Christa Fuchs, founder of OHB, was honored with a Special Award of the German Founders Award (Deutscher Gr\u00fcnderpreis), 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wanted to be self-employed, and the workshop in Hemelingen reminded me of my father\u2019s 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,\u201d Christa Fuchs recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s financial management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the following decades, the company grew steadily. Key milestones included winning the major contract for the Bundeswehr\u2019s SAR-Lupe radar reconnaissance system in 2001 and securing the contract for fourteen satellites for Europe\u2019s Galileo navigation system in 2010. Through these achievements, OHB gradually established itself as Europe\u2019s third major space company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u20ac1.2 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\u2019s share capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the company\u2019s chief financial strategist and commercial conscience, Christa Fuchs played a decisive role in OHB\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s space industry and strengthening its international competitiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith 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,\u201d said Marco Fuchs, Chief Executive Officer of OHB. \u201cTogether with my father, she helped build OHB into the company it is today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOHB 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,\u201c says Jean-Jacques Dordain, former Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI feel deeply honored and proud to receive this award,\u201d said Christa Fuchs. \u201cOHB 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Christa Fuchs, founder of OHB, was honored with a Special Award of the German Founders Award (Deutscher Gr\u00fcnderpreis), 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12934"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12958,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12934\/revisions\/12958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}