Günther Fielmann is dead.

The founder and long-standing CEO of the optician chain of the same name "fell asleep peacefully surrounded by his family" on Wednesday at the age of 84, the company announced on Friday. Fielmann opened its first optical store in Cuxhaven in 1972. Today, the company has more than 1,000 branches and 23,800 employees generating annual sales of more than two billion euros. Fielmann is worth almost four billion euros on the stock exchange.

With its business model, which focused on affordable glasses, Fielmann heralded the end of the unfashionable "health insurance glasses" for people with statutory health insurance. In doing so, he took on the entire eyewear industry with his advertising campaigns, which were often seen as provocative. "The democratization of eyewear fashion is the historic achievement of our company founder," explained Fielmann.

Günther Fielmann worked for his company for 47 years. Fielmann AG went public in 1994. It was not until 2019, shortly after his 80th birthday, that he handed over the sole chairmanship of the Management Board to his son Marc, who had gradually been given more and more responsibility over eight years. The family still holds a good 72% of the shares, and in 2012 Günther Fielmann transferred the majority of Fielmann AG to a family foundation. Fielmann sees itself as the market leader in Central Europe and number three in the optical industry worldwide.

(Report by Alexander Hübner. If you have any queries, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)