He flies around the world, is restless and unconventional.
He has a state-of-the-art factory built and scares the employees with open-plan offices and provocative art in the factory, canteen and break rooms.
In the late 1970s, Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth's world began to crack.
The Herta brand is still strong and meat consumption in Germany is on the rise, but with the supermarkets, price pressure is also increasing.
Schweisfurth, who is committed to the artisanal quality of his sausages, begins to have doubts.
The fact that his children are distancing themselves from the family business and going their own way finally makes Schweisfurth rethink: how are the animals from which he makes his products kept and slaughtered?
In 1984, Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth unexpectedly sells Herta to the Nestlé food group and shortly afterwards founds the "Herrmannsdorfer Landwerkstätten", an organic farm with artisan food production in Bavaria.
A real pioneering achievement at the time.
But Schweisfurth, himself a trained butcher, has one goal: to produce better meat - and he is convinced that the animals must also live well.
Food production should be organic, artisanal and regional.
His sons ensure that the farm is profitable today.
In the end, they are inheriting the family legacy.
And today: Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth still has a lot planned, even at the age of 84.
He discovers "symbiotic agriculture" and experiments in his experimental garden in Herrmannsdorf.
Once again, he is ahead of his time - a pioneer.
WDR Television, Friday, June 19, 2015, 8:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.