On the 10th Anniversary of the Death of Alexander Tutsek (1927-2011)

Can a life’s work be felt? Yes! Everyone who has had the opportunity to work with Alexander Tutsek has felt what a life’s work means. And everyone who has worked in the Refratechnik company or in the non-profit Alexander Tutsek Foundation over the past ten years feels: Over almost 60 years of his work in the company and since 2000 in the foundation established by him and his wife Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek, Alexander Tutsek has laid a foundation that points far beyond his own life. Alexander Tutsek’s life’s work has had an enormous long-term impact.

So today, on 14 September 2021, the tenth anniversary of his death, we remember with gratitude a special person. Who was Alexander Tutsek? What did he advance? What guided him? Let’s take a look together at his life’s work and what it means to us today.

Alexander Tutsek, who had Hungarian roots, stood on his own two feet early on: a few years after World War II, he started his own business in Vienna with the news agency “Radiopress Ost”. In 1954, he joined the business of his then father-in-law in Lower Saxony. After taking over the company in the 1960s, he developed it over five decades into an international group of companies active in the refractory ceramics and industrial minerals sectors.

But Alexander Tutsek was not only a doer, he was always a person as well. Both were one in the same with him. He developed a corporate culture of togetherness and respect, oriented toward tangible values. He liked people, he did business sustainably, and he built his company with style. All this continues to shape the company every day.

But social commitment was also important to this comprehensively interested and culturally educated man: As the crowning achievement of his life’s work, he created the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung together with his wife Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek, a non-profit foundation that promotes fine arts as well as training, teaching and research in the natural and engineering sciences. The foundation is active in several fields at once, and its record to date is impressive

• To date, the foundation has supported almost 60 scientific projects at nine universities in the fields of engineering and materials science.
• In the past seven years, the foundation has supported more than 130 students in ceramic professions at universities, technical colleges and technical schools.
• In its exhibition and collection activities, the Alexander Tutsek Foundation focuses on contemporary sculptures and installations using the medium of glass, as well as on modern photography: since 2004, 16 exhibitions have been held in the Foundation’s exhibition rooms in Munich.
• In the promotion of young artists, among other things, the foundation launched a major funding program in 2016 to improve the education of students in sculpture with a focus on glass.
• In addition, the foundation supported countless artists*, has been the main sponsor of the Haus der Kunst in Munich since 2016, and has realized over 50 projects at 24 museums and cultural institutions to date.

The vision of the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung is an enlightened, modern society, for whose vitality and progress a vibrant world of art and science is essential. With its commitment and its support projects, it concentrates on special areas in art and science, some of which have fallen out of focus, and strengthens them in the long term.

In this way, the life’s work of Alexander Tutsek remains alive.