After 29 years as legal advisor, head of department and authorised signatory of the DBU, Josef Feldmann retired at the end of May. He had "accompanied and shaped the DBU from the very beginning", had "decisively developed and supervised" the legal framework conditions for the establishment of the DBU funding business, also with a view to its recognition by the European Commission, and had always been "competent, reliable and assertive", according to Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter, Chairwoman of the DBU Board of Trustees and Member of the German Parliament. "You have contributed a great deal to making the Foundation what it is today," said DBU General Secretary Alexander Bonde, also praising Feldmann's achievements in a digitally transmitted ceremony.
Feldmann studied law in Münster at the Westphalian Wilhelms-University and worked as a civil servant for the State of Lower Saxony from 1986 to 1991 in the Ministry of Agriculture, the Federal Council and the Ministry of the Environment, before he left the state service at his own request to take up the position of government director and joined the only six-week-old private-law DBU as legal advisor in mid-April 1991. In March 2001, he also took over the management of the newly founded staff department of the DBU, and in September 2007 he became an authorised signatory of the newly founded DBU Naturerbe GmbH. Since 1998 Feldmann has been admitted to the bar in Hamm and will continue to work in this capacity.
Feldmann's successors are Klaus Jongebloed as head of the staff department and Marius Keite as legal advisor and authorised signatory of DBU Naturerbe GmbH (see DBU aktuell 03/2020).
Translated by DeepL
