Helmut Horten (8 January 1909

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

– 30 November 1987, Croglio, Switzerland) was a German

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

who built up and owned the fourth-largest chain of department stores in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

: the

Horten AG Horten AG (Aktiengesellschaft) was a German department store chain founded by Helmut Horten in 1936 and headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany. With up to 80 stores throughout Germany, Horten ranked fourth-largest among German department store ch ...

Early life

Helmut Horten was born on January 8, 1909, in

Kingdom of Prussia The Kingdom of Prussia (german: Königreich Preußen, ) was a German kingdom that constituted the state of Prussia between 1701 and 1918. Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. ...

. His father was a judge.

Career

Horten was apprenticed in a

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...

department store belonging to Leonhard Tietz before working for the

Duisburg Duisburg () is a city in the Ruhr metropolitan area of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Lying on the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr rivers in the center of the Rhine-Ruhr Region, Duisburg is the 5th largest city in No ...

department store of the ''Gebrüder Alsberg'' (Alsberg brothers) company. When the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

came to power in 1933, Horten was able to acquire the company from the Jewish owners, Strauß and Lauter, who fled to the

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. He was aided in this transaction by the banker Wilhelm Reinhold of the Commerz- and Disconto-Bank. The bank was to become a partner in the newly formed Horten & Co. Until 1939, Horten acquired several other department stores and enjoyed a good relationship with the Nazi government despite that his uncle, the (later) Catholic saint Titus Maria Horten died in custody in 1936. Horten was able to acquire the distribution rights to certain goods which were scarce due to the Second World War. After the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, Horten was interned by the

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in 1947 in Recklinghausen. Following a hunger strike he was released in 1948. He soon continued with the consolidation and expansion of his company, which he still owned. Horten introduced Germany's first supermarket after a visit to the United States, the copying of this business model expanding the group quickly. In 1968, with 25,000 staff and turnover of the equivalent of

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1 billion in West German marks, he floated the group on the

Frankfurt Stock Exchange The Frankfurt Stock Exchange (german: link=no, Börse Frankfurt, former German name – FWB) is the world's 12th largest stock exchange by market capitalization. It has operations from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm ( German time). Organisation Loca ...

. In 1972, Horten sold his majority stake and retired from the business, which controversially lost a great deal of value soon afterwards. In 1994 the chain was bought by Kaufhof Holding AG, merged into the German retail group METRO AG in 1996.Metro AG - History
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Personal life

In 1960, Horten met 19-year-old

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n Heidi Jelinek, a woman 32 years his junior, in a hotel bar in

Velden am Wörthersee Velden may refer to several places: *Velden am Wörther See, a municipality on lake Wörthersee in Carinthia, Austria *Velden, Limburg, a village in the municipality of Venlo, Netherlands *Velden (Pegnitz) Velden is a town in the district Nürnbe ...

. The couple married on 23 July 1966 in Düsseldorf-Lohausen and moved to Croglio in the Swiss canton of

Ticino Ticino (), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino,, informally ''Canton Ticino'' ; lmo, Canton Tesin ; german: Kanton Tessin ; french: Canton du Tessin ; rm, Chantun dal Tessin . ...

at the end of 1968. Horten enjoyed living the life of a wealthy man: he owned a

BAC 1-11 The BAC One-Eleven (or BAC-111/BAC 1-11) was an early jet airliner produced by the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Originally conceived by Hunting Aircraft as a 30-seat jet, before its merger into BAC in 1960, it was launched as an 80-se ...

as a private jet, a series of private yachts named after Carinthia, and a villa in Mülheim an der Ruhr. In

, the centre of his business activities, he made donations to the tennis club, the carnival and the zoo. The Helmut Horten Stiftung promotes medical research. His widow inherited his $1 billion fortune and lived between homes in Croglio,

Lyford Cay Lyford Cay is a private gated community located on the western tip of New Providence island in The Bahamas. The former cay that lent its name to the community is named after Captain William Lyford Jr., a mariner of note in Colonial and Revoluti ...

, by the

Wörthersee Wörthersee (; Slovene: ''Vrbsko jezero'', en, Lake WörthTesch, F. W. 1977. ''The Eel: Biology and Management of Anguillid Eels''. Transl. Jennifer Greenwood. London: Chapman and Hall, p. 195.) is a lake in the southern Austrian state of Carin ...

in Austria and a penthouse in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. Rated within the world's 500 richest people by ''

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'', she also commissioned and owned one of the world's largest yachts, the '' Carinthia VII''.

References

* * * * Josef Niesen: ''Bonner Personenlexikon.'' Bonn: Bouvier, 2007, .

External links

Helmut Horten Stiftung
{{DEFAULTSORT:Horten, Helmut 1909 births 1987 deaths Nazis Businesspeople from Bonn People from the Rhine Province German businesspeople in retailing 20th-century German businesspeople German company founders