Dieter Schwarz, 86, is the man who built the Lidl (and Kaufland) empire, and in 2025 he was named Germany’s richest person for the third year in a row. According to the ranking compiled by German business monthly Manager Magazin, his fortune reached 46.5 billion euros (about $50 billion), up from 43.7 billion euros the year before. [1]
It is a highly unusual story — and one lived, from start to finish, far from the spotlight.
A family business that became a global giant, led by a man shrouded in mystery
An air of mystery has always surrounded Dieter Schwarz. Born in 1939 in the German town of Heilbronn, he was the son of a grocer, Josef, who set up a wholesale fruit business with a partner named Lidl.
After finishing high school, Dieter went to work alongside his father, who in 1973 opened his first supermarket — clearly modeled on Aldi, the German discounter famous for rock-bottom prices and a vast product range.
The name chosen for the store was Lidl. «Schwarz» was ruled out because in German it means black.
With the name settled and the business defined, the boom was immediate. Just four years after opening, in 1977, Lidl already ran a network of 33 stores. That same year Josef Schwarz died and Dieter took the helm. The company kept expanding — including with the launch of the Kaufland hypermarket chain — and today counts more than 13,000 stores in every corner of the planet.
One of the most striking features of Lidl’s rise is Dieter Schwarz’s decision to avoid every kind of spotlight and public event. It is no surprise that many of his fellow townspeople have said they would not recognize him if they saw him.
That Schwarz is a decidedly atypical entrepreneur is clear from a corporate move he made in the 1990s. At the end of the last millennium, Lidl’s creator chose to step down as chief executive and transfer 99.9% of his personal shareholding into a foundation bearing his name — while keeping 100% of the voting rights of a separate operating company. The step was seen as necessary to secure the long-term independence of the group’s various businesses.
A new focus on cloud and artificial intelligence
Among the Schwarz Group companies that have drawn the most attention in recent months is Schwarz Digits, which specializes in digital services.
Digits was born to run the IT systems, cloud, and cybersecurity of the Lidl store chain, but it proved so successful that in 2023 it was spun off into a stand-alone operating unit.
In just a few years, the Schwarz Group’s tech arm has gone from building in-house management software to serving clients such as the Port of Hamburg, SAP, and the Bayern Munich soccer club, while managing roughly 7,500 employees.
Meanwhile its horizons have widened and, as was easy to predict, the first investments in artificial intelligence have followed. Schwarz has acquired a significant stake in the German start-up Aleph Alpha, and through his charitable foundation he has created — in partnership with the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg — the first European campus dedicated to AI: an EU «Silicon Valley» based in his hometown of Heilbronn.
For a man who has spent a lifetime avoiding cameras, it is a fitting final act: building an empire that keeps growing while its founder remains, to almost everyone, a face no one can quite place.
Editor’s note
This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Andrea Fabbri on August 06, 2026 as «La storia di successo di Dieter Schwarz, l’uomo più ricco della Germania grazie all’impero Lidl». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.
