Götz Werner wanted to be a druggist like his father.

Take over the "Drogerie Werner" in Heidelberg.

So he completed an apprenticeship as a druggist in Constance.

However, the planned collaboration with his father turned out to be difficult afterwards.

His ideas simply didn't resonate with his father, he once said.

So he went to Karlsruhe and opened his own drugstore there, one according to his own ideas.

And he turned it into dm, one of the largest drugstore chains in the world.

That was in the early 1970s. Shortly before that, price maintenance for drugstore items had been abolished and from then on the free play of market forces also applied to drugstore items.

It was no longer the druggist in a white coat who handed the soap over the counter, customers could help themselves from well-stocked shelves.

Not only Götz Werner, but also Anton Schlecker and Dirk Rossmann took advantage of the moment.

However, nobody was as successful as dm.

With more than 3,800 branches and 66,000 employees, dm is now the largest drugstore group in Europe.

Werner has always seen himself as a somewhat different entrepreneur, as an anthroposophist and philanthropist who does not primarily focus on profit but on the well-being of customers and employees.

If their satisfaction is right, the business success is also right.

A lot is still different today: Apprentices are called apprentices, the saleswomen sometimes attend theater courses to develop their personality, and they can make comparatively many decisions themselves.

The fact that not everyone in the industry ticks like this became clear at the latest with the Schlecker bankruptcy.

In any case, the success proved Werner right.

A few years ago, he handed over the management of the company to his son Christoph.

Since then he has devoted himself to his heart's issue, the introduction of an unconditional basic income.

On one occasion, however, when he was in public dispute with his brother-in-law and long-time comrade-in-arms, Alnatura founder Götz Rehn, about trademark rights and supply contracts, Werner could no longer maintain the image of the good person.

The wound must have stayed until the end.

Götz Werner died on Tuesday at the age of 78.

His strength had steadily decreased, said his son.

The father "and extraordinary life companion" passed away peacefully.

Baden-Württemberg's Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann said that Werner was not only a brilliant entrepreneur with a unique entrepreneurial flair and success.

"At the same time, he was a visionary who, for example, initiated social and political debates with great passion on the subject of an unconditional basic income".

He dedicated himself with vehemence to the topics of sustainability and justice and thus made an impressive statement as an entrepreneur who felt obliged to an overriding responsibility for society.

"His impulses and ideas will have an impact for a long time to come."