The namesake of the Oskar Patzelt Foundation, Dr. med. Oskar Patzelt, was 102 years old today on January 2nd, 2021. The board of directors of the Oskar Patzelt Foundation congratulated them that morning.
Oskar Patzelt in 2005 when the Oskar Patzelt Foundation was awarded the Golden Badge of Honor
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Oskar Patzelt sets the annual motto of our Oskar Patzelt Foundation “Now even more!” in their own way. He celebrated his 102nd birthday on January 2, 2021. And in the best of health, still living in your own home. Dr. Helfried Schmidt, Chairman of the Oskar Patzelt Foundation, was one of the first to congratulate on the morning of the day.
Who is Dr. Oskar Patzelt?
He was born in 1919 in the small town of Christofsgrund near Reichenberg (Liberec) and grew up in Aussig (Ústí nad Labem) and began to study in Prague. Then life took a sudden turn: in World War II he had to serve as a soldier on the Eastern Front. He was taken prisoner by the Soviets. Two daring eruptions failed. He was only released from captivity in 1949 and started looking for parents and siblings. He ended up in Saxony. Here he finished his studies. After intermediate stops, including in Zwickau, Wurzen became his new home, where he worked for about a quarter of a century as chief physician in the internal medicine department of the district hospital.
He loves literature, philosophy, music and still declaims Goethe’s “Faust” today. For many years he played his violin with passion and a great sense of art. Even at the age of 99, the loyal member of the St. Wenceslai Chamber Orchestra took part in the Christmas Oratorio in Wurzen Cathedral. His favorite pastime is reading to this day, no matter if daily newspaper, Medical journals or novels.
How did the name “Oskar Patzelt Foundation” come about?
In 1994, Dr. Helfried Schmidt launched the competition initiative “Großer Preis des Mittelstandes”. At that time the competition was still under a different name. Schmidt has been running the competition together with his business partner Petra Tröger since 1996. In 1997 Schmidt registered the competition name as a trademark with the German Patent and Trademark Office, and in 1998 he set up a foundation to support future competition activities.
That attracted Hollywood to the scene: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, USA (Hollywood) forced the Leipzig start-up initiative into a legal dispute because of an alleged risk of confusion with the Hollywood brand “Oscar”. The competition for medium-sized companies was – and is still today – organized entirely on a voluntary basis and financed exclusively by private parties. Schmidt and Tröger withstood the dispute with the giant from Holywood, which was pending at the Federal Patent Court, for seven years. After all, the SME competition had nothing to do with the film business. It would not occur to anyone who understands to “confuse” the Hollywood Oscar with the Leipzig SME competition. Around a hundred similar brands had been registered in the German trademark register for years, from the training Oscar of the junior economists to the meat Oscar from “Kaufland”. The Federal Patent Court therefore followed the argument that terms such as “Oscar” or “Oskar” would have lost their worth of protection on their own, at least in Germany, because they were now used as a synonym for awards.
But then a young eloquent lawyer from Berlin won the Hollywood mandate. With a lot of diligence and skill, he managed to get all these brands to “buckle” in just one year. They refrained from using their, in some cases, traditional brand names and paid the not inconsiderable cost notes without resistance.
But with each of these trademark deletions, the “synonym” argument at the Federal Patent Court melted like snow in the sun. When, at the beginning of 2005, only the SME competition from Leipzig and a small cafe in the Potsdam film city Babelsberg were left, the foundation also avoided the cost and existence risks of the Hollywood disputes: Oskar Patzelt, the father-in-law of Dr. Helfried Schmidt, transferred the right to the foundation on January 18, 2005 to be allowed to bear the name “Oskar Patzelt Foundation” in the future. Hollywood could not refuse an out-of-court settlement. Since then, the foundation has not only carried the first name but also the full name of Dr. med. Oskar Patzelt, father-in-law of the foundation’s founder Dr. Helfried Schmidt. Since then it has been called the Oskar Patzelt Foundation. One year later, on February 2, 2006, the regional council of Leipzig, as the competent foundation supervisory authority, approved the amendment to the statutes that had become necessary.
Originally started in 1994 as a local initiative in Saxony, the foundation has been active nationwide since 2002. Every year over 1000 municipalities and institutions nominate outstanding exemplary companies for the competition. The approximately 5,000 participants in the competition each year represent the successful, indispensable, growth-oriented and solution-oriented core of our economy – the best of what defines a social market economy. The “Großer Preis des Mittelstandes” competition developed into the most popular competition for medium-sized companies in Germany. In 2019 the international brand “Grand Prix Mittelstand” was registered.
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