Obituary for Thomas Greim

Thomas Greim, the founder of 'dennree Naturkost' and the 'denns' organic markets, has been my good colleague in the organic industry for 40 years, someone we have all always looked up to. His sudden death this week has shaken us all deeply.

In my grief, I think of him today.

There are many important memories with Thomas. It was always extremely interesting to have conversations with Thomas, the philosopher. A very calm, cautious, and thoughtful person, who could always see much further than many others. Particularly special was also our business relationship that developed with basic, an organic retail company I founded with friends in 1998. There was and probably still is no better and more professional wholesaler with such a wide range as dennree. Even during the enormous expansion of our company, dennree was always by our side.

A little look back: In the mid-eighties, dennree was one of the first organic wholesalers in Germany, then still relatively small. Thomas Greim had already started in the seventies, bringing organic cheese from France to Germany with his small delivery van. At that time, there was nothing comparable in Germany, really just industrially produced and plastic-wrapped rubber cheese with a salty taste. A horror. We had just started with Herrmannsdorf and our new small dairy began producing raw milk soft cheese in 1988 as the first dairy in Germany, which was still frowned upon at the time! Thomas recognized the quality back then and listed our Camembert, which helped us a lot.

A lot of time has passed since then. Just a few years ago, Thomas and I exchanged the following old story, which I will never forget: one autumn day in 1988, we were sitting together on the bench in front of our farmhouse in Sonnenhausen and Thomas said to me: I want to one day be like Rewe or Edeka, that is, have my own store network. Today, dennree achieves a turnover of 1.5 billion €: an insane achievement, even in difficult times, against all odds. He was a true entrepreneur with the unwavering conviction that organic farming and organic processing are the only way out of the constant agricultural dilemma. That was our common ground. Although basic unfortunately didn't survive the difficult situation in the post-corona and inflation years due to all sorts of mismanagement by some of my successors, dennree and denns always stayed on top.

Thomas also came back in 2015 with his children, who run the company today, especially from Franconia to Sonnenhausen for the funeral of my friend and basic co-founder Richard Müller, which expressed his respect. Great!

Thomas, you will be greatly missed as an instigator, role model, and human being - but it always goes on! We are not at our destination yet!

Georg Schweisfurth,
In October 2025