The young Austrian Marlene Engelhorn is 29 years old, she studies literature and gives up being a multimillionaire.
In life you can win the lottery in many different ways, and one of them, as in the case of Marlene EngelhornIt is by inheritance. The 29-year-old is a student of German language and literature in Vienna but is best known for be a descendant of the founders of the BASF company, one of the largest chemical companies in the world and which in 2021 recorded revenues of over 78,000 million dollars.
The young woman is a descendant of Friedrich Engelhorn, the man who founded Badische Anilin-und Soda-Fabrik, better known as BASF, currently the largest chemical company in the world. Friedrich Engelhorn left the company in 1883 and invested his money in the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Mannheim. His grandson Curt ran this company until 1997, before selling the group to Switzerland’s Hoffmann-La Roche for $ 11 billion.
However, Engelhorn has been in the media for a few weeks for refusing 90% of his share by inheritance. The reason? She doesn’t want to be “that rich”. This has been stated in several interviews in the German and Austrian media. The young woman, who stands out for leading movements with an important class consciousness, he defends a greater redistribution of wealth and that those who have more money must pay more taxes.
Young Austrian Marlene Engelhorn says money “doesn’t make you happy”.
The young Austrian, to whom her background attributes a wealthy complex of girls, and 49 other heirs of like-minded billionaires, founded the Taxmenow initiative. This foundation promotes the idea that the state takes over the bulk of the fortunes and is in charge of managing them. “Managing that wealth takes a long time. This is not my life plan. It’s not that I don’t want to be rich, it’s that I don’t want to be that rich. “recognize.
Her grandmother ranks number 687 in the ranking of the richest people in the world, according to Forbes magazine. A fortune generated by the over 150 years of the company, the benefits of which seem to make the protagonist of this story uncomfortable: “It shouldn’t be my decision what to do with my family’s money, for which I have not worked”. he explains in one of the interviews.
“Social justice”
Engelhorn does not shy away from her privileged status as a “rich girl” – she said herself – and is aware that thanks to the fact that she was born where she was born she had structures that not everyone can access. However, she believes that everything has a limit and that no one should accumulate terrible sums of money while there is such latent inequality in society.
She is a strong advocate that she doesn’t need that much money. Firstly because she would not know what to do with it, and secondly because she believes that too much money brings only tension, problems and misunderstandings. “I couldn’t be happy” reaffirms.
The 29-year-old heir studies literature.
“This is not a question of will, but of fairness. I did nothing to receive this inheritance. This is pure luck in the birth lottery and pure coincidence, ”she defends.
A mentality that has led her to be a strong defender of social justice, which is why she created AG Steuersrechtigkeit, a movement that has changed throughout Europe under the Taxmenow nomenclature, and which consists of the heirs of great fortunes who renounce it for a higher tax rate for the rich. “As someone who has enjoyed the benefits of wealth all their life, I know how distorted our economy is and I can’t keep sitting around waiting for someone, somewhere, to do something,” he told the BBC.
Redistribution of wealth, taxes on millionaires and major structural changes in high positions are some of Engelhorn’s demands for achieving greater social equity.
Source: The avant-garde
Source: Clarin
