Emil Georg Bührle

Emil Georg Bührle (1890 to 1956) was a German-born Swiss industrialist, armament manufacturer and art collector. Born in Pforzheim, he served as a cavalry officer in the First World War, then joined the Magdeburg machine tool factory, whose purchase of the Swiss Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik Oerlikon in 1923 took him to Zurich as general director the next year. He became majority shareholder in 1929 and sole owner in 1936, took Swiss citizenship in 1937 and built the firm, later Oerlikon-Bührle Holding, into an arms exporter that at the Swiss government's request supplied weapons to both the Allies and Germany and Italy during the war, which made him Switzerland's richest man. His wartime profits funded a large collection of French Impressionist and modernist painting, now held by the E. G. Bührle Foundation, whose provenance and Nazi-era acquisitions remain controversial.