100 years of Fresenius

In October 1912, Dr. Eduard Fresenius, the pharmacist and owner of the Hirsch Pharmacy, which was known locally by its German name, Hirsch-Apotheke, established the pharmacy business Dr. E. Fresenius chemisch-pharmazeutische Industrie KG.

The Hirsch Pharmacy was one of Frankfurt’s oldest apothecary shops, with a history that could be traced back to 1462.

The products that Dr. Fresenius produced and sold with his new company included special compounds for colds, such as the nasal ointment Bormelin. The business was successful and grew out of numerous collaborative relationships entered into by Dr. Fresenius with well-known medical specialists. For example, it produced a solution for Nobel Laureate Paul Ehrlich used in his syphilis treatment, Salvarsan: “Injectio Fresenius,” ultrapure distilled water.

In 1934, Dr. Fresenius relocated his chemical-pharmaceutical company to Bad Homburg. He intensified his focus on the company, which employed around 400 people in the years to follow.

Dr. Fresenius had many ideas that made his pharmacy and business well known and were often far ahead of their time. One of these was the Unterhaltungsblatt der Hirsch-Apotheke (Hirsch Pharmacy’s popular paper), which he published in the early 1930s, to win his customers’ loyalty and to promote his company’s products.

He had a courier service – still out of the ordinary at that time – which allowed the business to make fast delivery of drugs to its customers.

Another example of Dr. Fresenius’ ingenuity was the diet pavilion that he first opened in Bad Homburg in 1937. There, Fresenius employees offered visitors to the famous spa town freshly made fruit and vegetable juices during the summer months, and prepared special drinks for dieting patients according to doctors’ prescriptions. These latter drinks were prepared for people with stomach and digestive ailments who generally could only consume fruits and vegetables in limited amounts. The precisely dosed, freshly squeezed juices were given to patients upon consultation with their doctors and facilitated their intake of essential vitamins. Milk-Mix drinks, an early form of milkshakes, were particularly popular.

The Hirsch Pharmacy in Frankfurt was destroyed in the air raids of March 1944. While the business premises in Bad Homburg were not damaged by bombing, shortages of raw materials made the resumption of production difficult.

Dr. Fresenius died in February 1946, leaving his property to a community of heirs, among them his faster daughter Else Fernau. The community of heirs decided that Else Fernau should take over the pharmacy and the company. She assumed this responsibility after completing her studies in pharmacy in 1951, at the age of 26.

From the 1950s, Else Fernau concentrated on relaunching the production at the company in Bad Homburg, and looked to employ specialist staff and assistants. It was the economist and jurist Hans Kröner who offered particularly helpful expert advice. She first consulted him on legal questions, but soon also enlisted his help in developing business strategies for the company. At first, the Bad Homburg site mainly produced infusion solutions, and later Else Fernau and Hans Kröner expanded the product portfolio to a comprehensive range including high-quality special solutions.

To create space for the production of infusion solutions, Fresenius erected a new building at Gluckensteinweg 5, in Bad Homburg, in 1955.

Infusion solutions marked the beginning of the company, and in the 1960s the continuous expansion of this field began. This included the development of new nutrition and volume replacement solutions as well as intravenously administered generic drugs.

Up until the early 1960s, there was little help for patients suffering from acute renal failure. Many patients died because no dialysis machines were available for their treatment. For this reason, in 1966, Fresenius started distributing and maintaining dialysis machines made by manufacturers in the U.S. Through their contact with the medical staff who used them, Fresenius employees acquired knowledge and were then able to develop their own dialysis machines starting in the early 1970s.

A newly established research department opened up new areas of activity in nutritional medicine for the company in the early 1970s. Fresenius employees, in collaboration with research institutes and clinics, developed an effective composition corresponding to the natural amino acid pattern of the potato and the egg. It set new standards in parenteral nutrition.

In 1971, in Switzerland and France, the first foreign subsidiaries were established. Today, Fresenius operates all over the world in about 80 countries.

In 1974, the new production plant for infusion solutions was opened in St. Wendel, Germany. Today, this site produces highly innovative Polysulfone dialyzers for Fresenius Medical Care.

In a newly acquired plant in Schweinfurt, Germany, Fresenius commenced production of its own dialysis machines: with the A 2008, dialysis time is reduced by more than half. It was awarded a gold medal at the Leipzig Trade Fair.

In 1982, Fresenius developed the Polysulfone membrane, which is still the standard today in dialyzer technology.

At the end of 1981, the previous limited partnerships (Kommanditgesellschaften) are transferred to a joint stock company. As the principal shareholder, Else Kröner, née Fernau, assumed 95 percent of the original stock and became Chairman of the Supervisory Board, while her husband Hans Kröner became Chairman of the Management Board. With the introduction of preference shares in 1986, Fresenius was listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange. Ordinary shares were introduced in 1992.

In 2009, the preference shares of Fresenius SE were integrated into Germany’s benchmark stock index, the DAX. From 2007 on, Fresenius has operated as a European company (Societas Europaea or SE).

In 1996, the new business segment Fresenius Medical Care emerged from the merger of National Medical Care and Fresenius’ worldwide dialysis business.

In the same year, Fresenius was able to purchase the majority interest in VAMED AG. VAMED had been founded for the planning and construction of the Vienna General Hospital in 1982.

In 1999, the business segment Fresenius Kabi was created through the acquisition of the international infusions business of the American-Swedish company Pharmacia & Upjohn. Numerous additional acquisitions around the world followed, including the U.S. company APP (American Pharmaceutical Partners) in 2008. This took Fresenius Kabi into the North American pharmaceuticals market and made it one of the world’s leading suppliers of generic IV drugs.

In 2005, Fresenius acquired the private hospital operator HELIOS Kliniken GmbH and merged it with the Wittgensteiner hospitals, which it had acquired in 2001. The result of this was the creation of the new business segment Fresenius Helios, which today is one of the largest private hospital operators in Germany.

The change of the company’s legal form into a partnership limited by shares – Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien (KGaA) – took place in combination with the conversion of all preference shares into ordinary shares.

In its centennial year, Fresenius ended the fiscal year with new records for sales and earnings. Approximately 170,000 employees have dedicated themselves at Fresenius to the service of health in about 100 countries worldwide.