Aristotle Onassis
Aristotle "Ari" Socrates Homer Onassis ( Greek Αριστοτέλης Ωνάσης Aristotélis Onasis , born January 15, 1906 in Smyrna , Ottoman Empire (today İzmir , Turkey ); † March 15, 1975 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris ) was a Greek - Argentine Shipowner . The fleet of its 30 shipping companies comprised over 900 ships in the 1950s, most of them oil tankers . He owned the island of Skorpios in the Ionian Sea.
origin
Onassis was the son of the tobacco dealer Socrates Onassis from Smyrna and had an older sister, Artemis. When Onassis was six years old, his mother passed away. Since his father soon remarried and cared little for his son, Onassis was raised mainly by his religious grandmother. He was sent to the Protestant school .
During the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1923, Onassis, like all Christians, planned to leave the city, which was half inhabited by Greeks. Equipped with a Nansen passport , he emigrated to Argentina at the age of sixteen .
Life
Ascent from nowhere
On October 16, 1922, Onassis reached Buenos Aires and began his often-cited "rise from nowhere" with allegedly $ 60. Since he was still a minor at the time, he had the date and place of birth “21. September 1900 in Saloniki ”. During this time he earned his living as a courier , telephone operator and bellhop . He also sold so-called Turkish tobacco. He was the first to introduce Turkish tobacco to Argentina. Until then, these goods had been obtained exclusively from Cuba and the USA . While his cigarettes made from oriental tobacco were hardly accepted by the market, the blends of oriental tobacco and American tobacco were all the more successful. Onassis also sold his oriental tobacco to factories that used them for their own cigarettes. Despite the low profit margin, after two years he had made $ 100,000 in profit on $ 2 million in sales. He bought a cigarette factory and launched the Omega brand of cigarettes .
Although Onassis did not have to pay taxes as a stateless person in Argentina, he applied for and received Argentine citizenship ; shortly afterwards, due to a new law, he also received the Greek. Onassis later became Consul General of Greece in Buenos Aires. Onassis had learned that cattle hides and skins were buried because there was no market for them and the priority was meat processing. From then on he exported hides and skins, later also grain and animal feed to Europe. His company had over 200 agencies buying up goods for export. The enormous transport volumes prompted Onassis to enter the shipping industry.
Entry into the shipping business
Than by the global economic crisis, a group of Canadian Shipowners bankruptcy went Onassis could buy from them in 1932 its six largest ships for a fraction of the market value in cash. Due to the low demand for transport capacity, he was only able to use two ships with his own transports, the remaining four stayed in Montreal. He accepted high mooring fees that soon exceeded the purchase price. There were only lucrative margins in the oil transport business, as more and more people were switching from coal to oil firing and motorization was increasing. From 1935 he operated tankers and from 1938 commissioned shipyards with the construction of new tankers. At the beginning of the Second World War , his fleet had grown to 46 freighters and tankers. The Allied need for ships caused freight rates to skyrocket until the end of the war. His fortune in 1945 was $ 100 million.
When, after 1945, the shipyards in Germany were without an order and ocean shipping was banned by the Allies, Onassis began to negotiate with German shipyards. Finally, through his German company Olympic Maritime AG in Hamburg, he placed an order worth 300 million marks to build ships. A total of 18 units were ordered from three shipyards ( Howaldtswerke in Kiel, AG Weser in Bremen and Howaldtswerke Hamburg ). He gave financial support to participating companies. The Ruhr steel AG in Hattingen, the steel sheets rolled admitted Onassis one a loan of eight million marks. The anti-cyclical production of ships brought Onassis advantages in the purchase price, but also in the available capacities later. Onassis also employed 600 German seafarers on his ships who were no longer able to work due to Germany's fleet being destroyed or confiscated. The launch of Tina Onassis in Hamburg turned into a great festival.
From 1948 to 1956 Onassis built the world's largest private whaling fleet and then sold it in full to a Japanese consortium .
In the spring of 1954, Onassis concluded an extremely lucrative contract with King Saud in Jeddah . Onassis pledged to meet Saudi Arabia's growing need for super tankers. For this he was given the priority of transport and he was involved in the sale of the oil.
In 1956 Onassis acquired the small state airline of Greece. He renamed the company from TAE to Olympic Airways and expanded it significantly. At the time, it was the only privately owned monopoly airline in the world.
Engagement in Monaco
Onassis invested in hotels, villas and apartment buildings in the principality of Monaco , which was ailing until the 1950s , with the aim of making the location attractive for the jet set . Since 1953, Onassis owned - to the chagrin of the Monegasque dynasty - the majority of shares in the Société des bains de mer (SBM). This means that Onassis actually owned the casino and almost all of the luxury hotels. Prince Rainier of Monaco quickly increased the company's capital and thereby his own share. In 1966, the long-standing disputes between Onassis and Rainier escalated. In September 1966 Onassis drew the consequences, sold his Monegasque shares and thereby acquired a deposit bank in Geneva . It is said to have been an amount of at least DM 35 million. Onassis later stated that he must have underestimated Rainier. Its tanker fleet (over 70 ships) operated under the name Springfield Shipping of Panama and was headquartered in Monte-Carlo . When he moved this company to Athens , the principality lost immense tax revenues.
Despite the military coup in Greece in 1967 , Onassis maintained good contacts with the Greek government. He actually wanted to invest considerable sums in Greece, but could not come to an agreement with the junta . Onassis also had difficulties with the subsequent government under Konstantinos Karamanlis . These were only resolved when the government agreed to take over the airline Olympic Airways with retroactive effect from January 1, 1975.
Private life
On December 28, 1946, he married the 17-year-old Athina ("Tina") Livanos (1929–1974), the daughter of an important Greek shipowner, in New York . With her he had two children, Alexander Onassis (1948–1973) and Christina Onassis (1950–1988). When Onassis' relationship with opera singer Maria Callas became known, his wife divorced him in 1960. In January 1973 his son Alexander had a plane crash and a year later his first wife died of a sleeping pill overdose .
On October 20, 1968, Onassis married Jackie Kennedy , widow of the assassinated American President John F. Kennedy . She met Onassis when she and her sister Lee Radziwill were guests on his yacht Christina . Kennedy and Onassis rarely saw each other in the course of their marriage. Onassis was seen repeatedly in public with Maria Callas, Kennedy lived alternately on Skorpios and in New York . Kennedy spent most of his time traveling and shopping, which led to repeated arguments between the couple. In Onassis's environment, it was known as a "super tanker" because of its high spending, as it cost no less than buying a ship.
Onassis was in the process of filing for divorce when he died of pneumonia on March 15, 1975 at the American Hospital in Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine . At this point, Kennedy was in New York with her children. Their share of the inheritance was severely restricted by the marriage contract. Kennedy finally accepted the $ 27 million offered by Christina Onassis; in return, she waived all further claims. "Marriage to Jackie was the biggest mistake of my life," Onassis said shortly before his death. His legacy to posterity: "Anyone who claims that anything is possible with money only proves that he has never had any!"
His granddaughter Athina Onassis (daughter of Christina Onassis ), Thierry Roussel and the charitable Alexander Onassis Foundation he set up were heirs to his fortune, which is estimated at several billion euros .
In contrast to Stavros Niarchos , interest in free art was limited, for example visiting an auction house in Hamburg with Maria Callas or furnishing business premises. This was also due to a falling out with the art dealer Alexander Iolas , from whom Onassis had bought a few works.
Companies
Onassis had over 30 companies in total, some of which were:
- Olympic Maritime AG
- Olympic Airways and Olympic Aviation (both until 1975)
- Olympic Oil Lines
- AS Onassis, Ltd.
- Panama Maritime SA
- South Atlantic Marine, SA
Onassis Port Investment
The history of OPI began in the early 1960s and early 1970s with holdings and investments in the world market ports. Regardless of the shipowner's legacy and empire, some of his employees founded the Onassis Port Investment Commercial Brokerage Co. during his lifetime and with his consent, which is dedicated to investing in port operations and markets around the world.
reception
Onassis' life has received wide international attention since the 1950s; According to the shipping historian Gelina Harlaftis, it became a “legend” and a “household name”. In the New York Times alone, more than 2,500 articles deal with him; his life, however, has hardly been researched scientifically. A “mythology” has developed around Onassis, which is made more difficult to question and research because Onassis did not collect documents in a company archive and the research relies on external sources such as FBI and US Congress documents.
Onassis is still present in popular culture, for example in the form of novels and popular biographies. Including:
- Peter Evans: Aristotle Onassis ("Ari") . Ullstein, Frankfurt / M. 1989, ISBN 3-548-34608-1 (biography of a novel).
- Pierre Rey : The Greek . Novel. (“Le grec”.) Heyne, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-453-01149-X ( fictional representation of his life).
- The Greek Tycoon ( "The Greek Tycoon") Hollywood film - directed by J. Lee Thompson , starring Anthony Quinn and Jacqueline Bisset
Friedrich Dürrenmatt's tragic comedy The Old Lady's Visit alludes to Onassis with the character of the dubious benefactress Claire Zachanassian. Its name came about when Zaharoff , Onassis and Gulbenkian moved together .
In 1988 his life was filmed under the title Onassis, the richest man in the world (English:, Onassis: The Richest Man in the World) with Raúl Juliá as Aristotle Onassis.
Onassis wore ties with a knot he made up, which has been called the Onassis knot ever since .
See also
literature
- Onassis, Aristotle. In: Ioannis Theotokas, Gelina Harlaftis (Ed.): Leadership in World Shipping. Greek Family Firms in International Business. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2009, ISBN 978-0-230-57642-1 .
- Joachim W. Pein: Giants of the Seas. The largest tankers in the world. Koehler, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7822-1006-5 , short biography: Charismatic and clever. Aristotle Socrates Onassis , pp. 14-17.
Web links
- Regime of the sons-in-law . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 1954, pp. 16-21 ( online ).
- Gelina Harlaftis: Mr Onassis and Game Theory. PDF. Typescript for the 15th annual conference of the European Business History Association in Athens, August 2011 (43 pages).
Remarks
- ↑ To this and to the following Gelina Harlaftis: The Onassis Global Shipping Business: 1920s – 1950s. In: Business History Review. ISSN 0007-6805 , Vol. 88, 2014, No. 2, pp. 241-271, doi : 10.1017 / S0007680514000026 .
- ↑ Joachim W. Pein: Giants of the seas. The largest tankers in the world. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2011, p. 14.
- ↑ Regime of the sons-in-law . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 1954, pp. 16-21 ( online ).
- ^ Further reading Klaus Barthelmeß: The opponents of the "Olympic Challenger". How American secret services, Norwegians and Germans ended Aristotle Onassis' whaling adventure. In: Polar Research . Vol. 79, 2010, No. 3, pp. 155-176 ( PDF ).
- ^ Aristotle Onassis. on: WhosWho.de .
- ^ C. David Heymann: American Legacy: The Story of John and Caroline Kennedy. Atria, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-7434-9738-1 , p. 159 .
- ↑ Gelina Harlaftis: The Onassis Global Shipping Business: 1920s-1950s. In: Business History Review. Vol. 88, 2014, No. 2, pp. 241-271, here p. 244.
- ↑ Gelina Harlaftis: Mr Onassis and Game Theory. PDF. P. 2. There is a collection of documents in the Basel Swiss Economic Archives on “Onassis Aristotle Sokrates Homer (1906–1975)” with biographical documents and newspaper clippings (1955–1975).
- ↑ Gelina Harlaftis: The Onassis Global Shipping Business: 1920s-1950s. In: Business History Review. Vol. 88, 2014, No. 2, pp. 241-271, here pp. 243 f. The author is working on a book project with the provisional title "From the Vagliano Brothers to Aristotle Onassis".
- ^ Friedrich Dürrenmatt: The visit of the old lady. A tragic comedy . Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-257-23045-1 , p. 141.
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Onassis, Aristotle |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Onassis, Aristotle Socrates Homer (full name); Ἀριστοτέλης Ὠνάσης (Greek); Onassis, Ari (nickname) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Greek shipowner |
DATE OF BIRTH | January 15, 1906 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | İzmir , Turkey |
DATE OF DEATH | March 15, 1975 |
Place of death | Paris , France |