Helmut Horten

Horten built his vast fortune by forcefully buying Jewish businesses as part of Hitler’s Aryanization process.

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

Horten introduced Germany's first supermarket after a visit to the United States, the copying of this business model expanding the group quickly.

[2] In 1960, Horten met 19-year-old Austrian Heidi Jelinek, a woman 32 years his junior, in a hotel bar in Velden am Wörthersee.

His widow inherited his $1 billion fortune and lived between homes in Croglio, Lyford Cay, by the Wörthersee in Austria and a penthouse in Vienna.