High life | 14 May 2011

Why would a German playboy-billionaire industrialist with a large family and lots of old and good friends have dinner in Gstaad with one of his closest buddies, then go up to his chalet and put a bullet in his brain? As of writing, Gunter Sachs’s suicide is a mystery. But Gunter was always somewhat mysterious, and I have known him since the late Fifties. His uncle, Fritz von Opel, was the heir to the Opel car fortune and lived the grand life in St Moritz and St Tropez, where he had opulent houses. Von Opel was his uncle on his mother’s side. His father was also an industrialist — Sachs ball bearings, machines or something like that — and was probably richer than the Opels. Fritz von Opel’s son, Ricky, blew his share; Gunter’s side multiplied it. But his father did commit suicide, so escaping the claustrophobia of life and old age was in Gunter’s genes.