Crossing borders

The story of Hager Group is a history of successful border crossings. By operating across language barriers, cultural differences and borders, we have continuously expanded the scope of our success. And this is only the beginning of the story.

The Founding Fathers (and Brothers)
Together with their father Peter, Dr. Oswald Hager (1926 - 2017) and Hermann Hager (1928 - 2014) founded Hager Group in the mid-1950s. From the very start, the two entrepreneurs operated across borders and achieved success far beyond their Saarland home.

It all started with a big dilemma. In 1955, Oswald and Hermann Hager, along with their father, founded their small elektrotechnische Fabrik, which produced new meter and distribution boards. The location of the new Hager general partnership was Ensheim in Saarland, a region which, at the end of World War II, was first made a protectorate under French control. Then, in 1957 following a referendum, the Saarland became German again. A result of this was that France would become a sovereign neighbouring state with all the border controls, customs provisions and bureaucratic obstacles that greatly complicated cross-border trade at the time.

Our company founders had two choices: integrate into the French market or move across the border. In the end, they created a third option: operate successfully in both Germany and France. While Oswald oversaw the main factory and distribution in Ensheim, Saarland, Herman Hager, the more technical of the two, built the company’s second foothold in the town of Obernai, in the Region of Alsace, France.

It was one of the best decisions in our company’s history. Thanks to this option, they were able to operate across borders, effortlessly crossing from one side to the other and throughout Europe. Francophiles accepted them to such an extent that as the years passed they even considered them honorary Frenchmen. The Hager brothers were well-known at electrical trade fairs and not just for their meter boards: guests were greeted with champagne and cognac.

The fact that, as Saarlanders, they were neither totally German nor French helped them a great deal at the start, as Oswald explained later in retrospect. “We really were neither one nor the other, but we managed it so well because we knew both the French and German perspective and could act accordingly.”

We may be ‘neither one nor the other’, but we are active all over the world. Our company headquarters is located in Blieskastel, Saarland, and our largest production facility is in Obernai. While our company organisation is a European one – we are an SE, a societas europaea – our market is the whole world. We produce our components and solutions in 23 locations around the globe and customers in more than 120 countries around the world have come to rely on them.

This ability to adapt and be understood as well as embrace rather than deny our identity is more crucial today than ever before. Without these abilities, we would never have achieved our current size and scope. In keeping with this, we try to support the mobility of our employees today, regardless of hierarchy, length of service, work area or origin. This includes postings several months in length, as well as ’localisations’, whereby employees move to a new location in the long term. We support employees in looking for somewhere to live, language acquisition, finding a school for their children, intercultural training and almost everything that helps them integrate into their new home and will make their stay abroad a success.

Since 2015, the number of employee postings has almost doubled, increasing more than five-fold in comparison to 2013. In future, there may be even more. “The goal of our mobility policy is to promote international careers and build bridges between the various Hager Group sites,” says Anne Girault, in charge of international mobility at Hager Group. “This enables us to share knowledge and common processes within the company.”

One thing is clear: by continuously broadening our horizons, we have also expanded the scope of our potential success. By better understanding the perspectives and needs of other cultures and regions, we are getting better at understanding how we can help them with our products and solutions. And what better way of doing that than changing our perspectives for a while and making a second home abroad? Just like our founders did all those decades ago?

According to John Le Carré, “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” So let’s leave our desks and overcome the borders, barriers and difficulties that this involves. Let’s hit the road!