The unlikely story of a family business that once repaired hydraulic jacks and now manufactures satellites. In the middle of it all: Christa Fuchs and her family.
Thomas Jahn
14.01.2026 -
Bremen. At the beginning of the 1980s, Christa Fuchs was an "empty nester", as we would say today. Her two children had moved out and her husband was fully occupied with his job as an engineer. So the then 42-year-old looked for something to do to escape the empty family home.
An ordinary story so far, but one that continued in a more than unusual way. In 1981, Fuchs took over a small company that repaired hydraulic jacks for the German army and installed parking heaters in military vehicles. Entrepreneurship ran in the family: her father had a locksmith's shop in Pinneberg. Before her marriage, she had learned the commercial side of the business in the steel trade at Klöckner in Hamburg.
But the purchase of OHB was a "suicide mission", as Christa Fuchs once told a local newspaper. In fact, she took over "Otto Hydraulik Bremen" without any management experience or knowledge of the industry. Her days were suddenly more than full: Talking to customers, giving instructions to the then five employees, working through orders - with the help of an experienced foreman and lots of help from all sides, Fuchs managed to solve all the problems.
The now 87-year-old ran the company for two decades, first alone and later with her husband, amateur pilot and aerospace engineer Manfred Fuchs. Her son Marco Fuchs joined her in the mid-nineties. Together they built up one of the most important aerospace companies in Germany.
A high-tech group in Bremen
What a change, what a story. And right in the middle of it all, the former housewife and part-time employee of a coffee shop, who made a company big as a company boss - which wasn't always easy: "If you're worried about how you're going to pay the salaries at the end of the month, then you don't sleep well anymore," she replies in writing to questions from Handelsblatt. An interview was not possible; she is very open about her stroke, which makes it difficult for her to speak.
The sleepless nights were worth it: with a turnover of 1.3 billion euros, OHB is no longer a small workshop, but a high-tech group based in Bremen. With around 3,300 employees, OHB builds high-tech satellites, for example for the German Federal Armed Forces, and develops an asteroid defense system for the European Space Agency Esa - which uses a probe to divert such small astronomical bodies from their course towards Earth if necessary.
Esa CEO Josef Aschbacher told Handelsblatt: "OHB has enjoyed a long and successful collaboration with Esa." The cooperation ranges from Galileo navigation satellites and the third-generation Meteosat weather satellites to the exploration of exoplanets, the measurement of gravitational waves and future European launch vehicles. "This family-led commitment with a clear vision for the future strengthens Europe's space sector and industry and is greatly appreciated by Esa."
The signs are pointing to growth: the German Armed Forces want to invest 35 billion euros in space defense by 2030, while Germany is providing more money for Esa over the next three years than any other country in Europe with 5.4 billion euros.
"There were no funny remarks"
However, today's OHB would almost never have existed. When Christa Fuchs was looking for a job in 1981, she was offered a job in a wool store in the Roland shopping center. Back then, knitting and crocheting were a new and promising trend.
Rather by chance, Christa Fuchs got talking to the Otto family at an event, who were unable to find a successor for their repair workshop. The rest is history. The decision was also the right one on a personal level: "I always felt I was treated pretty well there," Fuchs recalls. "They also taught me a lot, and although I was suddenly the new boss as a young woman without a lot of experience, there were no funny comments."
At the time, her husband Manfred Fuchs worked at Erno Raumfahrttechnik, a German aerospace company - which is now part of Airbus. The aerospace engineer also flirted with self-employment: he came from a family of entrepreneurs with distilleries, sawmills and a wine trade in South Tyrol. The Forst brewery in Merano is still family-owned today - and is still the largest family-run brewery in Italy.
The time of the space shuttle
In 1985, four years after the purchase of OHB, Manfred Fuchs resigned from Erno and also took the plunge into self-employment. He saw business opportunities: "At that time, there was an initial space boom in Germany. There were more and more European projects, and there were also orders from the USA. In collaboration with NASA, Europe built the reusable space laboratory "Spacelab", which was used a total of 22 times with the space shuttle in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, Ulf Merbold was the first West German astronaut and non-US citizen to fly in a space shuttle to look after the Spacelab.
OHB manufactured so-called drop capsules for Erno: the company launched the "Mikroba" into the sky with a high-altitude balloon in order to achieve weightlessness for a short time during the fall. Later, the company also built a "drop tower". This was based on an idea that emerged with the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) and is still in vogue today: to use "microgravity" in space for industrial products such as semiconductors or medicines or for scientific experiments.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, much changed in space travel. The Cold War was over and many military and civilian projects such as the space shuttle were discontinued. OHB had to react - and entered the satellite business. In 1994, OHB launched its first satellite, the "Bremsat", into orbit for the University of Bremen. Today, the 60-kilogram high-tech piece adorns OHB's reception hall.
From lawyer to space manager
The collaboration was groundbreaking. The project manager was a certain Hans Königsmann, whom Elon Musk recruited as the fourth employee for SpaceX in 2002. The German aerospace engineer spent almost two decades shaping the SpaceX space program, which is now the most valuable private company in the world at 800 billion dollars. Königsmann left SpaceX in 2021 and was elected to the Supervisory Board of OHB a year later.
There was another important change in the mid-nineties: Marco Fuchs came on board - rather reluctantly. The then 33-year-old worked for the American law firm Jones Day in New York, enjoying the "glamor" of the cosmopolitan city, as he recalls today. But that came to an end in the fall of 1994 when he was transferred to Frankfurt. Due to the time difference, he also had to work almost around the clock for the American law firm. "They expect you to be there for them until one o'clock in the morning," he said.
So Marco Fuchs resigned - and set up a law firm in Hamburg. He also started at OHB, but only part-time, putting two thirds of his time into the law firm. But it soon became clear: "As a lawyer, you always work for others, you only ever pursue the dreams of others."
At that time, OHB was still a small company with 40 employees and a turnover of around ten million marks. The lawyer was familiar with space travel from an early age. As a lawyer, he said he was able to contribute a lot: "That's where you learn to think in a structured and strategic way," recalled Marco Fuchs, who has been managing OHB's fortunes as CEO since 2000. He was responsible for a number of acquisitions, such as that of MT Aerospace in Augsburg in 2005: "I basically built up the Group's development outside of space systems such as satellites."
The dynamics of a family trio
How the transformation succeeded is down to a lot of work, technological enthusiasm and a management trio that is mainly found in family businesses. "My father was the business developer, my mother was the CFO, and I basically changed and expanded the structure of the company," says Marco Fuchs.
According to the 63-year-old, a system of mutual control developed: "It was usually the case that my mother argued against my father and me." Christa Fuchs remembers this all too well: "They had ideas day and night, all of which were expensive and you didn't really know whether they could be implemented at all - and if so, whether anyone would want to buy them." Her conclusion: "If you just let engineers get on with it, it quickly becomes a bottomless pit." She was excited about every rocket launch - and also thought about the money her satellite had cost on board.
That may have "killed a good idea at times, but it kept us economically stable," says Christa Fuchs. "That applies to every company, whether you're in space travel or jacking cars: you have to have a solid foundation and manage your business well and wisely, otherwise customers will lose confidence."
An IPO and American raiders
Almost a quarter of a century ago, OHB experienced a turning point. In 2001, as part of the euphoria surrounding the Neuer Markt, the company floated parts of the company on the stock exchange. To this day, however, the family still holds a 65 percent majority stake in the Group. At that time, Marco Fuchs raised capital for expansion into new business areas such as the digital sector or, in 2005, for the acquisition of MT Aerospace in Augsburg.
With the IPO, Christa Fuchs withdrew from the operational business. She moved to the Supervisory Board, which she chaired until 2018. At that time, US investor Guy Wyser-Pratte bought a stake in OHB. He criticized the fact that the CEO was controlled by his mother. Marco Fuchs found that time "strange", he recalls: "That was the only phase in which we were really harshly criticized by shareholders." However, the American was partly right in his criticism. Wyser-Pratte later exited at a profit.
To this day, the stock market and America have shaped OHB. "The stock market has been good for us because it disciplines you," says Marco Fuchs. You have to structure the company in order to meet corporate governance requirements, for example. "Many companies that grow often have the problem that their structures somehow get mixed up."
Cooperation with KKR
OHB is still listed on the stock exchange today, although only a six percent share is still listed. With the help of US private equity giant KKR, the company submitted a takeover bid for EUR 44 per share in 2023. This valued OHB at a total of EUR 768 million. Since then, KKR has owned around 28 percent of OHB. Not a bad deal, as the space boom in Germany is inspiring investors and the market capitalization is now more than two billion euros.
The Fuchs family placed their shares in a family foundation in 2022. Marco Fuchs is interviewed by his son Konstantin, who studied aerospace engineering in Munich and worked for a time at a Berlin satellite start-up. He is currently considering joining the company. Marco Fuchs' sister, Romana Fuchs Mayrhofer, is also on the Supervisory Board. The lawyer has been running her own law firm in Munich since 1993.
The future is full of opportunities. According to Marco Fuchs, now CEO of OHB, the family business is on the verge of a boost: "If we don't grow now with the boom, when will we?" OHB currently has incoming orders worth three billion euros, so "our turnover should also rise to three billion euros in the next few years".
Germany is becoming a space nation
The focus is on the German Federal Armed Forces, which wants to build its own satellite constellations. As a German space company, OHB is the natural partner. "We already know the Bundeswehr very well and have gained experience with several satellite contracts," says Sabine von der Recke, who is responsible for "customers in politics and space-related institutions" on OHB's Management Board. "But no one in Europe has ever done such large constellations before. It will be a big change." However, the Management Board member, who has been working at OHB since 2014, is confident: "To be honest, I have never experienced OHB saying that we can sit back and relax, nothing new is going to happen."
OHB is also investing in New Space in Germany. For example, the company owns around half of Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), which was founded in 2018. Alongside Isar Aerospace from Munich, RFA is one of two German start-ups that have been shortlisted for Esa's 2025 rocket competition. RFA and Isar Aerospace are currently engaged in a duel: who will launch the first private German rocket into space?
In any case, Christa Fuchs is not worried about the future of the company: "I don't know what will be in demand in space travel in ten years' time, but it will certainly be possible to order it from OHB."
