Georg’s father and uncle founded Schaeffler — then called INA-Holding Schaeffler KG — in 1946 to make wooden handcarts. The company expanded in 1949 after Georg’s father, an inventor, developed a method to make critical machine components more reliable.
By the early 1990s, Schaeffler had more than 20,000 workers at plants on three continents. When his father died in 1996, Georg Schaeffler inherited 80 percent of the ball-bearing business that carries his surname while his mother inherited the rest.
Both serve on the supervisory boards of Continental and Schaeffler, which held an initial public offering in 2015 to help pay down its debts.
While Georg grew up as the heir to an engineering empire, obtaining degrees in business and law, Maria-Elisabeth studied medicine and never expected to embark on a business career.
Born in Prague and raised in Vienna, she was a medical student in the Austrian capital when she met Georg’s father. They married when she was 22, and Maria-Elisabeth eventually became involved in her family’s business affairs.
“I grew into it step by step,” she said in a 2001 interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “When my son was old enough, my husband and myself decided I should get involved professionally. That’s why I completed — I must correct myself — was privileged to complete, an apprenticeship with my husband, which was excellent.”
