Karl-Heinz Kipp

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The Tschuggen Grand Hotel, Karl-Heinz Kipp's first hotel acquisition

Karl-Heinz Kipp (born February 12,  1924 in Alzey ; † October 11, 2017 in Ascona , Canton Ticino ) was a German-Swiss entrepreneur.

life and career

Karl-Heinz Kipp was born as the son of the businessman August Kipp and his wife Laura in Alzey. The father traded in agricultural products. He spent his childhood in Alzey. When he was nine years old, his life changed suddenly. His mother was Jewish and he was exposed to increasing harassment, even though he was baptized as a Protestant. Karl-Heinz Kipp left school and trained as a freight forwarder . When the deportations of Jews to the extermination camps began, he left Germany and went to Norway. After the end of the war he returned to Germany and rejoined his father's potato and agricultural products trade in Alzey. In 1948 he bought the dormant commercial register entry Trachtenhandel Alfred Massa , based in Trier, for 500 bottles of wine . Kipp created the cornerstone of his fortune by selling traditional costumes , underwear and aprons to the rural population in the Alzey region.

In 1965 Kipp founded the first consumer market under the name Massa-Markt in Alzey. At the beginning of the 1970s, Kipp built the first large-scale consumer market on the "green field". In just a few years, 30 more Massa hypermarkets followed in southwest Germany. In 1981, Kipp introduced financial buying across the board. In 1986 the Massa markets went public; the following year he parted with his last shares in the operational business of the Massa markets, which later went up in the Metro . He transferred the real estate into his private fortune and leased the real estate to the Metro Group for 30 years for an estimated annual rental income of more than 50 million euros. He continued to use the former brand name Massa in Switzerland for the Massa Nova in Chur.

In 1980 he acquired the five-star Tschuggen Grand Hotel in Arosa , and in 1984 the Sporthotel Valsana there . In 1989 he bought the five-star Hotel Eden Roc in Ascona . Other well-known investments are a few office towers in Manhattan and another three hotels in Arosa, Ascona and St. Moritz , including the Carlton Hotel . Kipp was also Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tschuggen Hotel Group AG , based in Arosa. In total, he invested over 300 million francs in the renovation and expansion of the hotel buildings by 2014 . In 2016 he bought the Gassmann commercial building on Zurich's Paradeplatz for 100 million francs.

Kipp was married to Hannelore; The children Ernst-Ludwig and Ursula came from the marriage. His son Ernst-Ludwig died in 2003 in Palm Beach, where he lived, leaving behind 7 children. His daughter Ursula, married to the entrepreneur Wilfried Bechtolsheimer, succeeded her father in the family business in 2016. Kipp was the maternal grandfather of the British-Swiss dressage rider Laura Bechtolsheimer . Like them, he and his wife Hannelore had Swiss citizenship and Arosa citizenship .

Kipp lived in Arosa and Ascona, where he was buried on October 19, 2017.

Awards and honors

  • Karl-Heinz and Hannelore Kipp became honorary citizens of the city of Alzey (2000)
  • Georg Scheu plaque from the city of Alzey for his services to the region and viticulture (2006)
  • Honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv University (2006; two buildings on campus bear the name of his mother, Laura Schwarz-Kipp.)
  • Founder of the Karl-Heinz Kipp Chair (Karl-Heinz Kipp Chair in Research) at ESMT Berlin (2009)
  • Federal Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • Namesake of the Hannelore Kipp kindergarten in Alzey
  • Namesake of Karl-Heinz-Kipp-Strasse in Alzey

capital

Kipp was ranked 27th on the Manager-Magazin list of the richest Germans (2013) with an estimated 3.5 billion euros . On the Forbes list 2015, the fortune of Karl-Heinz Kipp was given as around 5 billion US dollars. This placed him at number 309 on Forbes' list of the richest people in the world.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Massa founder and Alzeyer honorary citizen Karl-Heinz Kipp died , October 12, 2017, Allgemeine Zeitung
  2. ↑ a b c Tschuggen Hotelkönig Kipp withdraws , balance from September 22, 2016
  3. ↑ Hans Danuser : Arosa - as it was back then (1979–1995). Vol. 6. Self-published by Danuser, Arosa 2002, p. 24.
  4. ↑ Hans Danuser: Arosa - as it was back then (1979–1995) . Vol. 6. Self-published by Danuser, Arosa 2002, p. 84.
  5. ↑ a b c Die Südostschweiz, February 12, 2014, p. 5.
  6. ↑ Information on the Tschuggen Hotel Group. Accessed on November 23, 2013.
  7. ↑ The Palm Beach Post: Obituary Ernst-Ludwig Kipp on .legacy.com of September 17, 2003
  8. ↑ Grandhotels were his great passion. In: www.suedostschweiz.ch. October 14, 2017. Retrieved October 14, 2017 .
  9. ↑ “The 500 richest Germans”, Manager-Magazin -Special Issue, October 2013, p. 28
  10. ^ The World's Billionaires List - Forbes. In: forbes.com. Retrieved September 2, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Kipp, Karl-Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swiss entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Alzey
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 2017
Place of death Ascona