Carmen Valero Berlin
Berlin
Updated Sunday, January 28, 2024-9:42 pm
Bettencourt Case Netflix launches a series about the war over her fortune between the L'Orèal heiress and her mother's photographer friend
The German-Austrian Marlene Engelhorn (32), bearer of one of the surnames with the most zeros in the bank accounts of Germany,
has inherited a fortune from her grandmother
that she does not want.
She believes that she has done nothing to deserve it
and also finds it intolerable that she is not riddled with taxes in a society where the rich are getting richer and social differences are getting bigger and bigger.
Marlene's activism was known and she has taken advantage of it to keep her cause alive in the media. At 29 she already declared that
she would get rid of 90%
of what she got from her grandmother if, when the time came, she did not change the tax situation for the rich. "I have not worked a day for the money I am going to receive and I am not going to pay a single cent in taxes to keep it. Put crudely: if by then there is no inheritance or estate tax, I will redistribute it"
The moment came in 2023, when
her grandmother, the Viennese publisher Traudl Vechiatto
, and patron after her marriage to the German Peter Engelhorn, great-grandson of the founder of the chemical company BASF and shareholder of the Boehringer Mannheim Group, Friedrich Engelhorn, died. The couple, who settled in Switzerland, had
four daughters
: Angelika, Ariane, Alissa and Sonia.
Marlene is the only one of the clan who wants to ignore the inheritance
.
A leap into the past: the goldsmith's workshop of the German Friedrich Engelhorn runs into difficulties in 1848. At the age of 27, he founded a gas factory, later an aniline dye factory and finally, in 1865, the Badische Anilin- und Soda. Fabrik, or BASF for short. When his son takes over the reins, he turns the company into
one of the world's leading quinine manufacturers
. In the postwar years, Boehringer Mannheim came under the ownership of the four lines of the Engelhorn family, headed by three cousins, Christa Gelpke-Engelhorn, Christof Engelhorn, Curt Engelhorn, and Peter Engelhorn, Marlene's grandfather.
11 billion
Many years of friction between the various lines led to turbulence in the 1990s, multiple changes in the board of directors and, finally, the sale of the company to the
Swiss group Hoffmann-La Roche
. Income amounted to
eleven billion dollars
, which was not taxed in Germany because the family holding company, Corange Ltd., was based in Bermuda. The share of the now widowed Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto was between 19 and 22%. She received $2.45 billion for her actions. Business magazine Forbes estimated her fortune at
$4.2 billion
in 2022, and she most recently ranked 687 on Forbes' list of the world's richest people.
Marlene Engelhorn grows up in Vienna in a "too big house," as she puts it, and attends a private daycare and a public school.
"Privileged rich kid, that's what my childhood was like
," she says. Two years ago, when he found out that he was going to inherit a sum of
tens of millions
from his grandmother and at first he did not know what to do with it and he began to ask advice from the people around him, he consulted experts, but also people that analyze their inheritance from a structural point of view. Marlene comes to the conclusion that it shouldn't be her decision what to do with her family's money that she hasn't worked for. In February 2021, Engelhorn and others founded the
AG Steuergerechtigkeit (Working Group for Tax Justice)
, which has been operating since June under the name
Taxmenow
. Engelhorn is using the initiative to collect signatures for a petition on the issue of tax justice. There are currently 44,000 signatures, 50 of which come from millionaires. The initiative aims to raise public opinion about the problem of the
unequal distribution of wealth
.
Other branches of the family
The norm in other branches of the family is different and usually ends up in court. The case of
Curt Engelhorn
, Marlene's grandfather's brother, is one for the books. Three ex-wives, four children from two different marriages, a stepson and a son from an affair. He was always generous with all of them. During his lifetime he gave his daughters from his third marriage a villa in an elegant place in Upper Bavaria (Germany) and half an island in the Caribbean. In total, the patriarch would have bequeathed
450 million euros to each descendant
over the years. However, Engelhorn's last wife, Heidi (89), was to be the main beneficiary of the inheritance. The children were
only
supposed to inherit 20 million euros each
. Sufficient reason for one of the daughters to challenge the inheritance. And since Heidi Engelhorn still lives in Gstaad, the inheritance dispute ended up in the courts of the Swiss canton of Bern.
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In Germany there was also a trial, this time as a result of
gifts to his children through trusts
abroad. The case was one of the largest criminal tax proceedings the country has seen. This Engelhorn's two daughters were accused of evading
440 million euros in gift tax
. In October 2013, both were arrested in Munich and taken to prison. After a year of investigations, investigators were convinced that the
billionaire daughters did not pay taxes
on their father's gifts, even though both are required to pay taxes in Germany. During the house searches, investigators confiscated hundreds of files, but were unable to fully penetrate the Engelhorns' complex financial system, which spread throughout the world. In the end,
the Bavarian tax authorities reached an agreement
with the subsidiaries to pay some €145 million in
back taxes
.
The case of
Christof Engelhorn
, Curt's cousin, is different. While still alive, he decided
to donate 120 million
so that the city of Lucerne could have
a new and prestigious musical theater
, the so-called Salle Modulable. However, when some of the heirs found out about these plans, peace was also lost in this branch of the family. Various parties vehemently attempted to prevent payments to the city of Lucerne, including through legal action.
The Lucerne theater fiasco
The trial of this case took place in Bermuda because Christof also had a flair for devious financial investments and some of his
trusts and foundations had been located in the Caribbean
. Over the years, the process swallowed millions and, in the end, the Salle Modulable project also sank. A fiasco that still resonates in Lucerne today.
It is not known how much the inheritance received by Marlene
from her grandmother amounts to, but if she does what she promised it is easy to do the math because
she will return to society, as she says, 25 million euros
.
"The rich should not have more influence in society or decide for themselves what problems to solve and where the money should go" is the motto of this woman,
queer
activist
and promoter of multiple initiatives in favor of the
reintroduction of taxes on millionaire assets
. For that reason, Marlene will not decide alone. "When great fortunes are distributed, it affects everyone because it creates realities. I cannot decide that alone." Above all, I don't want to decide alone. I want it to be decided in a democratic process. If you are serious about democracy, you have to give it a chance and trust the people," she maintains.
And this is where the Foresight Institute comes into play
with social researcher Christoph Hofinger and his team
. Using social science criteria, this team will choose 50 people and 15 substitutes who will spend six weekends between now and June developing proposals on the distribution of wealth. Each of them will receive compensation of 1,200 euros per weekend.
Those chosen to distribute the inheritance
The first letters of invitation to the
casting
of what will be called the Citizen Council for Redistribution have already been sent and in total there will be 10,000, all addressed to
Austrians over 16 years of age
, that is, with the right to vote, and residents in Austria, regardless of your nationality. This random sample has been extracted from the Central Resident Registry, in a strictly random manner by computer. Those interested can register by phone or online. In a later phase, personal invitations will be sent
to interested parties
and, at the end of the selection process, a picture of Austrian society will be obtained with regard to age, gender, place of residence, migration background, but also attitudes towards the distribution of wealth. In addition to the scientific support provided by Foresight, there will also be an external evaluation of the process.
Marlene will stay completely out of it.
Starting in March, the
50 people
who will make up
the Good Council
will debate the distribution of wealth in Salzburg, develop ideas "about how we should approach it as a society" and decide what to do with the
25 million it has in trust
. The results should be available in June. According to Engelhorn, one of the "rules of the game" is that there will be no "simple majority decision", but also no "single-vote veto"; A professional moderation team will take care of this, but there will also be experts to help the citizen councils.
Neither will Marlene have the right to veto.
"If the proposals are not undemocratic, contrary to life, anti-constitutional or for profit, everything is open," says the heiress, who is clear about what she will do in the future: "the idea is that when she enters working life , everything from my inheritance that I do not need for my personal expenses is redistributed.