Children kidnapped by Gerhard Delling’s partner: Who is Christina Block?

On Friday, Christina Block addressed the public because her children are being held in Denmark. Who is the Hamburg entrepreneur?

Christina Block, 49 years old, is the daughter of Eugen Block, who founded the “Block House” steakhouse chain in 1968 – a Hamburg success story. The first restaurant opened on Dorotheenstraße in Winterhude and is still at the same location today. There are now 55 restaurants across Europe.

In addition, there is the “Jim Block” brand, founded in 1973, with a total of nine burger restaurants in Germany, as well as the “Fischhaus” hotel on Schaalsee, the “Blockbräu” brewery on the Landungsbrücken, and the five-star hotel “Grand Elysée”. the Rothenbaumchaussee as well as an in-house butcher’s shop and a logistics center.

Christina Block owns 16 percent of the Block Group, which she runs together with her two brothers. The entrepreneur learned the hotel trade from scratch: in 1992 she began training as a hotel manager at the Bayerischer Hof in Munich. After that she worked in restaurants and hotels in Paris, Atlanta and Beijing and did her MBA in Scotland.

In her mid-20s, she set herself the goal of building up a chain of delicatessens. In 2001, she opened the first “Prima Pane” at the Alter Fischmarkt, a shop for ciabatti, baguettes and wraps. In 2003 a second branch was added. In 2012, however, she gave up “Prima Pane” in order to devote herself entirely to the family business, the Block Group, as a member of the advisory board.

However, Block and her brothers do not take on management tasks in the group: According to Eugen Block, only non-family managers should be given operational responsibility. However, his children are to inherit the company equally.

Christina Block has four children together with her ex-husband, the banker Stephan Hensel: three girls and one boy. Gerhard Delling brought three daughters into the patchwork family, two of them from his first marriage and one from his marriage to a television journalist.

Stephan Hensel, who is now supposed to be keeping two of his children in Denmark, also worked in the group’s butcher’s shop for a while, but then went into business for himself. Hensel and Block divorced in 2015 after almost ten years of marriage.

According to the “Hamburger Abendblatt”, there was already a bang when they separated: it was about a lot of money – and according to voices from friends, it was also about “success or failure”. Hensel’s career progressed less quickly than that of his ex-wife. Christina Block is also quoted as saying that she likes the “hooliganism” with four children and the company.