Robert Bosch (4)

In particular Robert Bosch's activities over and beyond the company, allow certain comparisons with another successful character, Henry Ford. He also founded a worldwide operating motor vehicle concern, which however, through his own stubborness, he in the end, almost ruined. He very early introduced improvements for his workers, thus incensing his colleagues.

Both had their roots in a rural environment and founded, after being successfull in their companies, large ranches, into which part of their profits disappeared. Robert Bosch probably donated more money to the public sector than did Ford, even though donations from successful company owners is more traditional in the USA. Indeed, both founded their own very successful hospitals.

Politically seen, they were not at all comparable, because Henry Ford with, e.g., his anti-Semitism and occasional admiration for Adolf Hitler, was more right wing, and Robert "the red" Bosch had more of a tendency to the left wing. This was probably more of a fatherly, more a socialism in the direction of Swabian-bourgeoisie. Indeed, neither received much gratitude for their social-reforms, in bad times both companies were hit by strikes anyway, Ford in fact, was hit much harder and for longer periods than was Bosch.

There was also another similarity that the two families shared, they both outlived their sons, Bosch however was granted a late progeny at the age of 66. Henry Ford outlived Robert Bosch, who died in 1942, by about five years. One of the reasons was perhaps, that the Second World War was raging and that Germany was in the grip of National-Socialism, which did not fit in at all with old man Bosch's ideas for the future. 02/10