BASF heiress Marlene Engelhorn, who garnered media attention for her far-left agenda of increasing taxes on the rich, said she’s forming a group of 50 individuals and 15 substitutes to help redistribute her $24.7 million inheritance in a passionate effort to offset wealth inequality
A wealthy 31-year-old Austrian pharmaceuticals heiress has decided to use her inheritance to address some of the world’s most harrowing problems. But first, she must find some help.
Marlene Engelhorn, 31, who is a descendant of the founder of BASF, Friedrich Engelhorn, wishes to combat wealth inequality. To do so, the heiress has formed a citi\ens’ group to help redistribute her inheritance of $27.4million (£21,703,540), which she got from her grandmother, Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto, who died in September 2022.
The group will be called the Good Council for Redistribution and will consist of 50 chosen participants, above the age of 16, who responded to one of Marlene’s 10,000 invitations she randomly sent to Austrian citizens she doesn’t know.
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The heiress added that 15 additional members will act as substitutes. The GCR will reportedly meet in Salzburg, Austria from March to June and work with scholars and civil-society organisations. Chosen council members will be compensated $1,300(£1,029.68) for childcare and travel expenses after each meeting, which will ostensibly happen on weekends.
Marlene has long acknowledged her luck in life, saying she won the “birth lottery” for accumulating vast wealth without lifting a finger. In response, she’s advocated for higher taxes on the rich and joined the Millionaires for Humanity event in Amsterdam where she lobbied for increased taxes for the wealthy.
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“Redistribution of wealth, land and power. We need redistribution of wealth, land and power and we need this to be a transparent and democratic process – to me, this means: wealth taxes!” she wrote on the organisation’s website. Additionally, the group explained how research by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network highlighted the “funding gap for the world to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and the resources that a 1% wealth tax could raise to help enable this.”
She plans to redistribute at least 90% of her wealth as she sees it as an opportunity to pass heavy tax policies on the rich, something she has spent the last decade campaigning for. In 2021, Marlene co-founded Tax Me Now, which is a coalition of aristocrats residing in German-speaking countries who fight to increase taxing on the 1% to offset extreme inequalities due to one-sided tax policies.
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“In Austria, the richest one percent hoards up to 50 percent of the net wealth,” Engelhorn said, the Washington Post reported. Austria precluded taxes on inheritances and gifts in 2008 while the US has no federal inheritance tax at all, except for a handful of states.
In a 2021 Facebook video, the heiress said, “Millionaires should not get to decide whether or not they contribute in a just way to the societies they live in. Social justice is in everyone’s best interest. Wealth taxes are the least we can do to take responsibility. Tax us.”