Ronald Lauder
Ronald Stephen Lauder ( born February 26, 1944 in New York City ) is an American entrepreneur, president of the New York Museum of Modern Art, and since July 2007, President of the World Jewish Congress ( WJC ).
Life
Ronald Lauder comes from the entrepreneur Lauder family and is the second son of Joseph Lauder and Estee Lauder. His older brother Leonard A. Lauder. He studied at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and later at the Universities of Paris and Brussels. In the early 1980s Lauder as a department manager ( Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy) worked in the Ministry of Defense of the United States. 1986 Ronald Reagan appointed him as successor of Helene von Damm to the United States Ambassador in Austria. After his return in 1987 he began to work in the family business.
Forbes estimates his fortune at around U.S. $ 2.6 billion; according to the Forbes list of U.S. dollar billionaires he is thus ranked 367th
Politically Lauder is a Republican and is the Israeli Likud close. He applied in 1989 to the office of mayor of New York, but lost in the primary of his party against Rudy Giuliani. Yet as a candidate of the Conservative Party, he joined, but did not come with 9465 votes over the fourth square. During his tenure as U.S. ambassador he defended the travel ban on the former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim. Austria raised allegations of illegal export of images and complained about public appearances of the Ambassador with bodyguards.
In 1987, Ronald Lauder, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation. The foundation is funded Jewish educational institutions in 16 countries to date. In Austria it supports the Lauder Chabad Campus in Vienna, a Jewish educational institution from kindergarten to graduation; they also financed since 1998 the office of the Anti-Defamation League in Europe based in Vienna. In Germany they support the Jewish house of study at the Berlin Rykestraße and a Jewish elementary school in Cologne. 1989 Lauder visited the Auschwitz concentration camp and has since supported the preservation of the Auschwitz- Birkenau. Internationally, Lauder engaged for numerous other Jewish institutions.
Lauder is heavily involved in relation to the return during the Nazi era looted art ( restitution ). He is chairman, he founded in 1997 Commission for Art Recovery. In June 2006, Lauder purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan in 1907, painted by Gustav Klimt portrait " Adele Bloch -Bauer I". The New York Times gave a purchase price of U.S. $ 135 million ( € 106.7 million ). The previously located in Berlin's Brücke Museum, also to Jewish heirs restituted paintings Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner acquired Lauder for the Neue Galerie on 8 November 2006 for U.S. $ 38.1 million ( EUR 29.7 million ).
Lauder is involved in the media company Central European Media Enterprises, which is involved in a costly legal dispute with the Czech state. At the former Checkpoint Charlie Lauder was temporarily involved in a construction project, which he has, however, now abandoned. He had also offered to invest at Tempelhof airport and is therefore criticized the Governing Mayor of Berlin for the closure of the airport.
Lauder married in 1967 Jo Carole button, with whom he has two daughters, Aerin and Jane. Since 2006, the couple is separated.
New Gallery
Since 2001, Lauder shows in New York, his art collection in the museum with the German name Neue Galerie, which includes art treasures from two and a half millennia. In addition, there are temporary exhibitions.