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Chance will have wanted that his book, Geld (“money”, in German, not translated), appeared a few days after the death of his grandmother, Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto, which occurred on September 22, at the age of 95. An event that will suddenly make the Austro-German Marlene Engelhorn, her granddaughter, a multimillionaire at 30 years old. “I still don’t know exactly how much, we haven’t read the will yet, but probably tens of millions of euros”, assures at the end of October the great-great-great-granddaughter of the founder of the German chemical and pharmaceutical companies BASF, Friedrich Engelhorn, who died in 1902 leaving to his descendants a fortune which remains considerable today.
At the time of his death, Traudl’s fortune, which had become rich by marrying one of Friedrich’s great-grandsons, was indeed estimated by the American magazine Forbes to 4.2 billion dollars, notably thanks to the sale of another family business, Boehringer Mannheim, to Roche Laboratories, in 1997. Even if it will touch only a fraction of this fortune, this inheritance seems “unfair” to Marlene. “I never worked for this”, recalls this student of German literature from one of the famous cafes in the Austrian capital where she barely takes the time to enjoy a lemon juice before leaving. The young woman is in fact very much in demand: various debates and German-speaking book fairs compete for her presence to talk about her work, which vehemently denounces the “undemocratic” of the “great fortunes”.
“It is unfair that a human being is ultra-rich, that he does not pay taxes and that he can take advantage of his fortune to influence the political debate on the subject” Marlene Engelhorn
At the beginning of 2021, when she discovers that she is going “inherit directly from [s]to grandma, she speaks in the Austrian press to demand that the State deduct from her “at least 90%”. A shock figure which immediately made Marlene Engelhorn the Germanic counterpart of these American billionaires who are currently demanding that the State tax them more. Even if in Europe the taxes are heavier, she recalls that there is no inheritance tax since 2008 in Austria. And it has also revived in neighboring Germany discussions on wealth tax, of which the heiress is an ardent defender. “It is unfair that a human being is ultra-rich, that he does not pay taxes and that he can take advantage of his fortune to influence the political debate on the subject. Point “, insists Marlene Engelhorn, who does not believe in the self-made-man myth either.
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