Trusting children to do something, letting them look for solutions on their own, encouraging their creativity and inventiveness. This positive development is due in particular to people like Hubert Frenzl. Known today as the "inventor pope of Lower Bavaria", he began transforming technology lessons into inventor lessons at the Maristengymnasium Fürstenzell over 40 years ago. This regularly met with resistance: "You have to teach children how something works, otherwise they wouldn't be able to find solutions". But Frenzel proved his critics wrong, his pupils registered countless patents, traveled with him to competitions all over the world and demonstrated their inventive talent in a wide variety of television reports. From an educational point of view, Frenzl was far ahead of his time, he trusted young people to be inventive and wanted to specifically encourage their inventiveness and ability to find solutions, and in Frenzel's opinion this was only possible if the necessary (free) space was created.
 

A group of former pupils, led by initiator Florian Gottschall, would now like to film the life and success story of Hubert Frenzl. KRIWAN has the honor of contributing a small part to this filming. Our Managing Director Dr. Christian Ellwein is a former pupil of Mr. Frenzl and is still in contact with his former teacher. It was during his lessons that he discovered his passion for "tinkering" and subsequently produced a building material in his mother's food processor, which was later registered for a patent. Much more important for the Managing Director of the KRIWAN Group is what he personally took away from this time as a teenager: "There was someone who believed in us, who had faith in us young people, who encouraged us to find solutions, no matter how crazy they were. That had a lasting impact on me in my later career."
 

This makes the work of the Friedrich Kriwan Foundation, which was set up as a charitable foundation by the late company founder Friedrich Kriwan, all the more important for Ellwein: "As a foundation, we particularly promote the areas of education and research. With our foundation activities, we make an important contribution to society and inspire young people for technology and awaken their inventive spirit."