The handover has already taken place, Anita Niedermeier passed on the most important knowledge to her successor Sandra Geisler. “We both tick the same way,” says the long-time managing director of the advent calendar for good works, who is going into early retirement at the end of the month at the age of 63. After almost ten years on the board of the non-profit and charitable association “Advent Calendar for Good Works of the Süddeutsche Zeitung” and after a total of almost 46 years of work, she is looking forward to spending time with her husband, who is already retired. Nevertheless, she also has “mixed feelings”, because for her the work for the aid organization of the SZ readers was “incredibly fulfilling”. During the ten years of her management, around 80 million euros in donations and inheritances came together. In close cooperation with the social department, social projects and the welfare organizations, many people could be helped.
Anita Niedermeier didn’t take much with her from the small, cramped Advent calendar office. A few office cups, a photo collage of former colleagues from the financial accounting department, lots of memories and the front page of the SZ from September 1, 1977, a present for a service anniversary. On that day, her training as a publishing clerk began at Süddeutscher Verlag. Kaufmann, that’s what it was called back then, but she doesn’t really care about gender anyway. She’s not lacking in confidence, which may have something to do with the fact that she’s taller than most people and because of that she’s hard to miss. She is always elegantly dressed, but on the other hand, external features such as the size of the office are not important to her at all. “If I had a dance hall, I wouldn’t feel comfortable, that doesn’t suit a modest club.”
As a “Münchner Kindl” she was born at the Wiesn, although not during the Oktoberfest, and grew up in Fürstenried and Waldtrudering. Actually, she would have liked to have become a physiotherapist for children with disabilities after high school, but her parents were against that because, not even of legal age, she would have had to do a social internship in Erlangen or Berlin. Her father, who was then working as a typesetter at Süddeutscher Verlag, asked for her application documents: “He handed them in to the publisher himself,” which she definitely didn’t want. It must have been a tough fight, even if Anita Niedermeier tells it almost like an anecdote.
As a student, she swore to herself “I’ll never go into bookkeeping in my life.” But after her apprenticeship, she ended up in accounting, of all things. Invoice verification, Anita Niedermeier sighs, “stupid work: merging copies of orders with invoices”. But the boss then let her take over client accounting for two book publishers, “that was tough, but good”. Years mainly in finance and accounting followed, until she took over the management of the advent calendar in 2014, not a job for her, but a vocation.
“Almost every day you experience the extraordinary gratitude of people for doing something good,” says Anita Niedermeier. The confidence of the readers that their donations are well spent is her top priority. She subjects requests for help to a thorough examination and checks all the evidence very carefully. She works like a trustee: “It’s not my money, I just manage it.” And so some applicants have to put up with the question: “Can’t it be a bit cheaper?”
The many difficult fates that Anita Niedermeier learned about in letters and social organizations changed her. “You become even happier with your own life.” Then her facial features harden a bit, her gaze becomes unforgiving: “And you become more critical of people who only complain about how bad things are for them, even though they have a lot of money in their accounts.” She was “precise and strict” as well as “sympathetic and warm-hearted,” said Advent calendar board member Hendrik Munsberg at her farewell, “a lovely person”.
The strong help the weak, that has been the motto of the SZ Advent calendar network for decades.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
Julia Sterzer, managing director of the Munich workers’ welfare organization and spokeswoman for the working group of Munich welfare associations, thanked Anita Niedermeier on behalf of the associations “for the enriching cooperation. We were able to use funds from the SZ Advent calendar to help countless people quickly and unbureaucratically who got into an emergency through no fault of their own.” Anita Niedermeier’s personal commitment and “the close contact to her enabled us to react spontaneously to acute, unforeseen needs for help”.
Social officer Dorothee Schiwy also thanked her heartily: “In Anita Niedermeier we had a competent and reliable contact person who always got involved in new projects and spontaneous ideas in order to support Munich citizens in emergencies and to enable social participation.” When asked about her favorite project, Anita Niedermeier doesn’t have to think twice. The “Old and Young” project she initiated brought children and young people from the Munich orphanage together with older people from the old people’s and service center (ASZ) in Neuhausen. Joint ventures, mutual help, good relationships developed from this. Anita Niedermeier is reminded of her own biography: “My grandmother was always there for us children while the parents were working.”
“Those who make the laws should spend half a year looking around in a social community center”
Better retirement homes and medical care, but also, for example, glasses again as a health insurance benefit because many pensioners could not pay for them, is what Anita Niedermeier wants from politics. “Those who make the laws should spend six months in a community center or a retirement home to see what’s going on there.”
Now she first wants to calm down, then later get involved in social work in her home town of Ismaning, “but no longer fully commit to it.” In any case, in the near future she will climb up again more often – in a black leather outfit as the Lady of Harley on her own motorcycle from the cult brand Harley Davidson. Of course she doesn’t belong to any motorcycle club, but, how could it be otherwise, to the board of the Herz Ass Chapter Munich.