Ernst Pollmann

* 1933

  • "At the very beginning, our main task was to explain to those employees that they don't just get paid for being at the workplace, but that they should work for it."

  • "I can only tell you this detail. We had this airport, and at that time it was that we were told that if you got from the Czech Republic to Austria, you were dead. One time a glider from the Czech Republic landed there and the pilot didn't get off the plane and said: 'Now shoot me’. Because they were told that if they got to Austria, they would shoot him. We didn't do it. We gave him water. We helped him take off, and he couldn't believe it at all."

  • "The company was founded in 1888. It was founded by my grandfather together with other partners. They then left the company and Franz Pollmann ran the company with his employees. At that time, wall clocks were made there. These were then sold in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They carried them in ruck sacks, in backpacks on their backs. Then the company grew into a wholesale business, and by then my dad was working there too."

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    Karlstein an der Thaya, 28.04.2022

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Man should work to live, not the other way around

Ernst Pollmann in 1980s
Ernst Pollmann in 1980s
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Ernst Pollmann was born on 10 June 1933 and grew up in Karlstein an der Thaya in the Lower Austrian Waldviertel. His grandfather founded a workshop there in 1888 to manufacture wall clocks and other components. The workshop, which gradually grew, was taken over in 1933 during the world economic crisis by Ernst Pollmann senior, later mayor of the village and a member of the NSDAP during the war. He ran the company until 1962, when he handed it over to his sons Ernst and Herbert. In the 1980s, when the company celebrated its 100th anniversary, they reoriented it towards the production of automotive components. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, however, the company found itself in financial difficulties and therefore created a branch in Czechoslovakia in cooperation with the company Lada from Jindřichův Hradec in order to reduce labour costs. In 1997, the Pollmann brothers passed the company on to the fourth generation: their descendants Marcus and Robert.