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| The Carl Zeiss Foundation in Jena |
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| (Original appeared in 1996 in a publication issued by the Regional Center for Political Education, Thuringia. Reproduced here with the kind permission of the authors: Wolfgang Mühlfriedel and Edith Hellmuth.) |
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At the end of the 1880s, 48-year-old Abbe started to seek a way of safeguarding his achievements for the long term. Under no circum- stances did he want the Zeiss Workshop to suffer the same fate as the precision-mechanical and optical institute in Munich that JOSEPH VON FRAUNHOFER had directed with great success. After the death of the physicist and glass chemist, the renowned facility had been totally ruined due to the distribution of his estate among his heirs.
In 1889, one year after the death of Carl Zeiss, this prompted Abbe to create the Carl Zeiss Foundation, to which he transferred his own share of the assets in the optical workshop and the Jena glassworks in 1891. In 1896, Ernst Abbe gave the foundation a constitution in which, in a legally effective manner, he stipulated both what type of business activity had to be conducted by the foundation companies and how the profits generated by them should be used.
In this way, he realized his objective of ensuring that the activities of the foundation companies would be permanently focused on science and technology; that a permanent core of personnel would exist for the sophisticated production of precision-mechanical and optical instru- ments, and that at the University of Jena all those scientists would be promoted who could be beneficial for the foundation companies.
Foundation funds were used to set up university institutes, support professorships and promote research projects. A major proportion of corporate profits was used to enhance existing and create new products. Over the decades, the employees’ awareness of working in an enterprise with unusual ownership conditions, the good specialist training available, the knowledge that the Jena products were very special and the social privileges provided created a mentality that extended right into the employees’ families and society itself.
This Zeiss mentality made it difficult for political groups to gain any influence on the workforce. This presumably led to the view that Zeiss employees belonged to a “workers’ aristocracy”.
The foundation’s constitution granted legally enforceable social rights to the employees. Every member of the workforce was paid an agreed minimum wage or salary which could not be reduced under any circumstances. Every year, the employees received a wage or salary supplement which was dependent on the profits generated by the company. Six days’ paid annual leave was granted. If layoffs were necessary, the employees affected were given a severance payment by the company.
A company health insurance scheme was put in place in 1875. Employees who joined the company before their 40th birthday were entitled to a disability or retirement pension after five years of service. In 1900, the Zeiss Works were one of the few German companies to introduce the eight-hour working day.
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