Protests against the World Economic Forum in Davos began on Sunday, with the wealthy heiress of a German business empire among those participating.
As some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world gathered in Switzerland, hundreds of protesters blocked traffic, while others marched, holding signs with messages like “Economy for all” and “Tax the rich.”
Marlene Engelhorn, who inherited a fortune as the descendant of a 19th-century German industrialist, was among those marching through Davos, calling for higher taxation on the superrich.
In an interview with Business Insider, Engelhorn said that Davos sees billionaires and entrepreneurs who can afford to be there talking to world leaders, while the people “who are going to be affected by the decisions” are left out of the conversations.
The rich, she said, “already hold too much power.”
“The problem we are facing here is that this is called the World Economic Forum, but they hide away in the Swiss Alps, protected by the military and the police, in order to talk about things where no decisions are being made,” she added.
Engelhorn’s ancestor founded BASF, which would become the world’s largest chemical producer.
She received an inheritance of about $27 million after her grandmother Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto died in September 2022. According to Forbes, Engelhorn-Vechiatto’s net worth was $4.2 billion at the time of her death.
However, Engelhorn decided to redistribute her inheritance, sending out invitations to randomly selected Austrians to help her choose how best to share it.
Fifty people were chosen to decide how the bulk of the money would be spent, through an initiative called the “Good Council for Redistribution” (Guter Rat für Rückverteilung in German).
Last June, the group decided to distribute roughly $27 million to 77 charitable initiatives, including several women’s shelter associations, children’s charities, and climate crisis organizations.
The largest sum, of about $1.75 million, went to an environmental group. Other beneficiaries included the World Inequality Lab.
Engelhorn has advocated taxing people like her more heavily. Austria, for example, doesn’t have an inheritance tax.
“I never worked for it,” she told Le Monde in November 2022.
Engelhorn also took part in protests in Davos last year, and is the cofounder of a group called Tax Me Now, which lobbies for higher taxes on the superwealthy.
Pointing to the US, Engelhorn told BI: “We see what happens when wealth and politics become too intimate. The new government in the US, the cabinet, as it is presented as of now, shows up quite clearly. Thirteen of 25 people are billionaires.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet is expected to be the wealthiest in history.
“They’re so far away from the actual population,” Engelhorn said.
Correction: January 21, 2025 — This story was updated to clarify one of Marlene Engelhorn’s positions. She supports inheritance taxes in Austria but is not calling for specific amounts of her inheritance to be taxed. She has separately pledged to give away at least 90% of her inheritance.
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