Why an Austrian heiress is giving her £21m fortune to 50 strangers

Marlene Engelhorn, from Austria, is an heiress unlike any other

When you hear the words “Austrian heiress”, Marlene Engelhorn is not the person who would immediately come to mind.

Far from the diamond-decked, champagne-swilling socialite you may expect, the cerebral 32-year-old is an activist and a staunch campaigner for fair taxation and equality.

Now, in a characteristically unusual move, Ms Engelhorn, a descendant of the founder of chemical company BASF, has launched a ballot to choose 50 ordinary Austrian people to decide what should be done with £21.5 million of her fortune.

Austrian heiress Marlene Engelhorn, pictured here at the event "Money is something you talk about!" at the re:publica 23, the festival for the digital society in the Arena Berlin in June.

On Wednesday, 10,000 randomly-selected Austrian citizens aged over 16 began receiving letters inviting them to take part in her initiative, the Good Council for Redistribution. Of those who sign up – either online or by phone – 50 people will be chosen, as well as 15 substitute members selected in case original participants drop out.

"If politicians don't do their job and redistribute, then I have to redistribute my wealth myself," Ms Engelhorn explained. "I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it. And the state doesn't even want taxes on it."

When she inherited her money after the death of her 95-year-old grandmother Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto in September 2022, Ms Engelhorn said she planned to give 90 per cent of it away. She is in favour of higher taxes on the wealthy – and for Austria to reinstate its inheritance tax, which it abolished in 2008, meaning her entire legacy is tax free.

Ms Engelhorn-Vechiatto’s fortune was estimated to be worth more than £3.3 billion. It is not known exactly how much Ms Engelhorn junior inherited, but it is likely to be significant.

Christopher Hofinger, managing director of the Foresight Institute that is supporting Ms Engelhorn in her proposal, said the participants, who will attend a series of meetings in Salzburg later this year, will be "from all age groups, federal states, social classes and backgrounds".

She has been careful to put in place measures to ensure the people who are selected will not face any barriers in attending the meetings, paying them €1,200 [£1,032] for each meeting they attend and offering childcare to those who need it. He said the group would be asked to "contribute their ideas in order to jointly develop solutions in the interests of society as a whole".

Ms Engelhorn will have “no veto rights” over the decisions made by the panel, who will also meet with academics and civil rights organisations to discuss ideas. However, if they cannot come to a consensus on what should be done with the money, it will be returned to the heiress.

If the group is randomly selected, among them will be people who, while maybe not as wealthy as Ms Engelhorn, are privileged compared to others. There are also likely to be people on both sides of the political spectrum, especially in Austria, where support for the far-right Freedom Party of Austria has grown in recent times ahead of this year’s impending elections. Finding a consensus – on anything – could be tricky.

The resulting social experiment would be a good subject for a reality TV show. I’d watch it.