Company history
Company founder Alfred Jörns
Of course, this feeling dates back to bygone times when there were no supermarkets and credit cards, when people didn’t drive around in cars, or have a pension fund. The feeling for what it means to own real property is the legacy of our ancestors and lives on in all of us. If you listen to your heart, you’ll know it’s true. Throughout the ages, fertile land has always formed the foundations for small principalities, then larger unions and finally empires. Whenever these empires – and we are talking now about passed millenniums – lost the fertile land on which they had were founded, then the cultures, which we can still read about today, were also lost. This is a historical fact and can be verified from South America all the way to Egypt; and, of course, it also holds true for Central Europe.
It is fascinating: the land that is today dealt with by Agrarboden, used to constitute the basis of legitimacy for a myriad of great rulers. A prime example of this can be found in Westphalia –where Agrarboden has its headquarters – at the time of Charlemagne; it was here that he maintained the agricultural basis for his war against Saxony. And it is no coincidence that, eight centuries before Charlemagne, the Romans tried to establish a province in precisely this area – this failed, as we know, when they lost the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
Just as it happened in Westphalia, the same has also happened throughout the centuries in countless other area of Central Europe. What used to form the basis for the ruling dynasties, which we all learned about in school, can now be bought on a fair basis through Agrarboden.
Alfres Jörns and Dirk Meier Westhoff
Property ownership is also a basis on which to make a living, and work in direct contact with nature, as well as in the knowledge of continuing traditions in a real historical setting. It was this fascination – for the countryside on one hand, and fair dealings on the other – that induced Alfred Jörns to set up his agricultural and forestry agency in 1960. The company has enjoyed an excellent reputation ever since it was founded. In the course of its further development the original company took on different legal forms before finally becoming the present day ‘Agrarboden Ltd.’ in 2009.
