Marlene Engelhorn

Marlene is a 30 year old long-term student of German literature and language who will always find an excuse to read. Upon receiving a pretzel-like around the corner announcement of a large inheritance, she was forced to put the foot down on principle. So, she started talking to everyone she knew and trusted about everything related to wealth and power. This journey has had her figure out family dynamics, work with the Guerrilla team on radical philanthropy, get in touch with organisations such as Resource Generation and it gave her enough determination to co-found taxmenow, an initiative of wealthy people using their privileged access to mainstream media in order to talk about the democratic necessity of wealth taxation so as not to perpetuate an elitist system of inequality in ownership of land wealth and power. To her, giving back has become redistribution and it simply states the fact that wealth comes from society and it must stay in flux between individuals and communities. She finds not only relief in letting go of excess wealth and power but also sees it to be a democratic duty of those who – for whatever reason – hold excessive access to wealth. She keenly reads constitutions and the universal declaration of human rights to figure out how we can tell a legal story of sharing among equals. Among the stronger voices in her thoughts are Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Katharina Pistor, Fran Lebowitz, Ariadne von Schirach and Herta Müller.