The property of the Schädler family on Ludwig-Finckh-Straße in Engen has been for sale for three years. Mayor Johannes Moser is now Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Dr. Karin-Schädler-Stiftung confident that the sale of the villa will soon work out. “We have had the property valued, there are interested parties and we are in sales negotiations,” explains Moser. The villa with twelve rooms, 423 square meters of living space, a swimming pool and around 4800 square meters of land is to be sold for around 1.7 million euros.
The villa is part of the Dr. Karin Schädler Foundation, founded in 2018. She was the daughter of Eugen Schädler, who owned a gravel works and a shipping company in Mühlhausen-Ehingen and Engen. After Karin Schädler passed away in 2017, she bequeathed her assets to the municipalities of Engen and Mühlhausen-Ehingen in the form of a charitable foundation for education and culture. The foundation’s assets are around seven million euros, plus the property and agricultural land.
Property costs a lot of money to maintain
The property is not a good investment for the foundation because it costs them a lot of money every year. Money that should actually benefit the foundation’s purpose. “The foundation has to raise several thousand euros every year for maintenance, which is why it has been putting the area up for sale since 2018,” reports Moser. Since then, there has been a sales sign in front of the building. The house had to be heated in winter, and the heating had to be repaired. In addition, a gardener keeps the site in good shape. The sales transactions would have dragged on over a longer period of time. “The Board of Trustees hopes to be able to sell the property as soon as possible, so that the income from the investments is not used for the maintenance of the property, but can be used for education and culture in accordance with the purpose of the foundation,” said Moser.
Eugen Schädler worked charitable in Mühlhausen-Ehingen. Mayor Hans-Peter Lehmann is on the Board of Trustees of the Schädler Foundation.
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Karin Schädler’s father, entrepreneur Eugen Schädler, supported projects in his home communities. He gave 500,000 marks to build the multi-purpose hall in Mühlhausen-Ehingen: it is named after him. He also subsidized the Hegau Stadium in Engen, the sports field and the fountain in Mühlhausen-Ehingen.
No distributions so far
Unfortunately, the foundation has not yet been able to make any distributions, reports Moser. The assets of a foundation may only be invested in secure financial investments, with only a small proportion of shares. Due to the financial crisis and the phase of low interest rates, only low income has therefore been achieved so far. A large part of it went into the upkeep of the house. “We hope that we will be able to distribute the first income after the villa has been sold in autumn,” explains Moser. It is a shame that Mayor Hans-Peter Lehmann from Mühlhausen-Ehingen is no longer a member of the Board of Trustees because his term of office ends on May 31. Lehmann was chairman of the foundation for the first two years and, together with the former managing director of the foundation, treasurer Kurt Fürst, spent many hours dissolving the household of the large house of the Schädler family.
Big property difficult to sell
Moser knows from the sales negotiations that it is not easy to sell such a large property. He assumes that the buyer will have to invest at least half a million again if he wants to keep the entrepreneurial villa from the 1950s. The use of the property was also discussed in the Engener municipal council, said Moser. However, he was not allowed to take part in the discussion because he is biased as a board member. One thing became clear to the Board of Trustees in the course of the sales negotiations: If he wants to have the property sold, the buyer must have a free hand in designing the property. A rental was out of the question due to the costs. “The task of the foundation is to preserve the assets. So we can only sell it, ”said Moser.
