Heiress Gives Away Fortune With Help From 50 Randomly Selected People
- Editor OGN Daily
- Oct 22
- 2 min read
Marlene Engelhorn "won the birth lottery" and did not think it was fair or appropriate that she kept her millions.
The Austrian-German heiress inherited her fortune from her grandmother, who passed away in 2022. It all stems from Friedrich Engelhorn, who founded BASF, today’s largest chemical producer, and an ethically controversial company.
Initially, the heiress wanted the Austrian government to apply a 90 percent tax on the inheritance, but it had abolished its inheritance tax over a decade earlier; so, instead, she decided to give it away with the guidance of 50 randomly selected Austrians. After emailing over 10,000 random Austrians, she selected 50 who demographically best represented Austria, and from them, the Good Council for Redistribution was born.
Engelhorn had three restrictions on how the 'Good Council' could not use the money. It must not go to for-profit ventures; groups with inhumane, unconstitutional, or extremist affiliations; and the members themselves or their associates could not be given the money.
In 2024, after six weeks of deliberations for which each member was compensated, they decided to divide the €25 million (almost $30 million) between 77 different organizations, covering a wide range of social issues. The largest donation of €1.7 million (nearly $2 million) went to the Austrian Society for Nature Conservation.
With the absence of inheritance tax still bothering her, Engelhorn co-founded the Tax Me Now movement as she believes it’s unjust for some to come upon such grand amounts of money simply because they “won the birth lottery,” as she puts it. Tax Me Now advocates for higher taxes on the wealthy to address inequality and fund public services, arguing for policies like wealth and inheritance taxes to mitigate extreme wealth disparities and fund social programs, on the basis that the current system is unjust and unsustainable.
