Schaefflers enjoyed $35 billion fortune, then things unraveled

Georg’s father and uncle founded Schaeffler — then named INA-Holding Schaeffler KG — in 1946 to make picket handcarts. The firm expanded in 1949 just after Georg’s father, an inventor, made a method to make essential device parts additional reliable.

By the early nineties, Schaeffler experienced additional than twenty,000 staff at crops on 3 continents. When his father died in 1996, Georg Schaeffler inherited eighty p.c of the ball-bearing organization that carries his surname although his mom inherited the relaxation.

Each provide on the supervisory boards of Continental and Schaeffler, which held an first general public supplying in 2015 to assist pay out down its debts.

Though Georg grew up as the heir to an engineering empire, obtaining degrees in organization and legislation, Maria-Elisabeth researched medication and by no means expected to embark on a organization profession.

Born in Prague and elevated in Vienna, she was a medical pupil in the Austrian cash when she achieved Georg’s father. They married when she was 22, and Maria-Elisabeth inevitably grew to become involved in her family’s organization affairs.

“I grew into it action by action,” she mentioned in a 2001 job interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “When my son was old sufficient, my spouse and myself decided I should really get involved professionally. That is why I done — I need to accurate myself — was privileged to entire, an apprenticeship with my spouse, which was exceptional.”