In view of rising energy prices and inflation, there are more and more people who can hardly afford the bare essentials. So what a blessing when wealthy people also think of their fellow citizens who are not so well off, as happened in Ottobrunn. The married couple Jakob and Ilse Steretzeder, who had no children themselves, inherited a piece of land and the house on it to the municipality in 2014. According to their will, the proceeds should be used to support community citizens who, through no fault of their own, got into trouble or became in need of help.
The Steretzeders hadn’t attracted much attention in the community until they came to Mayor Thomas Loderer’s office a few years ago. “They lived a more secluded life, they weren’t active in clubs, I didn’t know them before,” says the mayor. So in his office they brought up their request that they had a piece of land with a house on it that they would like to donate to the church.
A foundation has grown out of the inheritance
“The couple had lived in Ottobrunn for decades and felt very comfortable here,” says Loderer. The deceased, born in 1928, used to be a coal dealer. He finally died in 2016, three years later his wife. “They wanted to do something good,” says Daniela Steretzeder, grandniece of the deceased. As a child, Ilse Steretzeder also lived in the children’s home for a while, it was wartime, and sometimes she had little to eat. “They both wanted someone to benefit from it and support people in need,” says the great-niece.
At the end of 2019, the community then accepted the inheritance. Since then, various things had to be settled, including before the probate court. In the meantime, as was the wish and requirement of the testator, a non-incorporated, tax-exempt foundation has been established. It bears the name “Jakob and Ilse Steretzeder Foundation”. Its purpose is to support community citizens who are in need and need help through no fault of their own. The six-party house, which the couple bequeathed to the community and in which they also lived, has four larger flats and two apartments. According to Loderer, all apartments are currently rented. The rental income goes to the foundation.
Currently, one or the other bill is still open, and maintenance measures are pending in the medium term, so that it is not yet foreseeable when exactly the foundation will be able to make distributions. “We now have to get this up and running economically,” says Loderer. The aim is to get there as quickly as possible so that smaller amounts of around 100 euros can be paid out by the administration to the needy. Once this has started, the mayor aims to set up a kind of foundation advisory board, which can then decide on applications for larger individual amounts if the foundation throws them away.
The mayor welcomes the actions of the Steretzeders, especially since it fits in with his ideas for the future. “I would like to expressly encourage people to consider giving something to the community in which they have lived for decades,” says the mayor. He would be happy about donations. He would like to tackle the topic with greater intensity anyway. He can imagine that at some point there will be several smaller foundations that will all run under one roof, for example in the sense of a community foundation. He refers to the example of the city of Munich, which has a large foundation management because many citizens of the city would inherit something. He also highlights the “Luitpold and Ludwig Rothenanger Foundation”, which has been supporting the needy in the south-east of the district since 2000. “It’s an incredible relief that the foundation exists,” he says. Against this background, it is great that there is now a new foundation. Loderer believes that the topic also fits in with the spirit of the times, “where the state can no longer shoulder everything, but at the same time there is private wealth”.