Schunck - Christine Schunck (1960)

Christine Schunck (1960)

Of the shares in NV Schunck, one third was owned by Chrisje Dohmen-Schunck, one third by Leo Schunck (these two formed the management) and the rest by other family members.

By the company's 75'th birthday, in 1949, Peter Schunck (one year older than the firm) was still the managing director. In the board of directors were also Peter's second oldest son leo Schunck and his daughter Christine's husband Frans Dohmnen (director since 1948/01/01). Christine ('Chrisje', 1907-?) herself had already been working for the company for 25 years and operated as de facto manager, dealing with every aspect of the business. Peter Schunck wanted his oldest son Pierre to take over the business, but Pierre was more interested in technology than business. So when Peter Schunck died in 1960 at the age of 86, the business, which by then had 600 employees, was in name taken over by the second son Leo. In the 1930s, he had been head of the purchasing department and later he became member of the board of the purchasing collective Faam in Amsterdam, of which Schunck would become the largest participant. Already in 1945 he had started acting as a director of the company.

In practise, however, Schunck was largely taken over by Christine, who had more experience with running the business. Right at the start she was presented with the problem that the inheritance was to be divided among eleven children. She asked her brothers and sisters to not cash in yet, but only the youngest two complied. On top of that, the State Mines closed in the 1960s, just when a big further expansion had been undertaken. Still, she had enough experience and business sense to let the business survive and even expand.