Maritime legend dies after falling down stairs on wife’s birthday

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Bertram Rickmers († 71), one of the best-known German shipowners, was fatally injured when he fell down the stairs at his villa in Hamburg on his wife’s 60th birthday. A doctor the family calls can no longer help Rickmers. It is being investigated why Rickmers fell down the stairs and whether there was a health-related reason (such as a heart attack). As reported by “Bild,” Rickmers leaves behind two daughters, a son, and six grandchildren in addition to his wife.

The name should be familiar to anyone who has visited Hamburg in Switzerland. The museum ship “Rickmer Rickmers”, a tall ship built in 1896, has been in the heart of the city of Hamburg since 1983 and is the city’s unofficial landmark. The ship is owned by the Rickmers Foundation. The Rickmers family of owners has been active and very wealthy for five generations.

Bertram Rickmers was born in Bremerhaven (Germany), attended a noble boarding school and went to sea himself at a young age. After joining his uncle’s Rickmers shipyard in Bremerhaven, he became self-employed in 1982 and built an extensive network of different companies, each related to the shipping business. In 2017, his life’s business, Rickmers Holding, went bankrupt after years of trouble in the shipping industry. Due to the extraordinary bankruptcy case – we’re talking creditors’ claims in excess of one billion euros, Rickmers was defamed as a “bankrupt shipowner” and a “Sylt party animal”. He lost 300 million euros.

But multimillionaire Rickmers responded. He regained the trust of the banks. In 2019, he founded Asian Spirit Steamship Company, which currently owns eleven cargo ships and orders more. In 2022, his son Rickmer Clasen added Rickmers to the company. Business is booming as charter prices for ships have skyrocketed lately. But the second spring of owner and boss Bertram Rickmers came to an abrupt end. According to media reports, the global shipping industry is in shock.

Source :Blick