Leo Kirch

Kirch was born in Volkach, Bavaria, but shortly afterward his family moved to the nearby town of Würzburg.

Borrowing money from his wife's family, he purchased exclusive German rights for the Italian movie La strada in 1960.

Kirch himself withdrew from the enterprise, but kept up participation in the Swiss arms of his business, transferring sports broadcasting rights to the subsidiary.

The next month Kirch sued Deutsche Bank for €100m, claiming that they had questioned the status of the group and disclosed confidential business information in the process.

[citation needed] It was not until 2021 that it became known that Leo Kirch had put together an art collection of around eighty paintings since the 1950s, including Claude Monet, Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Lyonel Feininger, Franz Marc, Amedeo Modigliani, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

Kohl, for his part, arranged the creation of commercial television as one of his first official acts as Chancellor in 1982; this allowed Kirch to own a TV station and sports broadcasting rights.

[citation needed] Kirch was identified by the Wall Street Journal in 2009 as a target of Deutsche Bank's spying scandal.