The courage to go his own way: How Günther Kollmar shaped our success story
As a young man, Günther Kollmar (1937 to 2013) had always wanted to make a vocation out of history. In the end, he fulfilled this wish in a very original way: The son of Hedwig and Otto J. Kollmar did not study history, he made it. In so doing, he was the author of the OeTTINGER Brewery success story.
Günther had already taken over his parents’ business in 1957. He was 20 years young at the time, and he brought a trait to his work which has continued to shape our family business: The courage to go his own way.
When the first supermarkets sprung up in Germany during the 1970s, Günther didn’t just spot an opportunity for new sales channels, he created the new sales channels himself. As a result, we became one of the first breweries to supply affordable, top quality beer to these new markets for consumption at home. In so doing, the foundations for the OeTTINGER concept were laid, facilitating the brewery’s impressive development over subsequent years: An achievement which was second to none!
After Günther Kollmar passed away in 2013, Handelsblatt wrote: “He transformed a small brewery into a brewing empire whose products are familiar to every beer drinker in Germany: OeTTINGER.”
