieger developed and implemented the sustainable values of general respect, opportunities for training and further education, support and provision for employees that still form the basis of the socially responsible management of our family business. Outside of the company, Otto Rieger also cared deeply about his personal involvement in, and support for, communities that shared his Christian values.