Dietmar Hopp

Hopp grew up in Hoffenheim, a small village in Baden-Württemberg, Southern Germany. His father, Emil Hopp, was a Truppführer of the Nazi Party paramilitary organization Sturmabteilung, and led as a commanding officer the destruction of a synagogue in Hoffenheim during the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938.

In 2009, the Nazi past of his father was publicly addressed for the first time when Menachem Mayer and Fred Raymes, two Jewish brothers who had been persecuted as children and forced into exile, revealed in their memoirs the role Hopps father had played in the destruction of their hometown’s synagogue. Dietmar Hopp supported a film project about their lives.

After graduating from high school with an Abitur, he studied telecommunications engineering in Karlsruhe until 1966. After graduating from university, he worked as a software developer and consultant at IBM.

In 1972, he founded SAP SE with four other former IBM colleagues Hans Werner Hector, Klaus Tschira, Claus Wellenreuther and Hasso Plattner. He remained CEO of SAP SE (then SAP AG) from 1988 until 1998, chairman of its supervisory board from 1998 until 2003 and member of the board from 2003 until 2005. He kept about 10% of the company's shares after leaving the board.

He continues investing into various minor companies and his Dietmar-Hopp-Stiftung, a philanthropic foundation, has spent hundreds of millions of Euros for medicine, education and other charity in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region.

Hopp is married to Anneliese Zeuner, they have two sons, and live in Walldorf, Germany. His son Daniel Hopp (born Oct 1980) is the managing director of the event venue SAP Arena in Mannheim, the ice hockey team Adler Mannheim, the golf club St. Leon Rot as well as the Dietmar-Hopp-Foundation. His son Oliver Hopp (born Apr 1972) heads the golf resort Domaine de Terre Blanche in southern France.