"If politicians don't do their job and redistribute, then I have to redistribute my wealth myself," says Marlene Engelhorn, an Austrian-German heiress who is seeking to give much of her inheritance away. She has a plan on how to do it. The 31-year-old Vienna resident mailed 10,000 letters to randomly selected Austrians inviting them to register for a "Good Council for Redistribution" and fill out a survey, the BBC reports. A research institute has been hired to cut the number down to a 50-person council representative of the country's population, reports the Times of London. The council will decide what to do with around $27 million of Engelhorn's fortune.
Engelhorn, a descendant of Friedrich Engelhorn, founder of chemical firm BASF, inherited millions when her grandmother died in 2022. Austria repealed its inheritance tax in 2008, a move Engelhorn firmly disagrees with. "I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it," she says. "And the state doesn't even want taxes on it." It's not clear how much of her inheritance Engelhorn will keep, though she has spoken of giving away 90% of it, reports the BBC. She says she won't have any veto over the council's decision, though the conditions include not giving funds to profit-making organizations or groups involved in "inhumane" activities.
"Many people struggle to make ends meet with a full-time job, and pay taxes on every euro they earn from work," Engelhorn says. "I see this as a failure of politics, and if politics fails, then the citizens have to deal with it themselves." Council members will take part in a series of meetings with academics and civil society organizations between March and June of this year. They will have travel costs covered and will be paid around $1,300 per meeting for what Engelhorn says is a "service to democracy." "I am putting my assets at the disposal of these 50 people and placing my trust in them," she says. (More inheritance stories.)
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