Virtually all wealthy German families have been recorded in the basic database since the Middle Ages. In addition, the millionaire lists from 1913, which number several thousand people, were completely recorded and the further course of asset development researched. The data includes family history, business development, and company / ownership data.
In addition to sources such as corporate and industry rankings, wealth rankings and M & A deals, the following sources were also evaluated:
The multi-volume „Yearbooks of Millionaires“ from 1913 published a list of all millionaires in Germany shortly before the First World War, based on tax lists. For each individual an asset including income was published. In total 9.000 to 10.000 people are listed.
These people are recorded in the database and it was researched whether the families are still wealthy today. The data are also fundamental to the research of family trees of old entrepreneurial families.
Main chronicler of the large companies and entrepreneurs of the 1950s / 60s was Kurt Pritzkoleit, who provided in his numerous books very detailed facts. Definitely the best data base and an important intermediate step to research family trees and the history of the companies.
Important publications of this time provide important insights, e.g.
Ferdinand Simoneit, Die neuen Bosse 1966
Peter Brügge – Die Reichen in Deutschland, 1966
Max Kruk – Die oberen 35000, 1967
Hermann Marcus – Die Macht der Mächtigen – 1970
Michael Jungblut – Die Reichen und die Superreichen in Deutschland
For the database the the Hoppenstedt handbooks of medium and large enterprises were completely evaluated for each decade (1964, 1973, 1984, 1994, 2002). This analysis, followed by an internet search for the corporations, provided clues to a very large number of families who had sold their businesses since the 1960s and are barely appearing in rankings today.
In an Excel spreadsheet the 6.300 richest current families were condensed into different categories for further analysis. For more than 4.800 families the contact details of asset management and family offices have already been researched.
The following categories are recorded in the Excel list and can be combined accordingly. This allows a wide range of analysis options:
Owner family, main owner
Only whole families are detected; several billionaires from one family are included in one entry.
Main company on which the wealth is based.
Filtering possible for 24 sectors.
Filtering possible for 204 sub-sectors.
Listed company with IPO year
„Family“ = The company is controlled by the person / family (> 50% in private companies and> 32% in listed companies)
Year of foundation of the enterprise or entrepreneurial activity
„Sale“ = The main family business was sold.
In a second category, the year of sale is recorded.
The company is controlled by a charitable foundation.
The analysis can be limited to specific regions based on postal codes.
Based on the postal codes of the contact data, the analysis can also be limited to federal states.
Business activities (including sales if available), shareholdings, other large assets, foundations (with asset information)
Assets in million €.
Data from the lists of the manager magazine, Forbes etc.
Mainly (minority) religions are included, e.g. Muslims, Jews, Mormons, etc.
Entrepreneurs who have immigrated. The corresponding countries are recorded.
For family businesses, the current sales figures are recorded. This enables a current ranking.
