The Glock handgun’s reclusive billionaire inventor, Gaston Glock, who ‘revolutionised the world of small arms’, has died aged 94.
The Glock company said in a statement that the life’s work of its founder would ‘continue in his spirit’.
As well as being utilised by security personnel, armed forces, gun owners and criminals worldwide, the weapon has also become American pop culture staple, featuring in several Hollywood blockbusters.
Despite his success, Glock, who once knocked out a professional wrestler hire to assassinate him, has been portrayed as a reclusive character who enjoyed spending much of his time at an Austrian lakefront estate.
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He managed to avoid media coverage for most of his life, but gained attention in 2012 when a book about his business was published, after a divorce from his first wife Helga in 2011.
Gaston Glock during an event in Velden, Austria on October 23, 2008
A Glock 17 pistol. The weapon was an American pop culture staple, featuring in several Hollywood blockbusters
Charles Ewert, who managed Glock’s affairs in Luxembourg, attempted to have him killed in the late ’90s.
The hired attacker, who was a professional wrestler, hit him seven times on the head with a rubber mallet but Glock, who was 70 at the time, managed to knock him out.
Ewert – also known as Panama Charly – was sentenced to 20 years in jail for having organised the attempted murder in a Luxembourg car park.
‘Gaston Glock charted the strategic direction of the Glock Group throughout his life and prepared it for the future,’ the company said.
It also noted that he had ‘revolutionised the world of small arms’ and ‘succeeded in establishing the Glock brand as the global leader in the handgun industry’.
Glock was born in 1929 and went on to study mechanical engineering in Vienna.
In 1963 he founded his own consumer goods firm in the town of Deutsch-Wagram, 20 kilometres (12 miles) outside of the capital.
By the early 1980s Glock had branched into military supplies and decided to answer a call for tenders put out by the Austrian army, which wanted to update its pistols.
He devised the Glock, a firearm that revolutionised the field: made largely of non-metal components, lighter, easier to take apart, more reliable, able to carry more bullets than other brands.
Once the contract with the Austrian army was finalised, the company’s fortunes soared when it entered the American market before taking off globally.
Gaston Glockand his wife Kathrin Tschikof. Glock married Tschikof, who is 51 years his junior, in 2011
Between 2014 and 2017 alone, the company’s worth is estimated to have risen by almost 50 percent and in 2021, Forbes estimated the fortune of Gaston Glock and his family at $1.1 billion.
American pop culture in particular helped Glock attain its iconic status.
‘At the end of the 1990s, Glock was the most mentioned brand’ in the American Top 50 singles chart, Fritz Ofner, one of the directors of a film about the Glock, said in 2018.
Glock designed and patented a lightweight 9-millimetre semiautomatic handgun, capable of shooting 18 rounds easy to reload.
Paul Barrett, the author of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, wrote that the Glock was now ‘the Google of modern civilian handguns: the pioneer brand that defines its product category’.
The Glock’s ubiquity in pop culture saw countless rappers including the Wu-Tang Clan weave mentions of the gun into their lyrics.
In 2014, his then ex-wife unsuccessfully attempted to sue Glock for $500 million, accusing him of racketeering and of diverting funds from the company, as well as treating his family ‘with the senseless and self-destructive rage of Shakespeare’s King Lear’.
The lawsuit made a host of claims about how Glock had spent the money, including hiring strippers to represent the company at trade shows.
In 2011 Glock married a woman 51 years his junior, Kathrin Tschikof.
Glock and his company were not reticent about using legal means to defend their reputation, but this wasn’t always successful.
In 2012 the company lost a long-running lawsuit for defamation against the human rights organisation Amnesty International, which had drawn attention to reports of a Glock weapon being used by rebels in Sudan.
Glock is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.