Heinrich Thyssen

Heinrich Thyssen was a Hungarian-German entrepreneur and art collector, born on 31 October 1875 in Mülheim an der Ruhr as the second son of the German industrialist August Thyssen. After studying chemistry at Heidelberg and philosophy in London, he settled in Hungary in 1905. In 1907 his father-in-law, Baron Gábor Bornemisza de Kászon, adopted him, and he took the hereditary title and the name Thyssen-Bornemisza. After the First World War he moved to The Hague, from where he directed part of the family's commercial and industrial interests, including the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart. In 1926 he declined to take part in the Vereinigte Stahlwerke founded by his elder brother Fritz Thyssen, though he sat on its board, and he kept his inherited foreign investments and some German companies in a separate holding, today the Thyssen-Bornemisza Group. From 1932 he lived in Lugano and built a classic and modern painting collection, which his son Hans Heinrich later sold to Spain. He died in Lugano on 26 June 1947.