In 1903, Mimi received an inheritance from her grandfather Abraham Kuhn of 150,000 Marks, a considerable fortune equal to 53.7 kilograms of gold, and spent most of it on buying a villa in Cairo.

[1] While based in Cairo, he also directed the excavations in Heliopolis and the noble tombs of the Old Kingdom in Abu Gorab.

His brother Georg Hermann, a well-regarded writer, was murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz on 19 November 1943.

Recently, controversy has arisen with the assertion that Borchardt smuggled the bust of Nefertiti out of Egypt by reporting it as an artifact made of gypsum.

However, the Swiss art historian Henri Stierlin has claimed that the bust is a copy dating from 1912.