COMPAY HISTORY

Jan Wilhelm Peters & Christine Müller

"Ever onwards" also applies to the tradition of company management. Since 2008, I, as a member of the fourth generation, have also been a director of the company. As a business manager, I focused on working with glass, especially glass painting, during my dual course of study. I gained practical experience in specialist companies in the glass industry all over the world.

As a family member of the fourth generation, my sister, Christine Müller, has been working in the company as a management expert with international experience since 2013.

We are happy with our status as a healthy family business. We feel that we are in an excellent position with all our employees and we look forward to new and exciting challenges.

Jan Wilhelm Peters, Managing Director of the company

Wilhelm Peters

In 1980, my father, Wilhelm Peters, took over the management of the stained glass company. Today, he and I run the company together.

Wilhelm Peters studied art and art education in Hamburg and made a name for himself as an exhibitor and author before taking over the workshop in Paderborn.

He feels as committed to tradition as to modernity. His passion is the art, the artists, the progress, the "plus ultra".

Under his leadership, the stained glass business has steadily grown and is growing still: new concepts, new buildings, new workshops, an artists' gallery and outbuildings mean that the Peters stained glass company is now renowned in Europe and overseas.

Emil Peters

In 1935, after the early death of his father, grandfather Emil Peters took over the management of the workshops. He was trained by his father as a glass painter within the company, and he followed in his father's footsteps. Again, it was a war, the Second World War, which called a halt to the development of the workshop - but not for good.

In 1945, Emil Peters rebuilt the workshop which had been destroyed, and soon produced the first works of art with famous artists in cities like Beirut, Detroit, Manila or Washington.

He placed great emphasis on the training of young glass painters and stained glass makers. That was clever and forward-looking. Over 100 trainees have passed through his school. Even today we see the basis of his successful work in the training of our own employees to become highly qualified specialists.

Otto Peters

Our great-grandfather, Otto Peters, was the founder of the workshop. In 1875 he was born in the Lower Rhine - the centre of stained glass at that time, where he trained as a glass painter.

After a scholarship at the German Academy at the Villa Massimo in Rome and at other locations, he founded his own workshop in Paderborn in 1912: the "Westphalian Art Institute for Glass Painting and Artistic Glass Design, Renovation of Old Stained Glass". At that time it was a courageous and businesslike decision - and for us today it is still a wise and far-sighted decision.

The First World War put a stop to the development of the workshop, but shortly after the end of the war, the first large, national jobs were carried out. More and more employees were taken on, and even at this stage, designs by other artists as well as their own were being realised.