Reinhard Baumhögger

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Dortmund, Arcadia Hotel (2016)

Reinhard Baumhögger (* 1946 in Wickrath ) is a German real estate entrepreneur , project developer and hotel operator . He was the owner of Arcadia Hotels & Resort GmbH & Co. KG , based in Schenefeld (Pinneberg district), which has since been dissolved due to bankruptcy . Around 2006 he operated more than 30 hotels and four senior citizens' residences with a total of 7,500 beds and employed over 1,000 people.

Life

Origin and advancement as a building contractor

Baumhögger is the son of a judicial officer and comes from Wickrath, a current district of Mönchengladbach . After graduating from high school in 1966 in Erkelenz and studying economics and social sciences at the University of Cologne , he trained as a real estate manager at the Freiburg Administration and Business Academy in 1976 . At the same time, from 1972 onwards, as assistant to the management of a Dortmund property developer and on behalf of private and public clients, he gained his first experience in the construction of terraced houses and residential complexes.

Limburg, Arcadia Hotel (2013)
Suhl, congress hotel (2007)
Erfurt, Hotel am Dom (2017)
Erfurt, hotel hall (2017)

From 1980: Entry into the hotel business

In 1980 he started his own business, founded the company "Hotel-Vermögen-Treuhand" (HVT) and managed it as managing partner; In 1982 he won a tender to build a Mövenpick hotel on Lake Aasee in Münster , which is now owned by LVM insurance . Mövenpick founder Ueli Prager also involved him in the operation. Another Mövenpick Hotel followed in Trier , which he took over on his own in 1990.

His company HVT built a hotel in Bottrop for Ramada in 1993 . In the following year he acquired and renovated the historic Hotel Halm in Konstanz , built in 1874 , which was initially operated by Ramada, then by Accor-Mercure and sold again in 2001. In 1995 a Pullman hotel followed in Dortmund. With the purchase and management of the Airport Hotel in Miami , Florida , he expanded his activities internationally and also acquired a private villa there.

From 1996: Engagement in Thuringia, civil actions and sales

Baumhögger and his company HVT acquired the ruins of the Congress Hotel Suhl in 1996 . For the redevelopment he received funding of 24 million DM from the Free State of Thuringia . The matter later became the subject of an investigative committee of the Thuringian State Parliament “ Hotel funding, possible abuse of power of public funds and alleged inadmissible subsidies by the Free State of Thuringia for the construction of the congress hotel in Suhl as well as the Domhotel in Erfurt and its operation ”, which published a 158 p. final report on the topic of ECH Suhl 2009 under the file number

In the summer of 2000, the former Minister of Economic Affairs, Franz Schuster , promised the investor a GA funding rate of up to 28% for the construction of a 5-star hotel in Erfurt-Brühl . In 2001 Baumhögger then acquired the property in Brühl from LEG Thuringia , represented by Reinhold Stanitzek . After construction had still not started in 2003 due to financial difficulties, the City Council of Erfurt decided on March 26, 2003 to give preference to the renovation of the historic Erfurter Hof as a five-star hotel, which had already been favored in the 1990s . As soon as he became aware of the proposed resolution, Baumhögger wrote to the Prime Minister Bernhard Vogel on March 20, announcing lawsuits for "damages of several million euros", thereby prompting the city and the state to stop pursuing the Erfurt court's redevelopment plans. The “Grandhotel am Dom” , which opened in October 2004 with “serious defects” and without the presence of prominent politicians , became Baumhögger's fiftieth hotel. The operator was the Accor Group under its Pullman label, which it acquired in 1991. The 28% funding of the project and considerable deficits in accounting also led to questions in the above Investigation Committee 4/1 of the Thuringian State Parliament. Part of the ground floor was leased to the Erfurt casino in 2005 with the support of the Free State , but the casino had to cease operations at the end of 2014.

In 2002 he sold three hotels in Amberg , Landsberg and Limburg an der Lahn for 20 million euros. However, the purchase price was never paid. Instead, he wrote bogus sales invoices and was then wrongly reimbursed for the input tax portion from the tax authorities. In the same year, he liquidated other uneconomical properties by selling them to a “professional corporate undertaker” abroad based in Marbella , thus leading to insolvency. This had two advantages for Baumhögger: Numerous craftsmen were no longer paid for their further work and had to bear the considerable costs of legal prosecution themselves; open taxes and levies also remained unrecoverable to the detriment of the state treasury. "We lost millions", complained a Cologne electrician. Like him, Baumhögger cheated countless craftsmen. In order to make it possible to sell the ailing hotels, Baumhögger is also said to have given false information to notaries, as the criminal proceedings against him later revealed.

In 2006 Baumhögger ran 32 hotels through various companies. In 2010 the total turnover was 50.5 million euros.

From 2011: takeover of Arcadia, criminal proceedings

In 2011 Baumhögger took over the Arcadia Hotels & Resorts GmbH & Co KG group of companies in Hamburg, which had been entered in the commercial register since 2002. The purpose was the "administration and [the] operation of hotels as well as the construction, administration and operation of senior citizens residences". Arcadia owned 29 hotels, 21 of which were owned and eight leased, with 3353 rooms and employed around 1000 people.

At that time, already under investigation for running against Baumhögger bankruptcy in particularly severe cases , false certification , embezzlement and tax evasion amounting to 12.8 million euros as managing director of 31 companies between 1999 and 2006. The criminal proceedings before the District Court Dortmund ended 27 October 2011 sentenced to three years and four months in prison. On September 9, 2011, he was taken into custody because of the risk of escape and blackout. In Baumhögger's property in Hamburg-Blankenese, prosecutors had found correspondence about the acquisition of a diplomatic passport for 300,000 euros, which would have enabled him to flee Germany. Baumhögger suffered a heart attack during the procedure. After almost three months of pre- trial detention , he was released on bail of 500,000 euros.

As a result, Baumhögger had to "shrink" his group of companies to health. Baumhögger was able to sell eleven hotels, including houses in Amberg, Coburg , Wuppertal , Limburg an der Lahn and Günzburg , to the Austrian company Vienna International Hotelmanagement . Arcadia hotels were also sold in Heppenheim , Gerlingen , Leipzig , Dresden and Magdeburg . After that, the company only ran 15 houses in Germany, nine of which were owned.

Baumhögger's company took over other previously leased hotels as own operations. He is said to have resorted to vigilante justice at a hotel in Schweinfurt that was leased to the world's largest hotel group Accor after the lease had been terminated without notice and stormed the house with security forces when it was not vacated quickly enough. Accor obtained an injunction against Baumhögger, who had to vacate the hotel. Baumhögger lost the subsequent civil case at the Munich regional court. In 2015 he finally reached an agreement with Accor to terminate the lease agreements for the hotel in Schweinfurt. On September 1, 2015, Arcadia also took over the operation of the former Pullman hotels in Dortmund and Erfurt from Accor.

From 2016: bankruptcy, further sales and foreclosures

On April 29, 2016, at the request of a partner company, Europa Parkhotel Verwaltungs-GmbH , insolvency proceedings were opened against Arcadia Hotels & Resort GmbH & Co. KG before the Hamburg District Court. On June 8, 2016, the company was dissolved and struck from the commercial register of the Pinneberg District Court.

The Arcadia Hotels in Bielefeld, Bottrop, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Erfurt, Flensburg, Hanover, Heidelberg, Munich and Schweinfurt were acquired by the HR Group Berlin in 2016 . The Berlin hotel was taken over by the Deutsche Immobiliengruppe in Düren .

The Arcadia Hotel at the Congress Centrum Suhl, in which Baumhögger had invested ten million euros and the Free State of Thuringia almost 24 million euros, was foreclosed on March 30, 2017 for 3.5 million euros.

Sponsorship

Baumhögger appeared as a promoter of culture, sport and social projects. Among other things, he supported the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival of the conductor Justus Frantz , the international horse show in Dortmund and Welthungerhilfe .

Title purchase

In 1991, Baumhögger acquired a doctorate from the non-existent “Universitas Helvetiensis Sedis Urbis Turicensis” (literally: Swiss university based in Zurich ) for 60,000 euros . The public prosecutor's office investigated in 2011 for abuse of title.

Further activities

The African state of Liberia appointed him honorary consul after donating computers and discarded German police cars.

Written sources and web links (by date)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Focus , Christoph Elflein, Tanja Treser: The Imaginary Consul , Focus Magazin No. 44, Munich October 31, 2011.
  2. ↑ a b Kress.de : Reinhard Baumhögger , Mannheim 2011 , accessed on November 22, 2017.
  3. ↑ Thuringian State Parliament, printed matter 4/5306 of June 10, 2009, 158 p. [1]
  4. ↑ Thuringian Parliament, printed matter 4/5470 of August 21, 2009, p. 99 [2]
  5. ^ General hotel and gastronomy newspaper, October 2004
  6. ↑ Thuringian State Parliament, printed matter 4/5470 of August 21, 2009, p. 108 [3]
  7. ↑ a b DERWESTEN.de: Katrin Melliwa: Baumhögger has to go to prison , Funke Mediengruppe, Essen, October 28, 2011.
  8. ↑ Allgemeine Hotel- und Gastronomie-Zeitung, November 2006
  9. ↑ Hamburg District Court, HRB 112490 of December 11, 2002
  10. ↑ General hotel and catering newspaper, February 2011
  11. ↑ General hotel and catering newspaper, September 2011
  12. ↑ Tophotel - The magazine of the hotel industry, November 2015
  13. ↑ Main-Post, October 2016
  14. ↑ General hotel and catering newspaper, June 2016
  15. ↑ Pinneberg District Court, file number: HRA 6483 PI, announced on June 9, 2016
  16. ↑ General Hotel & Gastronomy Newspaper 2016
  17. ↑ Free Word Suhl 2017
  18. ↑ TV hearing and seeing: The heart in the right place, Bauer-Verlag Hamburg 49/2013 [4]
  19. ↑ Did Baumhögger buy a doctorate? , The West , May 20, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Baumhögger, Reinhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German real estate entrepreneur, project developer and hotel operator
DATE OF BIRTH 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Wickrath