Interviews
Interviews
Podcast
28.3.2022
Daniel Goeudevert has had an eventful life. Born in France, a child of the war, a student, a teacher, then a car salesman and finally a candidate for the position of VW CEO. In the end, the man who thought about electric cars in the 1990s lost the battle against Ferdinand Piëch, and rightly so, says Goeudevert, who later caused a literary stir with books about greed (The Water Lily Principle: How Greed Ruins Us) and his life (Like a Bird in an Aquarium: The Life of a Manager). 80 years old today, he looks back.
I'm also responsible for the shopping at home. Apart from that, I buy a lot of books, my whole office is full. I can now read a book for five or six hours a day again. I recently read a very good one about the Bible, even though I'm an atheist. I suppose I'm looking for confirmation that I'm right with my thesis and that there is nothing more after life.
No, no, I'm on the last stretch after a marathon with my wife, whom I love very much and with whom I'm very happy. Nowadays, young people all think it's a 100-meter race, but it's a long run. We can already see the home stretch, even if it's not a real finish line, death. We make larger purchases for the children.
I never earned badly, but there were no exceptional salaries in my day. That only started in the nineties, when I had already finished my career. If I earned, let's just take a number, 100, then my successor earned 1000.
"I'm happy to be a bird of paradise"
I never cared about money. I never asked for a pay rise and nowadays young people learn about this in books. I'm almost embarrassed, but people have come up to me and asked me: Why did you accept such a low salary? And I didn't even know what I was earning. Of course, I realized that I earned more money than the others as head of Ford or later as a VW board member, but I never knew what you could really earn in a position like that. I wasn't even a professional.
You've hit me on a sore point there. The reason was actually the money. We had three children and I wasn't earning enough working 16 hours a week as a teacher. So I got a job as a car salesman and then I kept moving up. I never quite understood why that was. I only found out afterwards from books where old companions said that I had made good decisions or that I never made a difference whether I was talking to the board or the assembly line worker. Some people obviously liked that.
I'm glad to be a bird of paradise. Better than a warthog. But I certainly got the label because I thought differently. At Volkswagen, we were working on an electric car. That was far too early from today's perspective, of course, but I had spoken to the EU, I had spoken to presidents and they thought it was a good idea. VW should have started with it back then, but the concerns were far too great. As a car boss, that was perhaps not always conducive. When I was then in talks to become a member of the VW Board of Management, I lost out to Ferdinand Piëch. That was a shame, of course, but absolutely right. VW needed a doer, not a visionary.
"Comparison is a disease, an epidemic"
That was the appeal of the job. I was a small Frenchman in Germany and was allowed to manage an entire company and help decide its future. That was fantastic for me. This responsibility is something very special and I could always say: I am satisfied, I am happy, I am filled with joy and satisfaction. People don't have to ask themselves whether they can earn more, but whether they are happy in their job. Comparison is a disease, an epidemic that comes from the USA.
It all started in the nineties with shareholder value. From that moment on, a company no longer served the employees and the economy, but only the shareholders - and they wanted to see a return. If you didn't deliver the return, the shareholders went to another company. Today, it's like a casino. It wasn't really conceivable before, but then the whole economy was geared towards it and salaries exploded. In the past, bosses earned perhaps forty or fifty times more than their employees, today it's more like four hundred or five hundred times. Is that fair? Or that a single person owns as much as a state? For me, there is no justification for that.
"We need more gray tones again"
The fall of the Berlin Wall was decisive. At that moment, capitalism believed it had won and there was nothing left to measure itself against. From that moment on, there were no more limits and the West shouted: Haha, we've won. The free market economy missed an opportunity to reflect on itself and its victory. I later spoke a lot with Mikhail Gorbachev, whose foundation I set up. He told me that he didn't want the end of communism, he just wanted to optimize it. Is that terrible? I don't think so. I don't think it always needs to be black or white, capitalism or communism. We need more shades of gray again.
Social media takes the whole thing ad absurdum. People on Instagram ridicule the value of money. Hello, I can boil an egg without a fire or stand around somewhere in my underpants. People get money for it and very quickly a million or two. Anyone can be a millionaire today, it's nothing special anymore.
I want to march together with my wife to the state we call death. But I don't really want anything more. I'm happy, I'm content and my wife makes me incredibly happy. I wouldn't do anything differently if I could.
Personal details: Daniel Goeudevert was born in Reims, France, in 1942. He began his career as a teacher, but later made a career in the automotive industry. He rose steeply at Citroen, became General Director of Deutsche Renault AG and later Chairman of the Board of Management of Deutsche Fordwerke. He became known in Germany as a member of the board of the VW Group, which he left in 1993. He then devoted himself to a university project and to writing books.
Interviews
28.3.2022
Nils Wischmeyer
Daniel Goeudevert, ex-VW board member and electric car pioneer, on his rise from teacher to car boss, his love for his wife and conversations with Mikhail Gorbachev.
Daniel Goeudevert has had an eventful life. Born in France, a child of the war, a student, a teacher, then a car salesman and finally a candidate for the position of VW CEO. In the end, the man who thought about electric cars in the 1990s lost the battle against Ferdinand Piëch, and rightly so, says Goeudevert, who later caused a literary stir with books about greed (The Water Lily Principle: How Greed Ruins Us) and his life (Like a Bird in an Aquarium: The Life of a Manager). 80 years old today, he looks back.
I'm also responsible for the shopping at home. Apart from that, I buy a lot of books, my whole office is full. I can now read a book for five or six hours a day again. I recently read a very good one about the Bible, even though I'm an atheist. I suppose I'm looking for confirmation that I'm right with my thesis and that there is nothing more after life.
No, no, I'm on the last stretch after a marathon with my wife, whom I love very much and with whom I'm very happy. Nowadays, young people all think it's a 100-meter race, but it's a long run. We can already see the home stretch, even if it's not a real finish line, death. We make larger purchases for the children.
I never earned badly, but there were no exceptional salaries in my day. That only started in the nineties, when I had already finished my career. If I earned, let's just take a number, 100, then my successor earned 1000.
"I'm happy to be a bird of paradise"
I never cared about money. I never asked for a pay rise and nowadays young people learn about this in books. I'm almost embarrassed, but people have come up to me and asked me: Why did you accept such a low salary? And I didn't even know what I was earning. Of course, I realized that I earned more money than the others as head of Ford or later as a VW board member, but I never knew what you could really earn in a position like that. I wasn't even a professional.
You've hit me on a sore point there. The reason was actually the money. We had three children and I wasn't earning enough working 16 hours a week as a teacher. So I got a job as a car salesman and then I kept moving up. I never quite understood why that was. I only found out afterwards from books where old companions said that I had made good decisions or that I never made a difference whether I was talking to the board or the assembly line worker. Some people obviously liked that.
I'm glad to be a bird of paradise. Better than a warthog. But I certainly got the label because I thought differently. At Volkswagen, we were working on an electric car. That was far too early from today's perspective, of course, but I had spoken to the EU, I had spoken to presidents and they thought it was a good idea. VW should have started with it back then, but the concerns were far too great. As a car boss, that was perhaps not always conducive. When I was then in talks to become a member of the VW Board of Management, I lost out to Ferdinand Piëch. That was a shame, of course, but absolutely right. VW needed a doer, not a visionary.
"Comparison is a disease, an epidemic"
That was the appeal of the job. I was a small Frenchman in Germany and was allowed to manage an entire company and help decide its future. That was fantastic for me. This responsibility is something very special and I could always say: I am satisfied, I am happy, I am filled with joy and satisfaction. People don't have to ask themselves whether they can earn more, but whether they are happy in their job. Comparison is a disease, an epidemic that comes from the USA.
It all started in the nineties with shareholder value. From that moment on, a company no longer served the employees and the economy, but only the shareholders - and they wanted to see a return. If you didn't deliver the return, the shareholders went to another company. Today, it's like a casino. It wasn't really conceivable before, but then the whole economy was geared towards it and salaries exploded. In the past, bosses earned perhaps forty or fifty times more than their employees, today it's more like four hundred or five hundred times. Is that fair? Or that a single person owns as much as a state? For me, there is no justification for that.
"We need more gray tones again"
The fall of the Berlin Wall was decisive. At that moment, capitalism believed it had won and there was nothing left to measure itself against. From that moment on, there were no more limits and the West shouted: Haha, we've won. The free market economy missed an opportunity to reflect on itself and its victory. I later spoke a lot with Mikhail Gorbachev, whose foundation I set up. He told me that he didn't want the end of communism, he just wanted to optimize it. Is that terrible? I don't think so. I don't think it always needs to be black or white, capitalism or communism. We need more shades of gray again.
Social media takes the whole thing ad absurdum. People on Instagram ridicule the value of money. Hello, I can boil an egg without a fire or stand around somewhere in my underpants. People get money for it and very quickly a million or two. Anyone can be a millionaire today, it's nothing special anymore.
I want to march together with my wife to the state we call death. But I don't really want anything more. I'm happy, I'm content and my wife makes me incredibly happy. I wouldn't do anything differently if I could.
Personal details: Daniel Goeudevert was born in Reims, France, in 1942. He began his career as a teacher, but later made a career in the automotive industry. He rose steeply at Citroen, became General Director of Deutsche Renault AG and later Chairman of the Board of Management of Deutsche Fordwerke. He became known in Germany as a member of the board of the VW Group, which he left in 1993. He then devoted himself to a university project and to writing books.
About the author
Nils Wischmeyer
Nils Wischmeyer writes about financial markets, investments, banks, banking regulation and white-collar crime.
