Walter Haefner

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Walter Haefner (born September 13, 1910 in Zurich ; † June 19, 2012 there ) was a Swiss entrepreneur . According to Forbes Magazine , his fortune built up in the automotive trade and software company was the third largest in Switzerland at 4.3 billion US dollars (as of 2012). In addition, Haefner was a renowned breeder of thoroughbred horses and a successful racing stable owner. The Walter Haefner Foundation founded by him annually supports various charitable institutions. In 1995 he donated parts of his important art collection to the Kunsthaus Zürich.

Life

Walter Haefner, who always held back as a person and never presented himself in public, grew up in Zurich- Wollishofen . His parents were the missionary August Wilhelm Häfner and his wife Elise Meta, née Zuppinger. After completing his school education with the commercial Matura, he studied business administration at the University of Lyon and the University of Zurich . Initially he worked as an oil salesman for Shell . This was followed by an employment contract at the Biel branch of General Motors . He used his knowledge of the automotive industry during World War II and founded Autark AG, which - against the background of a lack of oil imports - traded in charcoal generators for automobiles. In 1945 he founded the auto trading company Neue Automobil- und Motoren AG (AMAG) , which specialized in the import of automobiles into Switzerland. From then on, AMAG developed into the largest Swiss importer for models from Volkswagen, Seat, Škoda, Audi and Porsche. From 1951 to 1974 Haefner was also on the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG .

In 1950 Haefner founded Novelectric , a household appliance company, and in 1958 the construction company Mobag AG , which he sold in the 1970s. Haefner recognized the growing role of electronic data processing early on and founded Automation Center AG in Wettingen in 1960 , which was initially only intended for data processing in its own companies, to which the financial management company Walter Haefner Holding AG belonged since 1952.

In 1978, Haefner merged Walter Haefner Holding AG with Autark AG to form Careal Holding AG . Through the gradual sale of the data processing company Automation Center AG to the USA, Haefner achieved a 20.5% stake in Computer Associates International , the second largest software company in the world, in 1987 . In the meantime, Careal Holding has increased its stake in CAI to 24.5%. In 2001 Haefner invested CHF 200 million in the rescue of Swissair .

Haefner retired from professional life at the age of 95. He was married and had two children. His son Martin is the current managing director of Careal Holding. Forbes Magazine estimates Walter Haefner's net worth was $ 4 billion. He was in the list of the richest people worldwide in 268th place (2011) and was one of the ten richest Swiss.

Haefner died on June 19, 2012 in Zurich at the age of 101.

Horse breeder

Haefner, who was an amateur rider himself, bought a former dairy farm near Maynooth in County Kildare in Ireland in 1962 . It was in the subsequent period to stud expanded Moyglare Stud Farm, meanwhile, covers an area of 182 hectares and is designed for about 100 horses. The stud farm has been managed by the veterinarian Stan Cosgrove since 1971; Haefner's daughter is in charge. There are 35 broodmares in Moyglare, and 10 more mares are in the Ashford Stud in Kentucky.

For his services in horse breeding, Haefner received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College in Dublin in 1988 . The annual Moyglare Stud Stakes horse race, part of Ireland's Group I races, is named after the stud . Haefner's horses have won twenty-four Group I horse races since 1977, including the Irish Oaks in 1996 and the Melbourne Cup in 2002 .

Art collector and patron

Through horse racing, Haefner got to know the art dealer Daniel Wildenstein , who was himself a successful horse breeder. In the mid-1960s, Haefner acquired his first paintings in Wildenstein's New York branch. These included The Doge's Palace, seen from San Giorgio Maggiore by Claude Monet , On the Racing Course by Edgar Degas , The Gardener by Georges Seurat , White Huts at Saintes-Maries by Vincent van Gogh and Still Life with Flowers and Idol by Paul Gauguin . Haefner gave these paintings to the Kunsthaus Zürich on permanent loan in 1974 .

Haefner had previously helped found the Alberto Giacometti Foundation in 1966 and in 1973 financed Marc Chagall's work Au-dressus for the newly created hall in the Kunsthaus . In addition, he made several donations for the purchase fund of the Kunsthaus, on whose board of trustees he was appointed in 1965. From 1975 to 1978 he was a board member of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft .

In 1995 Haefner donated a total of twelve important paintings to the Kunsthaus Zürich. In addition to the works on loan to the museum since 1974, this donation included Claude Monet's Waterloo Bridge and The Parliament Building at Sunset , by Kees van Dongen Fillette au bois and by René Magritte the works A la suite de l'aeau, les nuages , Le seize septembre , La chambre d'ecoute and Les Grâces naturelles .

Haefner founded the "Walter Haefner Foundation", the aim of which is to support charitable endeavors in a scientific, cultural and charitable manner and which is committed to improving the living conditions of children at home and abroad. This foundation pays out CHF 15 to 20 million annually for charitable purposes. The institutions supported included, for example, “The Smile Train” with ten million dollars in 1999, an organization that enables operations on deformed children in China, and in 2007 the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich , which received three million Swiss francs for education and research. But also smaller institutions such as the Swiss Robinson Children's Circus or the Jerusalem Zoo - here he donated for the construction of an elephant and a giraffe house - found support from Haefner.

  • Paintings from the Walter Haefner Collection (selection)

  • Georges Seurat:
    The gardener

  • Vincent van Gogh:
    White Huts near Saintes-Maries

  • Edgar Degas:
    On the racing course

  • Claude Monet:
    The Parliament Building at Sunset

literature

  • AMAG Import (Ed.): Yesterday - today: AMAG , Schinznach-Bad 1995.
  • Christian Klemm: Gift of Walter Haefner . Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich 1995.
  • Peter Jegen (Ed.), Thomas Gfeller, Thomas Frei, Fiona Craig: The Moyglare Story: About racehorses and their people . Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-03823-209-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Amag
  2. ^ Forbes 2012
  3. ↑ Novelectric ( Memento from December 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Mobag
  5. ↑ NZZ Executive
  6. ↑ press portal
  7. ^ Forbes
  8. ↑ NZZ Online, accessed on July 16, 2009
  9. ^ Christian Klemm: Gift of Walter Haefner.
  10. ↑ World Week
  11. ↑ Orlando Sentinel  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.orlandosentinel.com  
  12. ↑ ETH Foundation  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / ethfoundation.ch  
  13. ^ Robinson Circus ( Memento of December 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Jerusalem Foundation (PDF; 1.7 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Haefner, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss industrialist, art collector and patron
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 2012
Place of death Zurich