(14 November 1932 – 7 May 2011)
Early life and family
Sachs was born in southern Germany.[1] His mother was the daughter of Wilhelm von Opel; his father was Willy Sachs, sole owner of Fichtel & Sachs, a leading manufacturer of ball bearings and one of Germany’s biggest automobile suppliers. Willy was known to Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler[2][3] and arrested by the American military after the war but finally declared a follower and released. Gunter Sachs commented on his father’s past in several publications.[4] Willy committed suicide in 1958 by shooting himself dead.[5] Sachs' brother, Ernst Wilhelm, died in an avalanche in 1977.[5]Personal life
A playboy[5] in his early years, Sachs was romantically linked to the former Iranian queen Soraya Esfandiary.[6] He married three times.[6] His first wife, Anne-Marie Faure, died in 1958 during surgery.[6] He courted his second wife, Brigitte Bardot, by flying over her villa on the French Riviera in a helicopter and dropping hundreds of roses. The couple were married on 14 July 1966 in Las Vegas;[1] they divorced in 1969.[6] His final marriage was to Swedish former model, Mirja Larsson, (who was 26 at the time of their engagement[7]) which lasted from 1969 until his death.[6] He had a son Rolf Sachs (born 1955),[5] with his first wife, and a further two sons (Christian Gunnar and Claus Alexander) with his third wife.[8]Sachs became a Swiss citizen in 1976.[5]
Sports
From 1969 until his death, Sachs was the chairman of the St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club.[9] Turn 13 of the St. Moritz-Celerina Olympic Bobrun is named in his honor.Astrological research
In the 1990s, Sachs made the international newspapers again after he commissioned major research into sun sign astrology using large samples.[citation needed] Sachs set out to test the assumptions of astrologers by gathering a team of scientists and statisticians which, over two years, analysed the lives of nearly one million men and women."In every case, there were significant results, way beyond what is explicable through mere coincidence," he is quoted as saying by the Daily Mail newspaper on 6 November 1997.
To facilitate the research he set up the "Institute for the Empirical and Mathematical Examination of the Possible Truth of Astrology in Relation to Human Behaviour".[citation needed] Then, using established statistical techniques and with help from the official statistics office in Switzerland (where the authorities have recorded the date and hour of birth of every citizen since 1875), his team gathered statistics on every aspect of human life.
His methodology and the statistical analysis have been criticized by mathematicians. They found serious errors in all parts and deny any statistical significance after the necessary corrections in his data.[10]
Death
Sachs committed suicide on 7 May 2011 by a gunshot wound to the head[11][12] at his home in Gstaad, Switzerland. The suicide note stated that he acted because of what he defined as "hopeless illness A." (which some have speculated to be Alzheimer's[13]) adding that "The loss of mental control over my life was an undignified condition, which I decided to counter decisively".[6]Literature
- Sachs, Gunter: The Astrology File: Scientific Proof of the Link Between Star Signs and Human Behaviour. Orion Books (December 1999). ISBN 0-7528-1789-2
- Elwell, Dennis: Cosmic Loom, 2nd edition 1999. The Urania Trust. ISBN 0-04-133027-7. Discussion and interpretation of some of Gunter Sachs results and related material.
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