Herbert Hillebrand

Herbert Hillebrand (born July 6, 1940 in Scherfede ) is a German entrepreneur in the real estate industry who has become known as the "Castle King" .

Career

In 1954 he began an apprenticeship as a wholesale and bank clerk at a Raiffeisen bank in Monheim am Rhein. After three more years of volunteerism, he started his own business. He has four children from his first marriage. He has seven children with his second wife, Colombian-born Mónica Hillebrand, and adopted four more. In 1973 he became a DM millionaire through the construction of social housing . He then systematically began to acquire listed castles and palaces that were in need of renovation and listed for symbol prices, mainly in Germany, to claim subsidies or tax breaks and to give the objects away to his children. These included Rheineck Castle (acquired in 1975, sold in 1999), Kendenich Castle (November 1978), Bedburg Castle (1980), Brohleck Castle (1980-September 1995), Schwansbell Castle (1982), Pröbsting House (acquired by the Borken district in 1986 , today Schlossklinik), Augustenburg Castle (October 1987, already sold at a profit in 1988), Marienfels Castle (1988-November 1994, afterwards Thomas Gottschalk acquired the property in 2004 for 3.5 million euros), Hemmersbach Castle (1988) became his home - and place of business (until 1997), Trips Castle (April 1989), Lipsa Castle (1992) or Lülsdorf Castle (2006), the last castle acquired. He owned a total of 27 palaces and castles. On July 3, 1985, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his entrepreneurial achievements . Hillebrand lived from 1960 to 1967 first in Nörvenich , then in Rath on Sandkaulenweg in the only thatched house in the village, which still exists (as of 2018).

The turning point in East Germany

From 1990, after the fall of the Wall in East Germany , he gradually acquired a total of 63 properties through the Treuhandanstalt . These included the Henneberg castle ruins (1990), Neustadt-Glewe Castle (September 1991) and Hohenerxleben Castle (1993), but also for the first time 3 industrial properties. This included the Wallendorf porcelain factory , the Weimar porcelain Blankenhain and a glassworks . He did not succeed in renovating the loss-making industrial properties that were in a corporate crisis . In April 1995, Weimar-Porzellan went bankrupt, and in the same month Wellner cutlery and silverware - once the largest German cutlery factory - had to file for bankruptcy. In February 1992 he acquired land from the city of Suhl , but had to give up the project in January 1995 during the shell construction work.

crisis

Hillebrand's properties were mostly financed with bank loans and, for the most part, could not be run economically. In addition, high renovation expenses were incurred. The bankruptcies of the East German companies led to financial difficulties, which also had an impact on his economic situation. Most of the projects ran through Herbert Hillebrand Baubetreuungs- und Beteiligungs-KG , for whose liabilities he was personally liable . In 1995 he owned a total of 135 properties, including 27 fortresses and palaces and 3,800 rental apartments. In his birthplace Scherfede he owns entire streets. In 1995 his private fortune was estimated at 300 million DM. The first signs of his economic problems became apparent in February 1995 when the real estate newspaper reported that he would sell 45 of his 135 real estate properties by 1996 due to liquidity bottlenecks. He had to lay off almost 1,000 employees.

He had to temporarily stop construction work on the 165.5 m high Cologne Tower in Cologne's Media Park in April 1995. In January 1996 he founded a special project company for the development of the media park (block 5). As early as March 1996, a contractual penalty was imposed on him for delays in construction. His debts to 26 banks now totaled 804 million DM, but the Bergheim tax office filed for bankruptcy because of 10 million DM tax debts in December 1999; He had previously won two lawsuits against his tax office before the tax court. Hans-Gerd Jauch was appointed as the insolvency administrator , who sold the remaining assets, including Hemmersbach Castle. In addition, Hillebrand was sentenced in February 2000 to a two-year suspended sentence for embezzlement of public funds and multiple fraud by the Cologne Regional Court .

Overcoming the crisis

Since October 2003 leads Herbert Hillebrand of Castle Mödrath his Hillebrand Children GmbH , which advises his children in financial matters. In that year he (more precisely: his children) still owned 15 castles, he had to part with the others due to liquidity. He continues to buy and renovate properties for his children that are to remain in the family portfolio for the long term. Among other things, he acquired 750 apartments on Rügen in 2006.

During the time he was a company, Hillebrand has shown himself to be very social. He invited patients from the Rheinische Kliniken Düren to vacation in his castles, supported and built children's homes , schools and clinics in Bogotá , where more than 5000 children live in facilities he built and supported.

Web links

• Website of the Hillebrand Group

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ute Grau / Ernst Otto Bräunche, Augustenburg Castle , 2000, p. 56
2. ↑ Office of the Federal President
3. ↑ FOCUS magazine No. 17 of April 24, 1995, King without a crown
4. ↑ Internet site of the Hillebrand Group ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Immobilienzeitung, edition 04/1995 of February 9, 1995, p. 2
6. ↑ ZEIT ONLINE from June 14, 1996, The Mediapark Cologne is an expensive dream
7. ↑ Authors-Reporter.de, Andreas Molitor, Der Sieger , 2013 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ Real estate: KRACH IM BURGENLAND . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1995 ( online ).