In the middle of the dark exhibition room is a desk – as a symbol. Because his desk was Wilhelm Merton's center of power. From there, the Patriarch directed his collaborators, managing the business of the globally operating metal company, but also his charitable activities, for which he had founded his Institute for the Common Good. He had tried honestly to delegate work and responsibility, but in the end he usually failed: This is how the entrepreneur is said to have once aptly characterized himself.
Alexander Jürgs
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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Wilhelm Merton, born in Frankfurt in 1848, son of a Jewish metal merchant who had immigrated from England, was what is often called an entrepreneurial personality. With the metal company founded in 1881, with the sale of non-ferrous metals such as copper, zinc and lead, he had generated millions.
However, the entrepreneur invested a large part of it in welfare. As a patron of the arts, he promoted education and wanted to provide more security for the socially disadvantaged. Merton had canteens and people's kitchens operated, initiated counseling centers for workers, and brought momentum to housing construction for the masses. And he argued for company pensions and more occupational health and safety. "To be rich with decency": according to this motto, the entrepreneur wanted to lead his life.
Merton wanted to take care to a new level
Merton was a "welfare capitalist," as the British historian Werner Mosse once described him. In the meantime, he would probably be called a pioneer of so-called "Corporate Social Responsibility". Today, numerous companies have taken up the cause of assuming social responsibility and operating sustainably. Nevertheless, only a few can keep up with the consistency with which Merton went down this path.
Because Merton was not content with donating. He wanted to take welfare to a new level, to better organize the multitude of already existing activities. As single-mindedly as he led the metal company, which benefited excellently from the high demand for copper for telephony and power lines at the time, the welfare was also to be structured. For this reason, Merton supported scientists who were to develop concepts that would counteract what he felt to be the "rulelessness and bungling" in social welfare. For this, he created an Academy of Social and Commercial Sciences.
And Merton supported the establishment of the first German foundation university in Frankfurt, today's Goethe University, like no other. Together with the then Lord Mayor Franz Adickes and his good friend Henry Oswalt, Merton had drawn up the plan to create a free and independent university. He gave 2.3 million marks from his own fortune to this educational institution, which was able to start operating in the winter semester of 1914/15. The men's league had achieved its ambitious goal.
What Merton did for Frankfurt is without question remarkable. And he is also remembered extensively in his native city: Frankfurt not only has a Merton street, but even a Merton district. Every three years, the Merton Prize is awarded to translators, there is a Merton School and the Wilhelm Merton Centre for European Integration and International Economic Order at Goethe University. Nevertheless, only very few Frankfurters are likely to be informed about the details of Merton's work.
Merton skipped the award of the Order of William
There are two reasons why the social entrepreneur has fallen into oblivion. The first is his restraint. Merton was not a man who pushed himself to the fore. None of the companies he founded bore his name. When he was awarded the Wilhelm Order, one of the most important awards of the Kingdom of Prussia, in October 1901, Merton ran away. Instead of appearing at the award ceremony, he took refuge in the family's holiday home in Tremezzo on Lake Como.
The second reason is a brutal one: the Frankfurt National Socialists did a lot to erase the memory of the founder with Jewish roots, who died in 1916. The fact that Merton's family had converted to the Protestant Reformed faith did not bring her any protection. The names and purposes of the foundations established by Merton were illegally changed, and the Institute for the Common Good was turned into an instrument of the Nazis. Merton's son Richard was deported to Buchenwald, but survived the concentration camp and managed to escape. In Britain and the United States, members of the family were able to escape into exile.
The show entitled "Metal and Society" makes do with just a few exhibits and concentrates on an exhibition space of the museum that is barely 100 square meters in size. It tells the story of the rise of the entrepreneur, his social commitment, his family ties and the persecution of the Mertons.
It also shows a donation: Andrew Merton, great-grandson of the entrepreneur who lives in the US state of New Hampshire, has bequeathed a portrait of the genre painter Rudolf Gudden to the museum. The entrepreneur appears casual on it, his hand tucked into his suit jacket, his gaze relaxed. The opening of the exhibition on Sunday will be a family reunion: more than 40 descendants of Wilhelm Merton will travel to Frankfurt, many of them for the first time in their lives.