Marlene Engelhorn, the millionaire who doesn't want to be one
Who. A 30-year-old woman, a capitalist, who has inherited several tens of millions of euros from her grandmother's fortune. That. She considers that the decision of what to do with so much money should not correspond to her, but to the State. Because. Engelhorn is anti-capitalist and has created a foundation for heirs of large amounts to renounce them.
With the Christmas draw this week there will be new millionaires in Spain and if any of the winners looked like the Austrian Marlene Engelhorn, they would ask the Treasury to apply more taxes than they should.. Because that's what this Austrian of German origin is like, a millionaire by inheritance who doesn't want to be one.. Engelhorn, 30 years old, anti-capitalist and queer, inherited a fortune from his grandmother, Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto, surnames that readers of the economics pages immediately associated with the pharmaceutical company Boehringer and with the German consortium BASF, the largest chemical group in the world.. The lady, who died in Switzerland at the age of 94, had a net worth of 4.2 billion euros, according to Forbes magazine.
Marlene has only inherited a few tens of millions, but she wants to get rid of 90% because she believes that the decision about what to do with money that has fallen from the sky should not be hers but the State's.
Marlene grew up in a house where she was lost in how great she was and without knowing what desire was because she had everything, she has embraced class consciousness.. He is a board member of “Guerrilla”, a Berlin-based foundation that supports activists and grassroots movements in building pockets of resistance and radical social changes.. She collaborates with the “queerconnexion” project, which provides LGBTI education to young people, and, as an involuntary millionaire heir, founded AG Steuersrechtigkeit, (Tax Justice) in February 2021, a movement that has mutated throughout Europe as Taxmenow or Millionaires for Humanity. The idea is that heirs to large fortunes will give them up in favor of a higher tax rate, “as someone who enjoyed the benefits of wealth all his life, I know how skewed our economy is and I cannot continue to sit and wait for “Someone, somewhere, do something,” he says.. It has collected 44,000 signatures, but only 50 come from millionaires.
Marlene does not garner much sympathy, but she talks about her case because she cannot campaign for fair taxation of wealth and at the same time be opaque.. “I am looking for a public debate” because “being rich implies power and in a democracy power is not a private matter,” argues a millionaire who considers “unfair and undemocratic that only a few inherit large sums of money and the majority are left without nothing”, or that those who made the accumulation of wealth possible are not recognized.
“I haven't done anything to be rich. In my case it was the people who worked at Böhringer Mannheim, the company in which my late grandfather had shares, and the people from the companies in which the money is currently invested.. None of them benefit from that, only me,” laments Marlene and continues: “Decisions should not be made by individuals who have been lucky in the birth lottery, because we have a system for this: elected parliaments. It is an impertinence to society that I am allowed to have this power. “You cannot trust the good will of the rich.”
Marlene inherited two years ago, but still doesn't know how to part with her millions. Create a company and wait to go bankrupt? She doesn't have the soul of an entrepreneur.. Any NGO? Not at all. Donations? No way. “Philanthropy only accentuates inequalities,” he says.
What a dilemma for Marlene Engelhorn.