The Aldi kidnap
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2021
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The abduction of Theo Albrecht, who co-founded the discount supermarket chain ALDI with his brother Karl. The brothers shunned publicity and there were few photos of them. So, when two armed men confronted Theo outside his company headquarters in late 1971, they demanded to see ID. They needed to be sure they were taking the right man. Albrecht later tried to claim tax back on the ransom paid to secure his release. He died in 2010, worth an estimated 16 billion dollars. Image: Theo Albrecht in 1971. Credit: EPA
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. This is the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Tim Mansell. |
| 0:48.0 | It's December 1971, West Germany, the weekend before Christmas. |
| 0:54.0 | Television news in grainy black and white is showing an interview with a middle-aged man standing at an open window. |
| 1:07.0 | He's smartly dressed in a jacket and tie. |
| 1:10.0 | His hair is combed carefully back from his forehead. He's polite but reserved. |
| 1:15.3 | He's in good health, he says, but very tired. The whole ordeal has worn him out. His face is not familiar, not then, and not today, even though he was |
| 1:29.1 | one of the richest men in Germany. You've probably never heard of Theo Albrecht, but I bet you've heard of the |
| 1:35.8 | supermarket chain he founded with his brother Carl. They called it Albrecht discount. You probably know it as Aldi. |
| 1:45.0 | Carl and Theo Albrecht born in the 1920s were children of the Depression. |
| 1:51.0 | They grew up in Essen, a city of mines and steelworks. Helping out in the family's |
| 1:56.2 | grocery shop taught them the virtues of thrift at an early age. When World War II ended they took over the business themselves and expanded it fast, |
| 2:06.7 | opening dozens more outlets in West Germany during the boom of the 1950s. Their method was simple, pile them high and sell them cheap. |
| 2:17.0 | Although Dieter Brandus for many years a member of Aldi's Executive Board doesn't put it quite like that. |
| 2:24.0 | Limited number of items of daily consumption, milk, toilet paper, rice and sugar and best possible quality, and then sell it at the lowest possible price. |
| 2:42.4 | And there was none of this in those days. |
| 2:45.0 | Aldi, good, different. |
| 2:47.0 | Aldi, simply smarter shopping. |
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