Obituary
逝者

Reinhard Mohn
莱因哈德·摩恩

Oct 15th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Reinhard Mohn, German media magnate, died on October 3rd, aged 88

德国传媒大亨莱因哈德·摩恩于10月3日逝世，享年88岁

CAPITALISM red in tooth and claw never seemed to appeal to Reinhard Mohn. Asked to write an essay entitled “My Thoughts on Choosing a Profession”, the 16-year-old schoolboy dwelt on his obligations to society, his natural abilities and the desire for a useful life. These concerns, he said, were to stay with him throughout his career. Indeed “co-operation and compassionate leadership” were the key to his success. And success he surely found. Not long before he died, his family-owned company, Bertelsmann, was the world’s sixth-biggest media group, with over 100,000 employees in 50-odd countries.

莱因哈德·摩恩对于资本主义的血雨腥风似乎从来就不感冒。16岁时，在学校布置的命题作文“择业之我见”中，他大谈自己的禀赋和对于社会的责任，并渴望成为一个有用的人。他说，这些信条将会一直贯穿自己的整个职业生涯，除此之外，“合作精神和人性化领导”也将是成功的关键要素。他的确是成功了。在他去世前不久，他拥有的家族企业贝塔斯曼是世界第六大媒体集团，分支遍及50多个国家，员工数量超过10万。

Bertelsmann had been founded in 1835, as a publisher and printer of religious books. It was, and still is, based in Gütersloh, a dozy town in eastern Westphalia, where Mr Mohn’s great-great-grandfather, Carl Bertelsmann, was a Protestant lithographer. The firm prospered until the great Weimar inflation cut its workforce from 84 to six in 1921-23. But it bounced back, and was employing 440 people in 1939. Then it did even better, producing quantities of Nazi novels and propaganda. When Mr Mohn came home from the war, though, the buildings had been bombed, so the young would-be engineer persuaded by his father to join the family firm was hardly taking on a thriving business.

贝塔斯曼的总部位于德国东威斯特伐利亚的居特斯洛，这是一座生活节奏较慢的城镇。1835年，也是在那里，贝塔斯曼的雏形出现了（起初印刷和出版宗教书籍，摩恩的曾曾祖父卡尔·贝塔斯曼是当地一名信奉新教的石板印刷工）。公司的生意红红火火，直到魏玛共和国时期那次恶性通胀的到来——在1921-1923年间，公司员工从84人减少到6人。通胀过后，公司迅速恢复元气，1939年时员工总数达到440人。之后，公司生意又是更上一层（通过印刷大量充斥纳粹思想的小说和宣传品）。但当摩恩从（二战）战场归来之时，眼前却是炸弹摧残后的楼房。这个年轻人本是想作一名工程师，却被父亲拉进了这个家族企业。应该说，摩恩是在公司处于低潮时承接重任的。

Reluctant he may have been, but he had already learned some useful lessons. One, he would claim, was the value of trust. This he came to appreciate as an officer in the Afrika Korps, lying wounded on a hillside in Tunisia. The American soldier who found him helped him down the mountain, instead of suspecting an attempt to escape and shooting him dead. Perhaps this example of humanity was later responsible for Mr Mohn’s readiness to give his managers their head (so long as their units were profitable) and his workers a share in the company’s profits (though not voting shares). Perhaps not. But never in his day did Bertelsmann have a strike.

加入公司尽管并非摩恩所愿，他却是带着一些（从战争经历中）学到的有用东西进的公司。其中一点，就是人与人之间的信任（摩恩绝对不会否认这个价值观），这是他在德意志非洲军团作军官时体会到的：在突尼斯，他受了伤，躺在半山腰。找到他的那个美国士兵并没有怀疑他是企图逃跑，然后再一枪打死他，而是扶着他下了山。摩恩后来之所以乐于向手下的经理人放权（只要他们负责的部门是盈利的），乐于将公司的一部分利润分给员工 [然后员工再用分到的钱购买公司的股票，即下段提到的“利润共享计划” ——译者]（尽管员工得到的并不是有表决权的股份），可能就是因为这次受到的人性化对待。也可能不是。但是在摩恩掌权期间，贝塔斯曼没有发生过一次罢工。

A useful captivity

一次有益的囚禁

Less open to doubt was the value of being a prisoner-of-war in America. There Mr Mohn learnt English and, more surprising, something of American business practices. In particular, he came to see obstacles as inspirations for opportunities. Thus, if post-war Germans would not go to bookshops to buy relatively expensive books, he would set up a club whose members would receive discounted ones, so long as they agreed to pay for a regular supply—which they did, in their hundreds of thousands. Similarly, when Bertelsmann had bought so many German companies that the anti-competition authorities were calling a halt, he stepped up expansion abroad. In America he bought record labels like Arista and RCA Victor, and publishers like Bantam, Doubleday and, eventually, Random House; in Europe, he acquired 90% of RTL Group, a huge radio and television company. Even the Bertelsmann profit-sharing scheme was partly a response to the scarcity of capital, since some payments were deferred until workers retired, so profits were booked as liabilities, with tax benefits for the company.

摩恩在美国作战俘的收获应该较少会有人质疑。摩恩在那里不仅掌握了英语，竟然还学会了一套美国人的生意经。尤其值得一提的是，他开始学着把困难当作机会的生发剂。于是，当战后的德国人因为经济拮据而不去书店买书的时候，摩恩就建立了一个俱乐部，为会员提供上万种打折图书，只要他们同意定期交纳一定的会费（他们当然乐意）。再有，当贝塔斯曼因为收购太多国内的公司而被（反竞争的）政府叫停的时候，摩恩就开始加速海外扩张的步伐。在美国，他买下了几家唱片公司（像阿里斯塔唱片公司和RCA Victor唱片公司）和出版社（像矮脚鸡出版社和双日出版社，最后买下的是兰登书屋）；在欧洲，他收购了大型广播电视公司RTL集团90%的股份。甚至贝塔斯曼推出的“利润共享计划”也部分是拜困难所赐：是为了解决公司的资本短缺，因为一部分红利要等到员工退休之后才能到达他们手上，之前这些钱会记作公司的负债，于是公司就能因此而得到税收的减免。

As time went by, Mr Mohn came increasingly to be seen as a benign patriarch who personified the collaborative, we-all-eat-together-in-the-canteen way in which Germans did business. This helped him brush off a few embarrassments, notably the publication by Stern, one of his magazines, of some bogus diaries supposedly written by Hitler. Potentially more damaging, because it showed that Bertelsmann had not come clean earlier, was the revelation in 2002 by a commission appointed by the company that it had co-operated closely with the Nazis during the war and used Jews as cheap labour.

随着时间的流逝，摩恩作为公司“家长”的形象越发变得亲近温和。他是德国商人的典范：那种讲究合作，“大家一起吃食堂”的经商方式。良好的公众形象帮他化解了几次尴尬，值得一提的一次是他旗下的《明星周刊》杂志刊登了几则伪造的希特勒日记。而可能会对公司造成更大危害的一次是2002年的大揭底（之所以说会造成更大的危害，是因为这些史实揭露了贝塔斯曼不光彩的过去）：贝塔斯曼委任的一个调查机构发现该公司在二战期间与纳粹合作密切，并且雇佣犹太人作廉价劳工。

In 1977 Mr Mohn set up a non-profit foundation, which now holds 76.9% of Bertelsmann’s shares, though the voting rights lie with another company, half of whose directors are members of the family. Ultimate control, however, has for some time rested with Liz, Mr Mohn’s second wife, whom he met at a company party when she was a 17-year-old switchboard operator. They married 24 years later.

摩恩在1977年建立了一个非盈利性质的基金会，现持有贝塔斯曼76.9%的股份。但是拥有贝塔斯曼绝对控股权的却是另一家公司 [即贝塔斯曼管理公司，Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft ——译者]，该公司管理层的半数都来自这个家族。而摩恩的第二任妻子利兹曾一度拥有贝塔斯曼的最终控股权。两人相识于一次公司聚会，利兹当时17岁，是一个电话接线员。24年以后，两人结了婚。

She is seen as a stout defender of the family’s interests, seeing off those who might have taken the company public and insisting, in 2006, on buying back a 25% holding sold five years earlier. The borrowing then undertaken to pay the bill of €4.5 billion ($5.7 billion), coupled with falling CD sales and waning book-club revenues, has narrowed Bertelsmann’s prospects.

利兹被认为是家族利益坚实的捍卫者，对于那些可能会将公司引入上市之路的人，她会一律说拜拜 [贝塔斯曼集团前CEO托马斯·米德尔霍夫曾试图让公司通过IPO上市，后在董事会的压力之下，被迫辞职。——译者]，并在2006年坚持购回了5年前卖掉股权中的25%。而购买这45亿欧元（57亿美元）股权所用的贷款，再加上CD销售额的下降和书友会收入的缩减，使得贝塔斯曼的前景变得愈加的不乐观。

In his heyday, Mr Mohn might have seen all this as another opportunity. A quiet man, he liked to take an hour’s walk in the woods around Gütersloh each day during which he pondered his next move. What that would be now, in the face of Bertelsmann’s straitened finances, the elusiveness of internet revenues and changes in publishing and advertising, is uncertain.

如果将时光扭转到当年，摩恩可能会将所有的这些都看成是另外一个机会。他是一个安静的男人，喜欢在居特斯洛附近的树林里散步，每天一小时，一边散步，一边思考下一步的动作。现在呢？在面对吃紧的财政，难以把握的互联网收益，出版和广告领域的变革时，他的下步棋会怎么走？没有人知道。

His avowed belief was to put social responsibility before the amassing of great wealth. As a dictum, it served him well, but it hardly amounts to a business model. In truth, he ran his companies with enterprise, ingenuity and a large dose of red-blooded capitalism. Without more of those, Bertelsmann is unlikely to survive as the media giant he made it. But then he also said he did not want to found a thousand-year Reich. That wish, at least, may well be granted.

他曾公开说到自己信奉的准则是社会责任先于财富积累。这个作为谨行的信条还可以（他也因此受益），但是很难成为一种商业模式。而实际上，他经营公司时还运用了自己的魄力，创新力，和很大程度的资本主义的适者生存法则。没有这些，贝塔斯曼很难成为他一手打造的如今的媒体巨人。但是他接着还提到，自己并不想建立一个千年帝国。这个理想——至少该不会落空。