Theo Albrecht, a reclusive billionaire who made his fortune building up one of Germany’s largest retail empires, has died at the age of 88.
Albrecht, an irrepressibly thrifty man who co-founded the Aldi discount market chain, was ranked by Forbes as Germany’s second-richest person — and ninth worldwide — with a fortune of almost 19 billion euros ($24 billion).
One of the most important figures in West Germany’s post-war “Economic Miracle,” he was buried in Essen, an official at the city’s cemetery said. Spiegel magazine’s online edition had reported that he had died on Saturday after a long illness.
Albrecht and his brother Karl, 90, who survives him , took over the small grocery store their mother operated in Essen in 1946, after Theo was released from a U.S. Army detention camp.
They turned the business into one of the nation’s largest food retail chains with a focus on a limited range of goods at bargain-basement prices.
The company they named “Albrecht Discount” — or Aldi — expanded during the post-war boom into a chain with 300 outlets by 1960.
That year the brothers split the company, dividing the German market into North and South and agreeing not to make inroads into each other’s territory, with Theo taking the North. Karl’s wealth is estimated at 21.5 billion euros and he was ranked sixth on the 2009 Forbes list.
Aldi owns the Trader Joe’s grocery chain in the United States.
In 1993 Theo Albrecht turned over day-to-day control of the company, which is now majority controlled by foundations. But he still attended important board meetings, according to the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung Web site. His two sons, Theo Jr. (59) and Berthold (56), work in the Aldi empire.
Theo and Karl Albrecht avoided publicity and the company did not release any pictures of them, a precaution taken after the kidnapping of Theo Albrecht for 17 days in 1971.
The last known picture of Albrecht was taken shortly after his release — a grainy black and white.
He was released after a bishop paid the a roughly $3 million ransom. The kidnappers were caught but half the ransom was never recovered. Albrecht went to court to have the ransom accepted as a business deduction for tax reasons.
