In 1916, in the midst of the First World War, the German Empire created the War Resources Departmentan office dedicated to coordinating private companies to fuel the war effort. It was one of the first great modern experiments in war economics: industrial families, private capital and the State working side by side to sustain the conflict. More than a century later, Europe once again looks to those same dynasties to build its new military muscle.
The silent heirs of rearmament. The story was told last weekend by the Financial Times. Every year, in a discreet business hotel in Germany, a peculiar group gathers: a veterinarian, a stairlift salesman, a jurist, a psychoanalyst, a landscape gardener and several academics. At first glance they have nothing in common.
However, they all share an access key to one of the most important companies on the new European military map. They are the shareholders of Wegmann, the extended and fragmented family that controls half of KNDS, the Franco-German giant behind the Leopard 2 and Leclerc tanks. For decades they were almost invisible. Now they are on the verge of an operation that can make them multimillionaires.
The IPO of a war giant. It so happens that KNDS is preparing its IPO with an estimated valuation of between 15,000 and 20,000 million euros. The plan goes through a complex reorganization: the German State wants to buy about 40% of the private part, while France would also reduce its participation to maintain a balance between both governments.
The rest would remain floating in the market, an industrial and political operation at the same time. KNDS has become a centerpiece of European rearmament since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Berlin wants to ensure it maintains direct influence over a key enterprise for the continent’s military future.
The rearmament business and its dividends. While Europe multiplies military budgets and accumulates debt to finance new purchases, the private owners of KNDS have already begun to reap the benefits. Only in November they distributed an extraordinary dividend of 1,000 million euros together with the French State.
Another additional distribution will arrive before the IPO. Annual dividends have almost doubled since 2021, going from about 34 million to 65 million in 2024. The company’s revenue also skyrocketed: from 2.7 billion in 2021 to 4.4 billion last year. European rearmament is generating new fortunes, and many of them are falling on names almost unknown outside very specific circles.
An industrial history from more than a century ago. The origin of it all dates back to 1882, when Wegmann was a railway carriage manufacturer in Kassel. As the decades passed, the company entered the military industry until it manufactured tanks in the First World War and became part of the industrial machinery of the Third Reich in the Second, using forced labor.
After the war she returned to the railway sector, although the rearmament of West Germany in 1955 took her back to the military business. There began his relationship with the Leopard 1, precursor of the current Leopard 2. Since then, the company was linked to the military history of Germany and, by extension, Europe.
The Bode family and the problem of inheritance. Much of the shareholding structure remains in the hands of the descendants of August Bode, the industrialist who took part in the company in 1912. Today at least twelve of his heirs retain more than a third of Wegmann Holding.
The main figure is Felix Bode, member of the KNDS council and visible representative of the family. Together with his brother Stephan, they could share around 1.2 billion euros if the maximum valuation is met. For decades, the Bodes have been the custodians of this industrial heritage, although within the family not everyone seems to share the same attachment to preserving it.
Leopard 2
The Braunbehrens and the great branch of capital. The other large shareholder family is that of the von Braunbehrens, a lineage that is much more intellectual than industrial. Among its members are musicologists specialized in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, philologists and academics. His shares, inherited from former Wegmann partners, have ended up pooled in a charitable foundation linked to Heidelberg.
That foundation owns 24% of Wegmann Holding and could receive up to 2.4 billion euros from the operation. It is one of the most curious images in this history: part of the money from European rearmament could end up financing studies on historical almanacs and traditional carpets.
A company that almost disappeared. The path to here was not always ascending. In 2015, the merger between the German and French division Nexter was seen within the sector as a defensive move. KNDS was born in part to avoid falling into the hands of Rheinmetall, which had been trying to absorb it for years.
At the time, the tank business seemed stagnant. The war in Ukraine changed everything. The Leopard returned to the center of European military debate and production needs grew rapidly. What a decade ago seemed like just another industrial company is today one of the nerve centers of the new continental defense.
The paradox of the new European military cycle. There is no doubt, history leaves a curious image: while European governments approve multimillion-dollar military spending packages and appeal to collective security, a group of discreet heirs, many long removed from day-to-day industrial life, is about to capitalize on a good part of this new cycle.
They are not businessmen made in the heat of war. They are heirs of an industrial chain that has been going through the great European conflicts for more than a century. For years his wealth remained almost motionless, managed in quiet meetings and buffet lunches. Now rearmament has put new value on that old heritage.
The end of a century-old relationship. Many within KNDS see this sale as the closing of an era. Younger generations no longer feel the same connection to the company that their parents and grandparents did. The idea of guarding a strategic industry for generations seems to be diluted. The move to public capital and the market marks a profound change in the nature of the company.
Thus, what began as a family wagon business, then became a tank manufacturer and today ends up integrated into the great European military reconstruction effort. And at the center of everything are those discreet heirs, almost anonymous until now, who are about to discover that history sometimes takes decades to pay its dividends.
Imagen | 7th Army Training Command, 7th Army Training Command
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