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When there is night over Heilbronn, a point in the northeast of the city lights up light. High above the 130,000 inhabitants, over the houses that nestle on the Neckar under vines, lights the tower of the Wartberg on and dab it almost like a star in the sky. The tower shines because one of the richest Germans wanted it, you tell yourself down in the valley. He gave himself this for the 80th birthday. Anyone looking down from the tower looks at a city that is considered the heart of this man. His foundation made her a university city, built an expensive international private school and supported the construction of a museum, promotes theater, schools and daycare centers. Heilbronn should apparently become a location of knowledge, possibly to a kind of German Silicon Valley.
The man is called Dieter Schwarz and he is said to have an estimated assets of 44 billion euros. He calls Heilbronn his homeland, is her honorary citizen, her patron and her greatest legend. One who knows him says: Schwarz is “everything he built”.
Dieter Schwarz has many names in Heilbronn, Phantom or King. In his company they often only call him: the owner. His company is the Schwarz Group, one of the largest German companies. An empire with several hundred companies, almost 600,000 employees; The annual turnover last was around 167.2 billion euros. The majority of this generate Lidl and Kaufland with their approximately 14,000 supermarkets. Lidl is one of the largest discounter in the world. Kaufland is particularly important to his founder, say insiders. Even today, Schwarz is said to have an office right behind the first branch, which he opened in 1984 in Neckarsulm near Heilbronn.
Dieter Schwarz is 85 years old today and sometimes looks like God. Almight, but invisible. He lives withdrawn, there are no interviews, avoids public appearances. There are hardly any photos of him. One reason could be kidnaps such as that of the Aldi co-founder Theo Albrecht, the cigarette factory heir Jan Philipp Reemtsma or the Schlecker children. According to reports, Schwarz is said to have already received kidnapping threats to his two daughters.
Dieter Schwarz, richest German and man behind Kaufland
Dieter Schwarz: A man almost without a photo
This is Dieter Schwarz, according to “Forbes” the richest German. Not even a handful of snapshots of the entrepreneur are circulating on the Internet, official pictures are in vain. Even when his city of Heilbronn celebrated him as an honorary citizen, she did not publish a photo of it
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The black group is no longer just in supermarkets. The company Schwarz-Digits, for example, specializes in artificial intelligence and cyber security. Many, perhaps hundreds of million euros, flow into start-ups and professorships, most recently to an innovation park for artificial intelligence. All of this is the vision for the future. Kaufland should play a role as a digital dealer like Amazon. But now there are problems: abuses in dozens of markets that recover the potential to endanger the health of customers and employees.
Source: Stern
