It was one of the last of its kind. Billionaire, patriarch, ruler of a corporate empire, shy of publicity, not looking for the big stage. Nevertheless, power-conscious and influential, or at least influential, happily pulling the strings in the background. In his case stripping to the right, am towards Franz Josef Strauss and Peter Gauweiler, and at times even further to the right.
August von Finck died last Sunday in London at the age of 91, after a short and serious illness. He came from a Bavarian entrepreneurial family who, over three generations, have amassed a fortune that is now estimated at almost eight to nine billion euros.
The grandfather Wilhelm Peter Finck founded the insurance companies Allianz and Münchner Rück, took over a bank and was admitted to the nobility in the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1905. The father August Georg Heinrich Baron von Finck, NSDAP member and “sponsor of Adolf Hitler” (Manager magazine) increased the possessions. After the Nazi dictatorship, his father supported the CSU and the Bavarian Party and sought to get close to Franz Josef Strauss.
He took over the closeness to the CSU from his father
When August Georg Heinrich Baron von Finck died in 1980, August von Finck, one of four children, took over the long-sprawling company empire. For a long time, this included the Mövenpick hotel and restaurant group, banks and other companies. The son parted with some parts of his empire, including two traditional Munich companies, the private bank Merck & Finck and the Löwenbräu brewery.
August von Finck, who had lived at Weinfelden Castle in the Swiss canton of Thurgau for a long time, also took over from his father to be close to the CSU. This was expressed in party donations; and in a very special relationship with Strauss admirer, MP and lawyer Peter Gauweiler. The two shared their skepticism about Europe and the euro, and also a lot financially.
Between 2008 and 2015, the lawyer Gauweiler billed the entrepreneur Finck more than twelve million euros in consultancy fees. Of this, more than eleven million euros during the time when the politician Gauweiler was sitting in the Bundestag for the CSU.
When the SZ made this public in March 2021, the two kept silent. Finck left a catalog of questions unanswered. Gauweiler announced that both the existence of a client relationship and all details of a client relationship were subject to “strict, legally regulated confidentiality”.
August von Finck with his wife Francine at the reopening of the Cuvillies Theater in June 2008.
(Photo: Weißfuß / imago)
“The euro will survive you,” said Waigel
Of the CSU leaders, Theo Waigel also met billionaire Finck a few times and experienced him as “modest and amiable”. It was on a supervisory board to which both had belonged, after Waigel’s time as CSU chief and federal finance minister. Waigel remembers that there was only one occasion when they got into each other. Finck once said “the euro is going to break”. He, Waigel, replied that “the euro will survive you”. Finck was a bit scared and avoided the subject from then on.
Waigel, who is a friend of Europe and the euro, says that a journalist later asked him how long the common currency would last. “My and your funeral will be paid for in euros,” replied the ex-finance minister. But that’s just by the way. Waigel thinks he knows why people like Finck shy away from the euro. It is fear, perhaps even a kind of primal fear for the wealth that has been earned.
The saying goes from the billionaire and patriarch, “If the state continues like this, it will ultimately destroy us all”. Perhaps it was this fear, which was not atypical in very conservative and very wealthy circles, that prompted August von Finck to support Manfred Brunner, the former FDP hopeful in the 1990s. When it came to the right direction from his point of view, Fink could be generous.
The billionaire gave Brunner 8.5 million marks. Brunner was supposed to build up the right-wing “Bund Free Citizens”, an anti-euro party, closely based on the model of Jörg Haider’s FPÖ in Austria. But the CSU could continue to rely on Finck. He supported Edmund Stoiber’s candidacy for Chancellor in 2002 with more than one and a half million euros, and the 2008 state election campaign with 820,000 euros.
The “Mövenpick donation” caused a sensation
Finck always tried to be discreet, he donated through unknown companies from his corporate empire. In 2009, however, a donation to the FDP received more attention than he would have liked; it became known as the “Mövenpick donation”. At that time, 1.1 million euros flowed to the Liberals, who had pushed through a reduction in VAT on hotel stays in the black-yellow coalition negotiations. That could of course only suit the major hotelier Finck.
At the end of 2009, Finck is likely to have been particularly concerned about the escalating euro crisis. But he had a strong ally in the Bundestag and in court: his lawyer Gauweiler. He diligently filed lawsuits with the Federal Constitutional Court, especially against the euro rescue. Gauweiler was helped by prominent scientists with well-honored reports. Gauweiler’s office paid for several reports, but Finck then billed them.
Finck, like some of his kind, could be both. Stingy and generous. At the end of 2020 it became known that the Finck family wanted to transform the traditional Franziskaner inn at the National Theater into a shopping mall because the rent had been too low so far. But there are also people who have met another August von Finck. A man who can sometimes postpone maximizing his profit.
The tenant of an old, dilapidated house on a Finck estate in the Munich area once said that the billionaire decided not to go ahead with the planned demolition. Finck had happened to see the tenant tackling himself to make the house comfortable; He found it so likeable that he left it where it was and also offered a very fair rental price.
There are hardly any patriarchs of this kind left
This is reminiscent of another patriarch who was very close to Strauss and Gauweiler. To Leo Kirch, who from Munich created a media empire that later collapsed. Kirch is said to have given employees a small gold bar when a child was born. Whoever belongs to the family to a certain extent, who makes himself useful, for him something falls away from wealth.
There aren’t many billionaires left who run an economic empire in their own unique way. Leo Kirch died more than ten years ago (long after the collapse of his media empire). Heinz Hermann Thiele, patriarch of the global Knorr-Bremse group and major Lufthansa shareholder, died that year. Incidentally, like Finck, both were clients of Gauweiler. For Kirch in particular, Gauweiler led spectacular litigation. But even that only by the way.
Incidentally, Finck’sche Vermögensverwaltung is located very close to Gauweiler’s office, on Promenadeplatz in Munich. There is also a gold trading company located there, which mainly belongs to a son of August von Finck and from which there is a strong trail to the right. One of the gold trading chiefs thinks little of parliamentary democracy. He heads an association that campaigns against “Merkelism”, warns against “collectivism” and senses “censorship and surveillance”. This gold trading boss had already been announced as a guest for an AfD event. It is not an easy legacy that August von Finck leaves behind.