Dietmar Hopp

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Dietmar Hopp (2019)

Dietmar Hopp (born April 26, 1940 in Heidelberg ) is a German entrepreneur and co-founder of the IT company SAP . Hopp is considered one of the richest Germans . He became known to a wider public as a patron of the professional football club TSG 1899 Hoffenheim .

Origin and life

The son of the teacher and SA troop leader Emil Hopp grew up with two siblings in Hoffenheim . His father's Nazi past was first publicly discussed in 2009 when Menachem Mayer and Fred Raymes, two Jewish brothers who had been persecuted and forced to emigrate as children, recalled in their memoirs the role of Hopp's father in the destruction of the synagogue in their hometown disclosed. Hopp supported a film project about her life.

After high school, Dietmar Hopp completed a degree in communications engineering at the University of Karlsruhe (TH) (today Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)), from which he graduated in 1966 as a graduate engineer.

Hopp worked at IBM , initially as a software developer in Stuttgart and from 1968 to 1972 as a system consultant in the Mannheim branch of IBM.

In 2009 Dietmar Hopp was blackmailed for 5.5 million euros. The blackmailer, a 43-year-old trucking company, was arrested on September 5, 2009.

Hopp is married and has two sons. His son Daniel Hopp (born October 10, 1980) is the managing director of the SAP Arena and the Adler Mannheim ice hockey club . Son Oliver Hopp (* 1972) runs a golf resort called Terre Blanche in the Tourrettes municipality in southern France and founded the Hopp Foundation in 2013.

Act

SAP

Dietmar-Hopp-Allee in front of the SAP headquarters in Walldorf

Together with four IBM colleagues, Hasso Plattner , Claus Wellenreuther , Hans-Werner Hector and Klaus Tschira , he founded the software company systems analysis and program development in 1972 . Many years later, Hopp said that he and his colleagues were very lucky and were in the right place at the right time: "We had time back then - our startup phase lasted around ten to 15 years."

In 1988 the company became SAP AG, of which Hopp was CEO from 1988 to 1998. He was then chairman of the supervisory board until 2003 and a simple member until May 2005. In 2010, Hopp held more than 8% of the shares in SAP. In 2014 the company became SAP SE .

Dietmar Hopp Foundation

The Dietmar Hopp Foundation was founded in 1995 as a non-profit GmbH to enable the implementation of non-profit projects. The foundation's assets consist of SAP shares that Dietmar Hopp brought in from his private possession. He invested two thirds of his assets in the foundation.

Since it was set up until 2019, the foundation, which is one of the largest private foundations in Europe, has distributed over 800 million euros. Non-profit projects in the fields of sport, medicine, social affairs and education are funded. The focus of funding activities is in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region , with which the founder feels particularly connected.

Commitment to climate protection

Hopp is particularly concerned with finding ways out of the climate crisis . His foundation is committed to climate protection . He is the founder of the Climate Foundation for Citizens . The goals of the foundation include a. the operation of the Klima Arena she founded , a place of learning, knowledge and experience for imparting knowledge about climate change. Hopp once said: “If people claim that there is no climate change and that there is no need for climate protection, then I can only shake my head. Such people just didn't understand what it was about. It's not about my or their future, but about the future of our youth and children. The youth took to the streets for this. These Friday demonstrations were good and important. "He praised the achievement of Greta Thunberg :" It [was] necessary to point out that billions and billions of tons of CO 2 are blown into the air by humans and that we must act now. [...] It is a man-made climate change and we have to counteract it. "

Business activities

Since his retirement from the day-to-day business of SAP, Hopp has been particularly active as an investor . He is the main owner of Actris and InterComponentWare AG , with stakes in companies in the biotech industry.

In 2010, Hopp increased his stake in Agennix AG from almost 30 to around 59 percent. At the end of May 2013, the shareholders decided to liquidate the company.

In September 2012, Hopp invested 80 million euros in the biopharmaceutical company CureVac . In March 2015, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also invested 46 million euros and thus became a shareholder in CureVac with around 5%.

capital

In 2010, Hopp owned 10% of SAP shares; they lost an estimated 2 billion euros in value during the 2007 financial crisis .

Dietmar Hopp is a multi-billionaire. According to the Forbes 2018 list, his net worth was approximately $ 10.2 billion. This put Hopp in 147th place on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world and 15th in Germany.

In March 2017, Hopp's fortune was estimated at EUR 8.8 billion.

Patronage

Rhein-Neckar-Arena

Hopp is active as a patron in various sporting areas: He is committed to promoting young athletes in golf ( Golf Club St. Leon-Rot ) and football (above all with a total of around 350 million euros at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim , but also at FC Astoria Walldorf ). As a teenager he played soccer himself at TSG Hoffenheim. After the stadium in Hoffenheim , which was financed by Hopp in 1999 and named after him, gradually turned out to be too small, Hopp announced in 2006 that he would finance a stadium suitable for the Bundesliga for TSG. The Rhein-Neckar-Arena was built from May 2007 on the A 6 opposite the Auto and Technology Museum Sinsheim . TSG 1899 Hoffenheim was promoted to the Bundesliga at the end of the 2007/08 season and has been using the new stadium since January 2009. From July 1, 2015, Hopp took over the majority of the votes in the club's gaming operating company with 96%. This was made possible by an exemption from the German Football League (DFL) from December 2014, which is granted if a club has received substantial funding for more than 20 years.

Positions

In 2017, Hopp attested a justice problem for Germany . He warned against letting education become a privilege of the rich and wealthy that leaves others behind. Hopp called on the wealthy to take responsibility for those who have less. For this reason, too, in 2011 he transferred the arithmetical share of Germany's national debt that was attributable to him, his wife, his two children and his grandchild , which at the time was around EUR 21,000 per German citizen, to a special Bundesbank account .

honors and awards

Dietmar Hopp Stadium in Hoffenheim
Dietmar Hopp sports hall in St. Leon-Rot , district of Rot

In his honor, Neurottstrasse near the Walldorf SAP headquarters was renamed Dietmar-Hopp-Allee in June 2005. The former TSG Hoffenheim stadium also bears his name, as does the sports hall in the Rot district of St. Leon-Rot , the FC-Astoria Walldorf stadium and a street in Sinsheim.

Controversy

Dietmar Hopp's financial commitment to TSG Hoffenheim, which made it possible for the club, which had long played in the lower class to make it into the Bundesliga, was repeatedly criticized. One allegation was that Hopp violated the 50 + 1 rule . The patron sometimes intervenes directly in the operational business of the association, which investors are forbidden.

In 2009, Hans-Joachim Watzke warned that traditional clubs would be discriminated against in comparison to “test tube clubs” and called on the DFL to carry out investigations in Hoffenheim. The division of the league into supposedly “real” football clubs based on tradition and emotions on the one hand and “artificial” football clubs designed only for commercial purposes on the other brought the managing director of the listed Borussia Dortmund club again to accusations of populism . As manager of Mainz 05 , Christian Heidel said in 2007 that it was a shame that “such a team [like Hoffenheim] is taking away one of the 36 places in professional football”. Hopp then turned to the DFB with the request that such statements be viewed as discrimination and punished as consistently as racism.

Especially in Hoffenheim's first Bundesliga season, Hopp was particularly hostile to guest fans. Hoffenheim was corrupted in "Hoppenheim". A banner of a BVB fan became particularly well known, on which the face of Hopp could be seen in a crosshair with the signature Hasta la vista, Hopp . This was often understood as a call to violence. Hopp filed a complaint; he took it back after apologizing from the author.

In the 2019/20 Bundesliga season, Hopp was insulted in various TSG Hoffenheim matches by fans of the opposing teams with posters and banners, some of them violently. On February 22, 2020, Ultras from Borussia Mönchengladbach held up a poster that showed Hopp in the crosshairs. On February 29, 2020, the home game of TSG 1899 Hoffenheim against FC Bayern Munich was interrupted twice after insulting Hopp from the guest block when the score was 6: 0 for Munich. In order to protest against the denigration, the professionals of both teams pushed the ball to each other after the second interruption in the 78th minute until the end of the game and received the applause of most of the spectators.

Web links

Commons : Dietmar Hopp  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. “I've started too much” - Dietmar Hopp turns 75th Computer Week , April 24, 2015, accessed on March 1, 2020 : “And his first million? Hopp, who, according to US magazine Forbes, is now sitting with his family on a fortune of 7.3 billion dollars (6.7 billion euros), no longer knows that exactly. "At the moment we were on the stock exchange, that was certainly the case," he says. "
  2. # 185 Dietmar Hopp & family. In: forbes.com. Retrieved April 27, 2015 .
  3. Thomas Hummel: Lost Brothers. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. May 17, 2010, accessed December 20, 2016 .
  4. Heads of the economy: Dietmar Hopp ( memento from April 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) wiwo.de
  5. Hoffenheim and the dark side of the Hopp family. In: welt.de. February 11, 2009, accessed April 27, 2015 .
  6. For more information on the film, see www.holocaustliteratur.de
  7. Hopp blackmailer demanded 5.5 million euros. In: WeltN24. November 20, 2009. Retrieved August 15, 2017 .
  8. Dietmar Hopp - WHO'S WHO biography. In: www.whoswho.de. Retrieved December 20, 2016 .
  9. Dietmar Hopp: "He always gave us a free hand", says his son Daniel Interview by Joachim Klaehn with businessman Daniel Hopp on the occasion of the 80th birthday of father Dietmar Hopp on the homepage of the daily newspaper Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, www.rnz .de, ( Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung ), April 24, 2020, accessed on April 26, 2020
  10. ^ Retired billionaire. April 21, 2015, accessed on April 27, 2015 : “In 1972 he gathered four IBM colleagues around him and founded the software company SAP with them. "We were very lucky and were in the right place at the right time," says Hopp. "We had time back then - our startup phase lasted about ten to 15 years." "
  11. Software company: How the SAP founders fight for their life's work. In: www.wiwo.de. Retrieved December 20, 2016 .
  12. Björn Greif: New legal form: SAP AG becomes SAP SE. In: ZDNet. July 7, 2014, accessed November 21, 2017 .
  13. Dietmar Hopp: "We needed time to learn". Handelsblatt, December 13, 2005, accessed on August 11, 2017 .
  14. ^ Dietmar Hopp Foundation: The Foundation. Retrieved March 2, 2020 .
  15. "Hopp Children's Tumor Center at NCT Heidelberg" is launched - MEDIZIN ASPEKTE. In: Medizin-aspekte.de. Retrieved December 20, 2016 .
  16. a b c Joachim Klaehn: Why Dietmar Hopp considers Greta Thunberg to be extraordinary. RNZ, December 21, 2019, accessed on December 22, 2019 (cd).
  17. a b https://klima-arena.de/ueber-uns/grusswort-des-schirmherren/
  18. Hopp takes over majority in biotech company Agennix. In: FAZ.net. October 1, 2010, accessed October 18, 2016 .
  19. Dietmar Hopp loses millions with biotech investment. In: Focus Money. May 23, 2013, accessed October 18, 2016 .
  20. Dietmar Hopp is putting 80 million euros into Curevac. In: Handelsblatt. September 18, 2012, accessed October 20, 2016 .
  21. Bill Gates invests in biotech "Made in Germany". In: WeltN24. March 5, 2015, accessed October 20, 2016 .
  22. "I lost two billion in the crisis". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. May 17, 2010. Retrieved August 15, 2017 .
  23. ^ The World's Billionaires 2018. In: Forbes. Accessed August 7, 2018 (English).
  24. They are the richest Germans. In: Handelsblatt. March 9, 2018, accessed August 7, 2018 .
  25. Annette Dönisch: SAP founder Dietmar Hopp made six important decisions in his 20s - they made him a billionaire. In: Business Insider Germany. March 22, 2017. Retrieved August 15, 2017 .
  26. 1899 Hoffenheim deep in the red. (No longer available online.) In: Financial Times Deutschland. January 11, 2011; Archived from the original on January 12, 2011 ; accessed on March 1, 2020 .
  27. Hopp loses fear of eight-figure sums , Manager-Magazin, May 14, 2018
  28. Portrait: Dietmar Hopp - Vadder and benefactor. In: Wirtschaftswoche. April 28, 2008. Retrieved August 15, 2017 .
  29. Club patron: Hopp takes over the majority in 1899 Hoffenheim. February 10, 2015, accessed February 10, 2015 .
  30. kicker online, Nuremberg, Germany: TSG members unanimously: Hopp takes over majority . In: kicker online . ( kicker.de [accessed on February 13, 2018]).
  31. Simon Book, Max Haerder, Dieter Schnaas: Hopp, Grupp and Leibinger-Kammüller: In Germany, things are unfair. In: Wirtschaftswoche. May 5, 2017. Retrieved November 12, 2017 .
  32. Annina Reimann: Check to Schäuble. Donations / No joke: Citizens transfer money to the state so that it can pay off its debts. Wirtschaftswoche , February 7, 2011, accessed on November 24, 2017 .
  33. An exceptional patron: the 2014 German Stifterpreis for Dietmar Hopp ; stiftungen.org, January 30, 2014
  34. Veh and Hopp settle accounts with Watzke ; Bild.de, November 26, 2009
  35. Dispute with Mainz manager: Hoffenheim-Hopp switches on the DFB . spiegel.de. February 16, 2010. Retrieved February 16, 2010.
  36. TSG patron moves 05 managers into the racism corner . rhein-zeitung.de. February 16, 2010. Retrieved February 16, 2010.
  37. Peter Müller: Leave Dietmar alone. In: 11 friends . November 26, 2009, accessed March 1, 2020 .
  38. Gladbach poster against Hopp: "I'm ashamed of the 50 horned oxen" . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed February 29, 2020]).
  39. Christian Eichler: Poster in Sinsheim: Professionals stop playing after scandal in the Bayern block . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed February 29, 2020]).