Karl Schwarz

* 1968

  • "My father met a lawyer in Prague who put him in touch with two men who helped us buy shares in the voucher privatization, and I think that is why the decision fell on Jihlava. Jihlava was the same size as Zwettler, but it had three times as many employees. Over two years, we gradually managed to acquire shares in the voucher privatization until we owned 78 percent."

  • “It was my father who with great interest watched the fall of the borders: in Berlin, in Hungary, and then in Czechoslovakia. We, of course, knew that Czechia was a nation of beer drinkers and that there was a beer culture – and we as a brewery family were interested in it. My father and mum went towards the Czechoslovak border on Saturday [18 November 1989] to take a look at everything. They went in the direction of Gmünd – České Velenice. They took me with them several days later, we were looking around, it was the first time we could go there. It was an exciting experience.”

  • “As a child, I thought that the world is flat and ends somewhere – and that one falls there. And so, until the borders opened, I felt that the world ended north of the Austrian border, at least in my imagination. I knew a lot about former Czechoslovakia and neighbouring countries from the history classes, but we did not have any relation to our neighbouring country, and neither we cared about it.”

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    Zwettl, 24.05.2022

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Business in Czechia almost caused the fall of the Zwettler family brewery

Karl Schwarz
Karl Schwarz
zdroj: Post Bellum

Karl Schwarz was born on 4 February 1968 in the small town of Zwettl in Lower Austria which was at that time about thirty kilometres away from the Iron Curtain. His father Karl Schwarz senior owned the family brewery Zwettler from 1959. He led his son to run the business as well. After the fall of the communist regime, the witness´s father decided in the early 1990s that he wanted to enter the Czechoslovak brewery market and buy Jihlava Ježek Brewery in the voucher privatization. However, the business in Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic was not very successful which Karl Schwarz Jr. was well aware of and told his father that he would only take over the family brewery if he gave up the business in Jihlava. This is what happened. In the second half of the 1990s, the Austrian owner sold the Ježek brewery to a Belgian company and Karl Schwarz Jr. took over the management of the family brewery in Zwettl from his father in 1996. He is still in charge of the company today (2022).