The billionaire, 74, was said by his family to have been “broken” by the sight of his business empire, which ranged from pharmaceuticals to cement, crumbling. He died on Monday evening, apparently hit by a train a few hundred metres from his home in southern Germany.
A statement from his family said he had taken his own life. “The desperate situation of his companies caused by the financial crisis, the uncertainties of the last few weeks and his powerlessness to act, have broken the passionate family entrepreneur.”
The publicity-shy billionaire was one of Germany's most powerful industrialists having built his family's small pharmaceutical business into a 120-firm conglomerate employing 100,000 people. He was regarded as a modest man who was known to bicycle to work.