Gaston Glock

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Gaston Glock (born July 19, 1929 ) is an Austrian engineer and entrepreneur . After working independently in the plastics sector from 1963, he developed a new type of pistol in 1980/81, the Glock 17 , which was introduced to the Austrian armed forces in 1982 as a new army pistol . Glock founded the gun production company Glock GmbH in his place of residence in Deutsch-Wagram and in the following years became commercially successful with his Glock pistols , especially on the US market.

Life

Working life

The son of a railroad worker graduated in 1947 from the Federal Trade School , mechanical engineering department (professional designation engineer ) in Vienna and then worked as a plastics technician. In 1963 he founded Glock KG, with which he manufactured plastic and metal parts for doors and windows. From 1970 Glock supplied the Austrian Armed Forces with the Glock field knife , feldspades , training hand grenades and machine gun belts . When the Austrian Armed Forces were looking for a new handgun in 1980 that was to be easy to use with a large magazine capacity and inexpensive to purchase, Glock offered to develop a new weapon. In close cooperation with weapons experts from the army, he designed the prototype of a pistol with a plastic handle and a trigger with a preloaded firing pin . On April 30, 1981, Glock filed a corresponding patent . Since it was his 17th patent, he named the new pistol the Glock 17 .

The advantages of the Glock 17 lay in the fact that it was a light and robust weapon with comparatively few parts and a magazine capacity of 17 rounds. In 1982 Glock won the tender of the armed forces ahead of nine other providers. Glock converted his KG into a GmbH and built a production facility in Deutsch-Wagram. Due to its design, the Glock 17 could be manufactured inexpensively with computer-controlled machines. 1985 Glock founded a subsidiary of his company in the USA. An American production facility was set up in Smyrna (Georgia) and another in 1987 in Ferlach, Austria .

As a weapons manufacturer, Glock was particularly successful in the American market. Many police departments and the FBI (as of 2016) are equipped with Glock weapons. In his unauthorized book about the Glock, the American journalist Paul Barrett called it the " Sam Colt of the 20th century" because he had renewed the small arms business in the United States.

With a fortune of 1.65 billion euros (as of 2016), the Glock empire is a highly successful group of companies. Glock's public appearances are rare. His contacts with the Carinthian Governor Jörg Haider , with whom he visited the factory of the Russian aircraft manufacturer Mikoyan-Gurevich in Moscow in mid-October 2000 , after Russia had offered to deliver the MiG-29 to Austria, attracted attention . In 2002 he accompanied Haider to Baghdad to visit Saddam Hussein . Glock has denied media reports that brought him in connection with the FPÖ . In May 2019, as part of the Ibiza affair , Glock was suspected of having financially supported an FPÖ-affiliated association.

In addition to managing his own company, Gaston Glock was on the supervisory board of the air traffic control company Austro Control from April 2002 to September 2011 , and since 2004 as chairman of the supervisory board. He was appointed to this position by the then freedom transport minister Mathias Reichhold . In this position, Caspar Eine follows him . Glock is involved in equestrian sports and finances the Glock Horse Performance Center .

In March 2012 he was appointed honorary consul of the Romanian consulate in Klagenfurt .

Assassination attempt

On July 27, 1999, Glock was the target of an assassination attempt in the underground car park of a Luxembourg office complex. The French Jacques Pêcheur tried to hit him with a hammer. He acted on behalf of Charles Ewert ("Panama-Charly"), a former business partner of Glock. The reason were disputes over Glock's trading company Unipatent SA and the allegation of infidelity. After 1989, Ewert is said to have smuggled up to 100 million US dollars from the Glock Group into a number of mailbox companies assigned to him. On March 12, 2003, Pêcheur was finally sentenced by a Luxembourg criminal court to 17 years in prison, Ewert to the maximum sentence of 20 years.

Processes

Glock has repeatedly had people and organizations who critically question his arms deals prosecuted. He lost an honor libel suit against Amnesty International in February 2008. Amnesty had reported that a Glock weapon had been obtained by a rebel in Darfur and asked Glock to clarify how this was possible. This process was also decided in 2012 in the final instance for Amnesty International.

Private life

Gaston Glock has three children with his first wife Helga, whom he married in 1962 and from whom he divorced in June 2011 after 49 years of marriage. Daughter Brigitte was born shortly after his marriage, followed three years later by Gaston Junior and one year later by Robert. In July 2011 he married Kathrin Tschikof , who was 52 years his junior from Velden , who is the manager of his “Glock Horse Performance Center”. Since the divorce in 2011, Helga Glock tried in several proceedings to reallocate the assets in favor of her and her children.

In 2008, Gaston Glock suffered a stroke. In 2010 the three adult children left the arms company.

Helga and her 3 children with Gaston Glock sen. worked for the arms company, but changed their orientation after the divorce in 2011. Brigitte has opened a pet shop near Vienna, Gaston Jr. has founded a company for hunting clothing in the USA and Robert (* 1967 or 1968) runs restaurants in Austria.

Ibiza affair

In a video that was secretly filmed in July 2017 and leaked to Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung in May 2019 , the then FPÖ party chairman Heinz-Christian Strache claims that billionaires like René Benko , Gaston Glock and Heidi Horten as well as the gaming group Novomatic have a Tarnverein of the FPÖ would donate for the election campaign of the FPÖ in violation of the regulations on party financing in Austria . All the people and companies named in the video as donors disputed the process on the same day.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Neumann: Glock Horse Performance Center: pistol, palm, horse . In: der Standard , September 14, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b Hans Dieter Faißner: Pistol Armament of the Federal Army - 1955 until today . In: TRUPPENDIENST - Episode 336, Edition 6/2013.
  3. ^ Paul M. Barrett: Glock. The Rise of America's Gun . Crown Publishing Group , New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-307-71995-9 , pp. 13 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ^ Paul M. Barrett: Glock. The Rise of America's Gun . Crown Publishing Group , New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-307-71995-9 , pp. 14 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  5. ^ Paul M. Barrett: Glock. The Rise of America's Gun . Crown Publishing Group , New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-307-71995-9 , pp. 67 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ↑ Adolf Winkler: Gun manufacturer Glock with 95 million euros profit . In: Kleine Zeitung , May 28, 2016.
  7. ↑ Ludmilla Lobova: Soviet and Russian positions on Austria's participation in European integration . In: Michael Gehler, Anton Pelinka, Günter Bischof (eds.): Austria in the European Union. Record of his membership. Austria in the European Union. Assessment of Her Membership . Böhlau, Vienna 2003, p. 496.
  8. ↑ Emo Gotsbachner: normalization strategies in the rhetoric of the Freedom Party. The political alchemy of turning criticism into support . In: ÖZP 32 (2003), pp. 457-483, here p. 479.
  9. ^ Paul M. Barrett: Glock. The Rise of America's Gun . Crown Publishing Group , New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-307-71995-9 , pp. 176 f . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  10. ↑ Horses, weapons and the connections between the FPÖ and Glock (September 22, 2018)
  11. ^ Benjamin Bidder, Anton Rainer: FPÖ affair: These are the bosses from the Strache video. In: Spiegel Online . May 20, 2019, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Close relationship with Jörg Haider. In: orf.at. January 12, 2011, accessed April 7, 2012 .
  13. ^ Gaston Glock: Carinthian weapons and their network. In: Wirtschaftsblatt . January 20, 2004, archived from the original on August 31, 2010 ; Retrieved April 4, 2012 .
  14. ^ Parliamentary response to questions. In: parlament.gv.at. November 21, 2011, accessed April 4, 2012 .
  15. ↑ Caspar Eine is supposed to control Austro Control. In: The press . September 8, 2011, accessed April 4, 2012 .
  16. ↑ The arms manufacturer as consul. In: Wiener Zeitung . March 28, 2012, Retrieved April 4, 2012 .
  17. ↑ Michael Nikbakhsh: Had a Glock . In: profile . No. 15 , April 7, 2003, p. 62 .
  18. ↑ Dyan Machan: Top Gun. Forbes , March 31, 2003, accessed March 10, 2010 .
  19. ↑ Amnesty wins case against Glock. In: derstandard.at. April 3, 2012, Retrieved April 4, 2012 .
  20. ↑ Gaston Glock: An Industrialist Who Avoids the Public. In: Small newspaper . October 24, 2008, archived from the original on March 8, 2014 ; Retrieved April 4, 2012 .
  21. ↑ Gaston Glock: In the Marriage War. In: oe24.at. December 10, 2011, accessed April 4, 2012 .
  22. ↑ Wolfgang Zwander: Glock versus Glock: "Glock" by Paul M. Barrett falter.at, Falter 49/2014, accessed January 26, 2019.
  23. ↑ a b Application for legal aid submitted. ORF , April 13, 2013, accessed on April 15, 2013 .
  24. ↑ Luck for Glock. In: Small newspaper . July 29, 2011, archived from the original on March 8, 2014 ; Retrieved April 4, 2012 .
  25. ^ In the Glock divorce war there is sharp shooting ( memento from April 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), from April 15, 2013, Wirtschaftsblatt , accessed on April 15, 2013
  26. ^ Paul Barrett, Zoe Schneeweiss, Caroline Winter: Bloomberg: Family feud at the Austrian arms industrialist Glock welt.de, January 27, 2012, accessed January 26, 2019.
  27. ↑ Nina Ellend: Seal of Approval of Love: Interview with Robert Glock at kurier.at, June 29, 2015, accessed on January 26, 2019.
  28. ↑ ORF at / agencies red: German media: secret recordings burden Strache. May 17, 2019, accessed May 27, 2019 .
  29. ^ Revelations by SPIEGEL and "Süddeutsche": Federal Chancellor Kurz wants to comment on the Strache scandal . In: Spiegel Online . May 18, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed May 27, 2019]).
  30. ↑ Great Gold Medal of Honor for Gaston Glock . Press release from July 2014, accessed on July 8, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Glock, Gaston
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian engineer and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1929