THE BILLIONAIRE'S SECRET

THE GERMAN INDUSTRIALIST KLAUSMICHAEL KUEHNE, BORN IN 1937, IS ONE OF THE RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, WITH MORE MONEY THAN KEN GRIFFIN, OR MACKENZIE SCOTT, OR FRANÇOIS PINAULT. WHERE DID HIS FAMILY FORTUNE COME FROM? THE NAZIS KNOW

- David de Jong

I.

A DIRTY BUSINESS

ON A THURSDAY AFTERNOON IN MID-NOVEMBER 2023, AN ELDERLY MAN WAS WALKING THROUGH HAMBURG’S OHLSDORF CEMETERY, THE WORLD’S FOURTH-LARGEST GRAVEYARD, TO VISIT THE BURIAL PLACE OF HIS FAVORITE SOCCER PLAYER WHEN HE NOTICED SOMETHING VERY WRONG. SOMEONE HAD SPRAYED “NAZI KAPITAL” (“NAZI FORTUNE”) ON THE KUEHNE FAMILY’S TOMBSTONE, IN RED AND BLACK, WHILE THE CRYPTIC TERM “M-AKTION” WAS TAGGED ON ALFRED KUEHNE’S TOMBSTONE.

These weren’t just any family tombs: The Kuehne dynasty is industrial royalty in Germany. Klaus-Michael Kuehne, the only child of Alfred and Mercedes Kuehne, is the country’s wealthiest person, with a fortune estimated at $44 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The 87-year-old billionaire owes his fortune to Kuehne + Nagel, the world’s largest freight forwarder, founded by Kuehne’s grandfather and Friedrich Nagel in 1890. Kuehne has used his wealth to build up a global transportation empire. He is also the largest shareholder of the German airline Lufthansa, shipping behemoth Hapag-Lloyd, chemicals distributor Brenntag, Hamburg soccer club HSV, and the company that owns North America’s Greyhound bus lines. In 2023 alone, according to Bloomberg, he stood to pocket $4.5 billion in dividends from his empire.

In the context of Germany’s discreet but clubby old money, where aristocratic and industrialist heirs mingle at hunting parties or go skiing in the Alps, Kuehne is a loner. Despite his billions, he remains outside Germany’s power circles and is only spotted occasionally at financier and merchant hangouts such as Hamburg’s Übersee-Club, a century-old private members establishment founded by the city’s Warburg banking dynasty.