Poor Rich Boy: Carl Hirschmann

Carl Hirschmann himself might not be the most interesting person, but he certainly makes a good example for the old adage of poor rich boy. Born into lots of money to come, he seems the epitome of a slightly directionless young man whiling away time in pointless frivolities.

Carl Hirschmann

The history of the Hirschmann family is short and sweet. Carl Hirschmann senior founded a company called Jet Aviation. The company caters to the superrich of this planet in several ways. On one level, it is an engineering company that upgrades the planes of discerning individuals with the bare necessity you just must have for a 30 minute flight from Paris to Nice, like 3D cinema, golden fittings in the bathroom, and individually fitted leather reclining chairs. On the other level, it rents out exclusively appointed small aircraft including crew for your shopping trip to London or Milan.

His son, Carl Hirschmann junior is noted for only one thing, he sold his father’s business for an estimated 750 Million Dollars. That brings us to the poor rich boy Carl Hirschmann himself, already. The Hirschmann family so far has managed to stay out of the papers and the news in an astonishing way and is best known for two things: They are of no importance in Switzerland, and they have made no claim to any celebrity status. So what is there to do for the son?

Step one: Make yourself a celebrity. There would have been several possibilities to get onto the (easy to climb) celebrity summit in Switzerland. One obvious solution would have been sustained charity work. But work is probably not what Carl Hirschmann is used to, so instead he opted to claim to have had a fling with Paris Hilton. This announcement not only brought him no celebrity, it made him look outright ridiculous.

Step two: Find something to do. It may be supposed that his choice of work reflected the fact that his celebrity status had failed or maybe it was a publicity stunt in regard to that venture. Carl Hirschmann opened a night spot called Saint Germain in Zurich, which usually is called a celebrity venue. The real celebrities, though, go to the Kronenhalle. Be that as it may be, he opened the Saint Germain with money from the family.

And with that we are in the middle of all the quandaries of a poor rich boy. Coming from a family with no claim to fame, how do you get it to an extent that others from older families have? The Paris Hilton ploy might look ridiculous, but maybe it was quite realistic. This doesn’t mean it is true, but it served a purpose maybe just as well as charitable work would have done. Because people would just have said: That’s easy for him to do, with all that money.

Opening the Saint Germain opened the second quandary. If the venue is a success (which I can’t judge due to lack of information available), people will just say: That’s easy for him to do, with all that money. If it isn’t, we either won’t hear about it, or it will be commented with: What else could you expect?

But building his life on the said premises brought one thing on (of the ‘I could have told you so’ variety): Unwanted publicity. With his face and financial circumstances in the open, he became the object of slander and money hunters. If you think money hunters are mainly found in Ponzi schemes or other frauds, you are wrong. Most money hunters these days work by means of the courts. In Britain you get the adverts daily on TV from lawyers who will claim any damage they can get for you in any which way. They are the tip of an ice berg in today’s society of greed.

One of these schemes was the one I reported on in the Sassy Headline article. As an update to that, the prosecutor general of Zurich has meanwhile issued the statement that the arrest was done on charges of sexual harassment. That leaves things wide open as to truth or fiction. At the same time, though, Carl Hirschmann was found guilty by a court in Basel for hitting a man in the face in a bar. The claimant had asked for 100,000 Dollars in damages, and was awarded 5,000. I have not followed the case closely, therefore I can’t tell if it is revision or not.

Poor rich boy, he seems to prove an old truth about financial dynasties: The first generation builds the fortune, the second preserves it, and the third squanders it. But whatever he will do, there will always be the detractors who’ll put it down to money alone.

Further reading
Zurich is More Than Banks
The Beginnings of Investigative Journalism
How Money Came to Dominate Our Lives