Horst van Cuyck

Horst van Cuyck (29 July 1939 - 26 June 2014) was a German business consultant.
Biography
Horst Bernhard Gerd Hans van Cuyck, born in Göttingen on 29 July 1939, was the youngest son of Ernst Merk (1903-1975) and Beatrice van Cuyck (1901-1990). He had two sisters and one brother: Ingrid, Armgard and Albert. His paternal grandmother, Marie Sedlmayr, was a descendant of the famous Munich Sedlmayr family, owners of the Spaten and Franziskaner breweries. His maternal grandfather, Hans Friedrich van Cuyck (1880-1943), married to Carolina Hayotte (1880-1961), was a paediatrician in Krefeld.
Up until 1945, due to the war, Horst van Cuyck mainly stayed in Walchsee (Austria), where the Sedlmayrs had a house. His father was captured in Courland on 11 May 1945 and remained in Russian captivity until October 1955.
Horst van Cuyck returned to Göttingen in 1947, where he attended school. After his Abitur in Bayreuth, he studied Business Administration in Munich and was simultaneously in training at the Deutsche Bank there. He worked as an employee of the Bayerische Vereinsbank in Munich and of Merrill Lynch in Frankfurt and Munich. In 1971, he became Deputy Manager of Merrill Lynch Munich, in 1973 Manager of E.F. Hutton Munich and in 1976 Manager of E.F. Hutton Germany.
From 1977, he became an independent business consultant and a few years later, he founded the company Diomedes AG in Meggen (Switzerland).
Horst van Cuyck had two sons (Christoph, born in 1968 and Alexander, born in 1969) from his first marriage to Helene Marie Haarmann (died 1990) and two children from his second marriage. On 28 January 2013, he married Caroline Gräfin von Arco-Zinnerberg.
Horst van Cuyck died in Munich on 26 June 2014 and was buried in Walchsee.
Heart for art and culture
Horst van Cuyck was an avid collector of art and antiques. It was his passion for the arts that drove him to study Art History and Archaeology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich between 1991 and 1994. From 2010 to 2015, he financed a Chair in Art History and an assistant position at the University of Bern. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Bavarian National Museum and of the Friends of the Munich Philharmonic. Moreover, he belonged to the inner circle of the Munich Glyptothek.
Horst van Cuyck was involved in several exhibitions, including The Legacy of Charlemagne (Ename, Oudenaarde, Provincial Heritage Centre, 9 May to 30 November 2014) and Offiziersehre und Widerstand. Das Reiterregiment 17 und die Wurzeln des Staatsstreiches vom 20. Juli 1944 (Ingolstadt, Bavarian Army Museum, permanent exhibition since 25 November 2014 in Reduit Tilly).
A rich family history
Horst van Cuyck was passionate about history in general and the history of the van Cuyck family, in particular, which goes far back in time and starts in the 11th century with Herman van Malsen and Ida van Boulogne, the sister of Godfrey of Bouillon and daughter of Eustace II, Count of Boulogne and St Ida. Their descendants developed a power base in the area of Cuijk (Netherlands), but also in Utrecht, Liège, Namur and Hoogstraten. They were lords, but also, and above all, diplomats who often carried out foreign assignments on behalf of English and French royalty or comital and ducal families. From the 16th century, the van Cuycks were mayors or aldermen in Utrecht. One branch of the family founded a large peat company. They were, and remained, Catholic and that is why, in the 17th century, they moved to the area of Afferden (which belonged to the Southern Netherlands). A little later, they crossed the border and continued their history in Germany.
Coat of arms
The coat of arms consists of three different elements:
* In the first and the fourth quarter, we identify the coat of arms of the Counts of Boulogne, a reference to Eustace II, Count of Boulogne and his wife St Ida, the parents of Ida of Boulogne who became the matriarch of the van Cuyck family.
* In the second and the third quarter, we can see the coat of arms of the lords of Cuijk, obviously a reference to the medieval history of the van Cuyck family.
* Above the escutcheon we see a gold crown, a reference to the comital title of the lords of Cuijk.
The coat of arms of Horst van Cuyck is registered on the roll of arms of the ‘’Münchner Herold’’ under No. 092/11899.

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