Austrian Heiress to Let 50 Strangers Decide Fate of Her Fortune
- Engelhorn formed citizens’ assembly to give away her wealth
- Group will decide over six weekends where to send €25 million
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Marlene Engelhorn hadn’t given much thought to the wealth that surrounded her as she grew up. She always considered the fortune, inherited from Friedrich Engelhorn, the 19th-century founder of German chemical giant BASF SE, to be her family’s money rather than hers.
Then she came into more than €25 million ($27 million) from her late billionaire grandmother in 2022. She had already co-founded the group TaxMeNow and discovered a community in various progressive groups for guilt-ridden rich people like wealth-redistribution advocates Resource Justice and Patriotic Millionaires. But now the 31-year-old had to grapple with the fact that she was a millionaire in her own right.