For an announcement to become a threat, you always need someone who understands it as a threat. For example, a mayor who is told by an important and, so far, quite benevolent business tax payer that the controversial construction plans could also be implemented elsewhere and that the headquarters could be moved there at the same time. From the perspective of Mayor Christian Köck and the municipality of Rottach-Egern am Tegernsee, such a “relocation of the company headquarters” would be “extremely regrettable”. Köck and the “Gertraud and Josef Gruber Foundation” recently announced this in a joint statement on the foundation’s own homepage. It goes on to say that “blackmail” will not be adhered to.
But that was also an unpleasant formulation in relation to the Gruber Foundation, which manages the legacy of beauty farm queen Gertraud Gruber, who died in 2022 at the age of 100. Especially since the community long ago approved the plans submitted during Gruber’s lifetime to build a seminar house in a residential area a stone’s throw from the beauty farm in which beauticians would be instructed in the use of Gruber’s products. The building is almost finished. The wooden structure was only missing the outer shell when the administrative court recently ordered a halt to construction.
The lawsuit was filed by a man who may not be a resident in the strict sense, but whose family owns, among other things, the neighboring house. The legal dispute is confusing, also because the district office in Miesbach brought a second building permit into play, which was then also complained about. The construction stop is temporary, but until the final verdict is made, the Gruber Foundation could lose a lot of time and money with its unfinished house.
That’s why she recently publicly announced that she would convert the cosmetics school, which had been blocked for the time being, into temporary accommodation for around 50 refugees, which some in the town then perceived as a threat. But these plans, the foundation’s lawyer emphasizes, only preserve its assets and correspond to the foundation’s social purpose of protecting the weakest. Gruber has indeed generously supported many projects. At least she might not have interpreted her foundation’s recent announcements as a threat.