Reinhard Mohn

Reinhard Mohn (29 June 1921 – 3 October 2009) was a German businessman who turned Bertelsmann, a "provincial, war-shattered German publisher", into the sixth-largest media conglomerate in the world.

He was born in Gütersloh, Westphalia, the fifth of six children of Heinrich Mohn. His great-great- or great-grandfather, Carl Bertelsmann, had founded the family publishing company in the town in 1835.

The eighteen-year-old Mohn was drafted in World War II. A lieutenant in Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, he was wounded and captured by the Americans in Tunisia in 1943. He ended up in Camp Concordia, a prisoner of war camp in Kansas. There, he learned English, as well as American business practices.

When he was released and returned home in 1946, his father persuaded him to work in the family business. The premises had been destroyed by Allied bombing. Though his father had been a supporter of the SS, the company was able to obtain a publishing permit from the occupying British. Nearly half a century later, Austrian journalist Hersch Fischler determined that the company had, contrary to its official version of its wartime activities, worked closely with the Nazi regime from the 1930s through the war, and had probably employed Jewish slave labour at some of its plants. Reinhard Mohn however denied being involved in the company's operations during World War II.

Mohn ran the company as chief executive officer from 1947 to 1981. Initially short of capital, he raised it from the employees by offering them a profit sharing arrangement, earning him the nickname "Red Mohn". He introduced the American concept of the book club with great success in 1950; within four years, he had over a million subscribers. He expanded into Spain in 1962 with the Círculo de Lectores (Readers' Circle). The revenue from book club sales enabled him to acquire other publishing companies, including Bantam Books, Doubleday, and Random House; record labels, such as Arista Records; and radio and television chains, including Germany's RTL Television and 90% of Britain's Channel Five. He took the company public in 1971.

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