On the occasion of the 80th birthday of entrepreneur and cultural patron Claus Wisser
Actually, he admits in an interview, he would have liked to have become an architect. Today, Claus Wisser lives out his “affinity for old houses” with great passion. He has bought and renovated around 30 of them over the past few years. One can assume that this was not a loss-making business. Because the last social-democratic multi-millionaire in Germany knows something about economics. The Wisag service group with 50,000 employees today grew out of a one-man cleaning company that he founded in 1965. In 2011, the entrepreneur withdrew from active business, handed everything over to his son Michael and from then on concentrated on his work as a cultural patron and social sponsor. Born in Wiesbaden, he celebrates his 80th birthday on June 30th.
He still likes to grumble and growl, as a tall person he looks like a small mountain range. But it has softened over time and doesn’t seem as hard as it used to be. To be honest, he can no longer hear the story of his incredible ascent from the son of a small shop owner: “I’m sick of it.” So just briefly the matter of the ad he placed in the Frankfurter Rundschau 57 years ago and with which it all began. She advertised for the student Claus as a cleaning man. Pretty successful.
Today he summarizes his career as follows: “If you were so lucky, it goes without saying that you give something back.” Today, Wisag offers security and surveillance as well as catering, landscape maintenance, repairs, assembly and logistics. The CEO always remained a social democrat and important SPD financier in the background, which earned him the honorary title “The Red Eminence”. At a young age he was with Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, then as “red Heidi” and Juso federal chairman, a left-wing pain in the neck for the SPD chancellor.
Wisser, the man of power, is easy to mate with, he quickly uses the familiar name of those he likes. But he only ever relied on himself. Worked hard and around the clock: “There wasn’t that much time for the family, I was more concerned with looking after the family.”
His cultural engagement began 35 years ago. His buddy Michael Herrmann was looking for a sponsor to implement a crazy idea: a big festival of classical music in the Rheingau. Wisser, who had studied piano at the conservatory in Wiesbaden, was happy to help. This is how the Rheingau Music Festival came about. Today he is the chairman of the 4,000-member association, and until 2021 he held half of the shares in the GmbH.
Active in many places
Wherever he is active for culture and science is difficult to describe in a few words. As Chairman of the Board of Trustees, he is the driving force behind the Caricatura Museum in Frankfurt am Main. On June 30, on Wisser’s birthday, the house in Wiesbaden is awarded the Hessian Culture Prize, and the patron is of course there. He is a member of the board of the Friends of Frankfurt University as well as the council of the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. He puts a lot of money into the Germany scholarships, which support students at German universities.
He has remained loyal to the SPD to this day, even when the Jusos, no longer under the leadership of Wieczorek-Zeul, attacked him as a “real estate speculator”. However, he resigned from the evangelical church: the regional church only seemed like a “medium-sized tax office” to him. A deep knowing laugh.
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