Senior executive of the Otto Bock Group passes away at the age of 94
The Otto Bock Group is mourning the loss of senior executive Dr. Max Näder, who passed away on Friday, July 24th, at the age of 94. The funeral service for Dr. Näder, who was an honorary citizen of the cities of Duderstadt and Königsee, will be held on Friday, July 31st, at 12 pm in the St. Servatius protestant church in Duderstadt. Following the service, his casket will be carried in a procession through the historical old town to the St. Paulus Cemetery, where Dr. Näder will be buried next to his wife Maria, who died in 2005.
Otto Bock HealthCare and Otto Bock Kunststoff in Duderstadt will not be open for business on this day. Employees are invited to the service to pay their last respects to their senior president. Production will also stop on Friday at the wheelchair manufacturing facility in Königsee, Dr. Näder’s home town. At Otto Bock’s worldwide sales and service locations, an hour of remembrance will be held in loving memory of Dr. Näder.
Humility before creation, respect for people and love of his homeland distinguished Dr. Max Näder throughout his life. In 1935, Max Näder applied for a job with Otto Bock, who quickly recognised the young man’s talent and ambition. Otto Bock gave him the opportunity to train as an orthopaedic technician and sales representative, and in 1943 granted him permission to take his daughter's hand in marriage. Three years later, Max and Maria Näder established the northern warehouse in Duderstadt. By 1947, production had begun at factory building 20 on Euzenberg Street, thus laying the groundwork for the success of what is today a global enterprise.
In 1953, founder Otto Bock passed away at the age of 64. That same year, Otto Bock Kunststoff was founded. In a show of long-term commitment and courage, Max Näder established Otto Bock's first foreign subsidiary in the US. This laid the foundation for the internationalisation of the company. Today, Otto Bock HealthCare has 40 sales and service locations around the globe and supplier contacts in over 140 countries.
Two groundbreaking inventions, the myoelectric arm prosthesis and a modular system for prosthetic legs, marked the beginning of a boom in the 1960s and 70s. There was also a personal cause for celebration: Hans Georg Näder, the family's first and only child, was born in 1961. One year later, the foundation stone was laid for a new building in the Duderstadt industrial park. This would be the future site of buildings for the orthopaedic industry and plastics manufacturing division. In 1969, the Näder family celebrated the completion of the company’s administration building.
In recognition of his achievements, Max Näder received an honorary doctorate from Berlin’s Technical University in June 1985. In 1994, Dr. Bernhard Vogel, then Minister President of Thuringia, awarded him the prestigious Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. These were just some of the many prestigious honours Max Näder received. In 1985, he earned the Georg-Hohmann Award from the German Orthopaedics and Traumatology Society, a distinction his son Hans Georg Näder also received in 2003.
In 1987, Dr. Max Näder established the Otto Bock Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting orthopaedic technology and interdisciplinary collaboration through continuing education programmes for doctors, physical therapists and orthopaedic technicians. In the wake of the flood disaster in eastern Germany in 2002, the foundation expanded its activities to include charitable activities. This included organising relief and fundraising campaigns after the 2004 tsunami and the devastating earthquake in China in 2008.
In 1990, at the age of 28, Professor Hans Georg Näder took over the family business and continued running the company in the spirit of his father. In 1992, the family bought back its former Königsee headquarters, which had been expropriated after the Second World War. The year 2009 marks yet another milestone in the history of the family and the company. Ninety years after the company was founded, Otto Bock is returning to its roots in Berlin and opening the Science Center Medical Technology, a unique forum for technologies for people with disabilities.
Dr. Max Näder was extremely proud of the success and the outstanding worldwide reputation of the company to which he dedicated his life. Right up to his last days of his happy, fulfilled life, he had a personal investment in the well-being of the company and the employees, the needs of people with disabilities and customer satisfaction. The Otto Bock Group and all its employees are mourning the loss of an entrepreneurial spirit whose composure and Human values serve as an example for others, a man who shaped the culture of this German family-owned business by providing a model for future success.
