Alfred Lowenstein
Alfred Lowenstein (
March 11,
1877 -
July 4,
1928) was a
Belgian soldier,
aviator,
sportsman, and one of the most powerful
businessmen during the early decades of the
20th century.
Born in
Brussels, Belgium, he was a
wealthy man by the time
World War I erupted in
Europe. He joined the
Belgian armed forces and following the army's retreat,
Captain Alfred Lowenstein was sent to
London,
England where he was placed in charge of
military supplies. At war's end, he maintained a residence in England where he ran an
investment business that made him one of Europe's most powerful
financiers. He partnered with the
Canadian-born investment house of
Sir James Dunn in several
business venture, the duo emerging with more than
£1,000,000 profit from their
1920s investment in
British Celanese alone.
Business success in electric power
Lowenstein also made an enormous fortune providing
electric power facilities for developing countries worldwide through his Belgian-based company,
"Société Internationale d'Énergie Hydro-Électrique" (SIDRO). By the mid 1920s, Lowenstein's reputation was such that he was consulted by
heads of state from around the globe. The British government made him a
Companion in The Most Honourable Order of the Bath.
Disappearance in an airplane
In
1926, he established "International Holdings and Investments Limited" that raised huge amounts of
capital from wealthy
investors wishing to get aboard his bandwagon of success. However, Lowenstein was rebuffed in his attempt to
takeover a Canadian company called
Brazilian Traction, Light, and Power, a huge operation building
infrastructure in
Brazil. While flying on his private
aircraft across the
English Channel, Lowenstein went to the rear of the plane to use the
lavatory. After a noticeable length of time passed, one of his
employees went to check on him and reported that Lowenstein had vanished from the plane. The employee (along with the others on the plane) asserted that they believed Lowenstein had fallen through the plane's rear door and had plunged several thousand
feet to his death in the English Channel.
News, theories, and recovery of the body
News of Lowenstein's demise caused
panic selling in his
corporations' publicly traded shares that immediately plummeted in value by more than fifty percent. His
body was recovered a few weeks later; an
autopsy was performed (at the request of his family) and it revealed no
evidence of
foul play.
Many theories have been put forward as to exactly what had happened to Lowenstein in the back of his plane; some suspected a
criminal conspiracy in which his employees
murdered him. The
New York Times hypothesised that a growing
absent mindedness, noted by many of Lowenstein's acquaintances, may have caused him to walk out the wrong door of the plane. Because he had left behind a tangled web of business ventures, many of which were highly
leveraged, others theorized that his business empire was on the verge of collapse. Some even asserted that corrupt business practices were about to be exposed and that Lowenstein, therefore, committed
suicide. None of these theories were ever proven.
In 1987,
William Norris wrote Lowenstein's story in a book titled
The Man Who Fell From the Sky.
