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Jan Diesteldorf and Benedikt Müller-Arnold, Frankfurt / Düsseldorf
In ancient Rome, Mercurius was the god of merchants, but also that of thieves and profit. The name of the planet Mercury goes back to him, no other is so close to the center of the Milky Way, no one orbits the sun so quickly. Paul Gauselmann named his company, one of the most powerful gaming groups in Europe, after this star. Starting in the Westphalian provincial town of Espelkamp, the entrepreneur, 86, has formed a gambling empire since the 1950s that had no counterpart in Germany for a long time. The logo: a yellow sun that laughs over its own gaming halls, that shines on the Merkur slot machines that adorn the Düsseldorf football stadium, the “Merkur-Spielarena”.