Carl Hirschmann and Noemi Lenoir: Reality Check on Press Rumours

British and international press and media latched on to the alleged suicide attempt of VIP Noemi Lenoir, a person so unimportant she didn’t even make the list of the most unimportant VIPs in the world. In an attempt to spice up the story to news level, they added unchecked rumour but didn’t do their homework. 

Paris Hilton and Carl Hirschmann

Reporting the sordid story of an alleged suicide attempt of a working single mother was obviously not enough of news for the press and other media. To link the father of her child, someone called Makelele, into the story is understandable. Makelele shares the non-VIP status of Lenoir; seemingly he is (like millions of others) someone who plays a bit of football (soccer).

Desperate to make at least some impression, they then cited ‘friends’ of Lenoir linking her to non-VIP Carl Hirschmann which finally allowed them to introduce the name of Paris Hilton into the story. Mission accomplished, at last a VIP from the D-list. Journalism must be a tortuous profession. But in doing so, they showed themselves as the incompetent scribblers they usually are, they didn’t bother to check on any of the ‘facts’ they reported.

In the reports, press and media placed Carl Hirschmann in Zurich, currently on bail for the duration of an investigation into alleged sexual offences. Actually, Hirschmann is in St. Tropez, in Southern France, and nowhere near Switzerland. Last week, the bail requiring him to remain in Switzerland had been temporarily lifted (for a small deposit of £300,000) to allow him to visit his father at their family estate in St. Tropez.

Father Carl Hirschmann Jr. is reported as suffering from pancreatic cancer, but there is no official statement from the family on that account. Whatever the reasoning behind the Swiss judge’s decision to let him go, Carl Hirschmann left Switzerland on Friday by private plane for Nice. He was conveyed by limousine straight to St. Tropez. Rumours that he hosted a big party at Cannes on Saturday haven’t been substantiated. It is also unlikely, as there are too many real VIPs throwing well planned bashes right now.

The tortuous way to link Hirschmann into the Lenoir story was done by an alleged romantic tie between the two. In view of his direction of travel, I would say that the hospital in Paris where Noemi Lenoir was treated over the weekend was not on the agenda. The whole ‘romantic tie’ story is based on a coincidental snap showing the two in Zürich and the stories of all those ‘friends’ of Lenoir’s.

Suicides often are the result of a total breakdown of communication with friends and family. It is doubtful that anybody should be called a friend at such a time. And all those ‘friends’ inventing Lenoir’s life for her should be ashamed of themselves, as they obviously failed her and just don’t know anything. The involvement between Hirschmann and Lenoir might be as true as Carl’s self-invented involvement with Paris Hilton.

As usual: It’s all true, it said so in the newspapers. 

Article first published on Triond on 27/05/09.

Further reading
When a Sassy Headline Becomes an Embarrassment
Carl Hirschmann: Poor Rich Boy
Carl Hirschmann: Home Theatre

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