Cigarette heir Jan Philipp Reemtsma sold his inheritance and was kidnapped for a 30 million mark ransom

Philipp F. Reemtsma ran Germany's largest cigarette maker. In 1933 and 1934 he gave large sums to Nazi organisations to protect the firm. Göring shielded him in a 1934 tax case and in 1939 named him a war economy leader. The firm supplied cigarettes to the Wehrmacht. He died in Hamburg on 11 December 1959. His son Jan Philipp was seven. The will let him control his inheritance at 26^†. In 1980 he sold the majority stake to the Herz family of Tchibo, for $200 million by a 1996 press report. His Hamburg Institute for Social Research, founded in 1984, opened an exhibition on Wehrmacht crimes in 1995. It was withdrawn in November 1999 over errors in about 20 of more than 1,400 photos and returned revised from 2001 to 2004^†. On 25 March 1996 four men seized him at his home in Hamburg-Blankenese. He was held 33 days. The demand rose from 20 to 30 million marks, the largest ransom paid in Germany to that date. By 2008 only about 2 million marks had resurfaced. Thomas Drach, who collected the money, received 14 years and 6 months in 2001^† and was released in 2013. On 4 January 2024 a Cologne court gave him 15 years plus preventive detention for armed robberies of cash transports and attempted murder^†. The Federal Court of Justice rejected his appeal in November 2025^†. In 2026 Reemtsma is 73, and his institute is set to close in 2028.