Christa Fuchs, founder of OHB, was honored with a Special Award of the German Founders Award (Deutscher Gründerpreis), recognizing her exceptional lifetime achievements as an entrepreneur. With this distinction, the jury acknowledges her exceptional contribution to building one of Europe’s leading space companies and her lasting impact on the German and European space industries.
Christa Fuchs, born in 1938, took over the then small family-owned company Otto Hydraulik Bremen on Hemelinger Hafendamm in 1981. At the time, the business employed five people and primarily repaired hydraulic ship systems for the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr).
“I wanted to be self-employed, and the workshop in Hemelingen reminded me of my father’s metalworking shop. On top of that, I got along well with the founders, the Otto family, and I felt that the company was a good fit for me,” Christa Fuchs recalls.
With strong entrepreneurial instincts, she set the company on a growth trajectory early on and expanded into new business areas. When her husband, Manfred Fuchs, joined the company in 1985, it gained a clear strategic direction toward the space sector. While he shaped the technological vision, Christa Fuchs remained firmly in control of the company’s financial management.
Over the following decades, the company grew steadily. Key milestones included winning the major contract for the Bundeswehr’s SAR-Lupe radar reconnaissance system in 2001 and securing the contract for fourteen satellites for Europe’s Galileo navigation system in 2010. Through these achievements, OHB gradually established itself as Europe’s third major space company.
Today, the OHB Group covers the entire space value chain and delivers missions for institutional and commercial customers in Earth observation, navigation, telecommunications, science, and defense. In fiscal year 2025, the company generated more than €1.2 billion in revenue and was recently admitted to the SDAX following a capital increase. The Fuchs family nevertheless retains more than 60 percent of the company’s share capital.
As the company’s chief financial strategist and commercial conscience, Christa Fuchs played a decisive role in OHB’s success over many decades. In 2002, she moved from the Executive Board to the Supervisory Board, serving as its Chairwoman until 2018. She remained a member of the board until 2024, when she stepped down from her mandate and entered a well-deserved retirement.
With this Special Award, the German Founders Award honors not only an extraordinary entrepreneurial career but also a remarkable individual who has made a significant contribution to shaping Germany’s space industry and strengthening its international competitiveness.
“With her courage, her keen understanding of finance, and her tireless dedication, my mother laid the foundation for Germany to have its own integrated space systems company today,” said Marco Fuchs, Chief Executive Officer of OHB. “Together with my father, she helped build OHB into the company it is today.”
“OHB provides almost every type of satellite needed for Europe’s security, and that is the achievement of Ms. Fuchs. Without Christa Fuchs, there would be no security in Europe,“ says Jean-Jacques Dordain, former Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA).
“I feel deeply honored and proud to receive this award,” said Christa Fuchs. “OHB has enjoyed a great deal of recognition within the space industry for many years, but in recent years the broader public has also come to see a company like ours as something special, and I am naturally delighted about that.”
