...When Tagore came to tea

When Jon Baumhauer says that “India is an incredibly rich subcontinent,” he is not referring only to pharmaceutical resources or a growing, dynamic market for pharmaceutical and chemical products, but also to a part of his own family history.

When Merck arranged an evening devoted to the theme “Encounters with Rabindranath Tagore” in autumn 2011, Jon Baumhauer, who is the Chairman of the Merck Family Board and of the Executive Board of E. Merck KG, opened the event with a description of Tagore’s visit to Baumhauer’s grandparents — the publisher Kurt Wolff and his wife Elisabeth Wolff-Merck.

Tagore, a Nobel Prize for Literature laureate who was born 150 years ago, visited the Wolff family in Munich in 1921. On his trip to Germany he also visited Darmstadt, where the “Tagore Week” took place that year. The meeting between the poet and the publishing couple was the culmination of a close literary friendship.

Wolff had not only published German translations of Tagore’s works, but Elisabeth Wolff-Merck had personally translated his play Chitra from English into German. The play was published in Germany in 1914, one year after the Indian poet received the Nobel Prize, and went on to become a best-seller.

The Merck family had been fascinated by the magical, distant country of India for a long time. In 1887 Willy Merck set off on a world trip at the tender age of 27. The pharmaceutical historian Sabine Bernschneider-Reif, who is head of Corporate History at Merck, calls Merck’s trip “astonishing both in its breadth and intensity” and explains that “India figured very prominently” in his travels.

Based on an array of archive items from the company’s collection, she illustrates the fact that Merck’s trip was characterized just as much by curiosity and openness toward the new culture as it was by his business sense.

Bernschneider-Reif explains that Willy Merck made “visits to important dignitaries and bazaars” during his trip, with “a view toward developing future business ties.” Among other things, the young scientist noticed the diversity and potential of India’s plant life, a fact that was quickly registered at Merck since natural product chemistry was part of the company’s original business.

Both as a supplier of raw materials and as a market for the company’s own products, the fascinating Indian subcontinent with its centuries of medical culture seemed very attractive to Merck.

Considering that they were penned in the late 19th century, the young man’s letters home sound visionary in retrospect — especially since India has enjoyed an increasingly important role for Merck in the last few years. In 2008 Karl-Ludwig Kley, Chairman of the Executive Board at Merck, described the Indian market as a strategic focus in the near future.

And in October 2011 Kley declared, “Since becoming Executive Board Chairman in 2007, I have never left India feeling as optimistic as I have this year. I see no reason why we should not continue to enjoy double-digit growth here.”