Friedrich Karl Flick
German businessperson (1927-2006)
Friedrich Karl Flick (3 February 1927 – 5 October 2006) was a German-Austrian industrialist and billionaire.
Early life
He was born in Berlin, the youngest son of Friedrich Flick, an industrialist and convicted Nazi war criminal, and Marie Schuss. After his studies, he worked in his father's company. In 1972, when his father died, he inherited the majority of the family business.
Career
As the sole owner of the Friedrich Flick Industrial Holding (Industrieverwaltung), he had interests in major companies including Daimler-Benz, WR Grace, Gerling Insurance, Buderus, Dynamit Nobel, Feldmühle and others.
In 1975 he sold his part of Daimler-Benz to the Deutsche Bank for more than $1 billion. Major tax liabilities were avoided through "cultivation of the political landscape",—a process that turned into the Flick Affair in 1983 when it became apparent that about $25 million had been paid to German political parties in return for tax cuts and favorable rulings. Although Chancellor Helmut Kohl benefited from the dealings, he claimed he had "no recollections", while others resigned from their posts. In 1985 Flick sold off the remainder of his companies. When Deutsche Bank announced that it had bought his holdings for about $3 billion German marks, Flick retired in Austria, where he became a naturalised citizen.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q263413. VIAF identifies the subject as 42632195. The Library of Congress control number is n84050176. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2006, 1972 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Friedrich Karl Flick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.