Karlmann „Bili“

Karlmann ‘Bili’ was the youngest of the seven children of Emilie ‘Emy’ and Georg II Anton Mautner Markhof in Vienna. Due to the large age difference between him and his older siblings, he grew up primarily together with his brother Peter, who was two years older, and partly also with his slightly younger nephew Georg IV J. E.. He spent his childhood and youth in the so-called Mautner Schlössel, now the Floridsdorf District Museum. His father died in 1934 and although Bili was still very young at the time, his father’s personality, especially in terms of decency and honesty, had a great influence on him throughout his life.

He completed his grammar school and A-levels at the school in Kandlgasse, in Vienna’s 7th district. As he was declared unfit for military service due to a stomach resection, he did not have to enlist and was able to begin his studies at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences. However, he was expelled again for the flimsy reason that the ‘German soil’ could only be worked by Aryans. Immediately after the end of the war, he fled by bicycle to Vorarlberg and swam across the Rhine to Switzerland. He returned to Vienna in 1946 to study economics. At university, he met his future wife Melitta Maček, whom he married in 1950 and with whom he had a very happy marriage until his death. Between 1952 and 1959, his children Maria Charlotte (Heidi), Maria Elisabeth (Sissy), Christian and Maria Christine were born.

After gaining his first professional experience at Diamalt in Munich, he joined Stadlauer Malzfabrik STAMAG in 1952, initially taking over the sales management of the baking agent department and then the position of CEO – a job that he particularly enjoyed, especially because he formed an innovative and successful team with an exceptionally capable chemist, Professor Dr Alois Weith. He expanded the product range to include confectionery products, sought international partnerships with innovative companies and developed many successful product lines. Due to the problematic development of STAMAG’s much larger malt department, the company was sold in its entirety to the German company IREKS in 1973 and Karlmann gradually withdrew into private life.

Bili was an extraordinary person, intelligent, helpful, interested and highly decent. In his youth he was a passionate skier and tennis player and throughout his life he was an enthusiastic mountaineer. His library of several thousand books testified to his passion for literature, history and art history. Despite his rather conservative nature, he had a large fan base of children and young people with whom he always enjoyed chatting, climbing mountains and playing croquet and board games all summer long. He died far too young in 2001 at the age of 76.