What do you do when you inherit millions but don’t believe you deserve the money? If you're Marlene Engelhorn, an Austrian heir to the Boehringer Mannheim fortune—an ancestor founded the chemical company BASF—you tear up the ultra-rich playbook and let a group of strangers tell you how to give your wealth away.
Englelhorn received her millions after her grandmother’s death in 2022, but paid no inheritance tax on the money because Austria abolished such provisions in 2008. That reinforced Engelhorn's view that unearned wealth undermines democracy, a belief that had prompted her to co-found an initiative in 2021 called Tax Me Now, which pushes for tax reform.
Last year, Englelhorn went even further when she established the so-called “Good Council for Redistribution.” The initiative invited a 50-person representative sample of Austria’s population to decide on her behalf how to give away €25 million ($27 million), which represents the bulk of her inheritance and at least 90% of her total wealth. After consulting with experts, the citizen council agreed to allocate the money among 77 organizations, which tackle issues such as tax policy, climate protection, and human rights.
Engelhorn entrusted the group, she says, because "if you want democracy, you have to abolish monarchy and any structure that resembles it"—including inherited privilege.