Helmut Horten was a German entrepreneur who built up and owned the fourth-largest chain of department stores in Germany, Horten AG.
13 Facts About Helmut Horten
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The business practices of Mr Horten flourished during the Nazi era, when he purchased Jewish businesses sold under duress.
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Helmut Horten was born on January 8,1909, in Bonn, Kingdom of Prussia.
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Helmut Horten built his vast fortune by forcefully buying Jewish businesses as part of Hitler's Aryanization process.
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Helmut Horten was apprenticed in a Dusseldorf department store belonging to Leonhard Tietz before working for the Duisburg department store of the Gebruder Alsberg company.
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Helmut Horten was aided in this transaction by the banker Wilhelm Reinhold of the Commerz- and Disconto-Bank.
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Until 1939, Helmut Horten acquired several other department stores and enjoyed a good relationship with the Nazi government despite that his uncle, the Catholic saint Titus Maria Helmut Horten died in custody in 1936.
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Helmut Horten was able to acquire the distribution rights to certain goods which were scarce due to the Second World War.
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Helmut Horten soon continued with the consolidation and expansion of his company, which he still owned.
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Helmut Horten introduced Germany's first supermarket after a visit to the United States, the copying of this business model expanding the group quickly.
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In 1972, Helmut Horten sold his majority stake and retired from the business, which controversially lost a great deal of value soon afterwards.
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In 1960, Helmut Horten met 19-year-old Austrian Heidi Jelinek, a woman 32 years his junior, in a hotel bar in Velden am Worthersee.
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Helmut Horten's widow inherited his $1 billion fortune and lived between homes in Croglio, Lyford Cay, by the Worthersee in Austria and a penthouse in Vienna.