Which heiress becomes 75 – Swabian

She seems uncertain and a little lost. Thin, almost fragile. At least not as we imagine a woman of the world. It once belonged to Madeleine Schickedanz, the richest people in Germany, who had inherited the empire from the source and lived in luxury. But in 2009, the main shareholder of Franconia was victim of the bankruptcy of the retailer Arcandor, following a financial disaster. And there was a fight. With people belonging to once noble backgrounds, such as the former noble bankers of Sal. Oppenheim. When Schickedanz turns 75 on Saturday, she will have ups and downs behind her. Business as well as private.

Briefly summarizing the financial history: Schickedanz admitted that Quelle, from Fürth – one of the best-known brands in Germany – merged with Karstadt in 1999 to form the Karstadt Quelle group. The firmierte then from 2007 as Arcandor. Schickedanz has become a majority shareholder and has injected more and more money into the already struggling Essen Group. At the end of 2009, the lights went out. Schickedanz would have collapsed on the day of bankruptcy. She had put everything on a card and lost.

Madeleine Schickedanz hardly speaks publicly. In the summer of 2009, she was all the more agitated as she said: "If Arcandor's rescue fails and the banks repay their loans, they will lose everything – houses, shares and shares of the company.His description at that time was legendary: "We live between 500 and 600 euros per month. We also buy at the discount store. We have vegetables, fruits and herbs in the garden. "

In Cologne, she continued a few years later in the High Court – the spectacular civil procedure began at the end of 2012. Among other things, her former financial adviser, Josef Esch, and the management of her former house bank, Sovereign Oppenheim , 9 billion euros. That would have invested their assets against their will, risked and wasted – which the defendants have denied. Schickedanz finally got only a fraction of an amicable settlement. According to information provided by the German news agency, it would be an amount of two million dollars, especially from Deutsche Bank, which had taken control of the house of the company. Money stumbling, Sal. Oppenheim.

"No relationship with money"

Schickedanz was born in 1943 in an anti-aircraft shelter of a hospital in Nuremberg. She was the only child of the founder of mail order Gustav Schickedanz, the source having fallen in love with him. After only a few semesters, Madeleine Schickedanz left her studies in commerce. In 1965, she married Hans-Georg Mangold for the first time. Wolfgang Bühler, his second wife, also worked in the group. Her third husband, Leo Herl, became a member of Arcandor's supervisory board. Schickedanz led the life of a super-rich. Villas in Spain or in St. Moritz, a property of Franconia Hersbruck. She has "no real relationship with money," her father said.

What is known about the retired billionaire stems in part from their statements in court. In Cologne, she said: "I was only watching my children." She has four children from the first two marriages. As a profession, she declared in court in 2014: "Housewife". The same year, in the process of disloyalty of the Essenes against the former patron of Arcandor, Thomas Middelhoff, Schickedanz described as a witness: "I have never been ambitious", even though she had been a major shareholder, but they had not exercised any power in the group. "My influence has never been greater, my life has always been shaped mainly by my children."

The picture she described in Cologne resembles Essen: she often did not investigate the group's rescue, borrowing, or stock purchase attempts – and she also described what was asked of her. . "I do not remember everything that I signed." That was a mistake, Schickedanz said in the spring of 2014 as a witness in the criminal case against former Sal chiefs. Oppenheim.

The former billionaire is so rarely seen in public that she has already been described as a "ghost" in the media. Their few appearances before the courts were therefore particularly followed. There she seemed a little awkward, spoke softly. Often she could not remember it. But when it came to her children, she was sure of it – birthdays, anniversaries she was thinking about.

She was suffering from the leukemia of her youngest daughter, healed after a long treatment. At the heart of Schickedanz is her foundation for children with cancer, which she founded in 1990, as she wrote on her homepage, for "very personal reasons".