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The Krupp family, a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have
become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition
and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp in
modern times, merged with Thyssen AG in 1999 to form ThyssenKrupp AG, a large
industrial conglomerate.
 Overview
Friedrich Krupp (1787 – 1826) launched the family's metal-based activities,
building a small steel-foundry in Essen in 1811. His son, Alfred (1812 – 1887),
known as "the Cannon King" or as "Alfred the Great", invested heavily in new
technology to become a significant manufacturer of railway material and
locomotives. He also invested in fluidized hotbed technologies (notably the
Bessemer process) and acquired many mines in Germany and France. He invested in
subsidized housing for his workers and started a program of health and retirement
benefits. The company began to make steel cannons in the 1840s - especially for the
Russian, Turkish, and Prussian armies. Low non-military demand and government
subsidy meant that the company specialized more and more in weapons: by the late
1880s the manufacture of armaments represented around 50% of Krupp's total output.
When Alfred started with the firm, it had five employees. At his death twenty
thousand people worked for Krupp - making it the world's largest industrial
company.
In the 20th century the company was headed by Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach
(1870-1950), who assumed the surname of Krupp when he married the Krupp heiress.
During World War I some criticized Krupp's policy of selling cannons to the Entente
as well as to the Central Powers, a policy which generated high profits. (Ford and
GM allegedly acted similarly during World War II - however, the American parent
companies did not control the German GM and Ford subsidiaries during
hostilities.)
After Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Krupp works became the center
for German rearmament. In 1943, by a special order from Hitler, the company
reverted into a family holding, and Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1907 -
67) took over the management. After Germany's defeat, when Gustav proved incapable
of going on trial, the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal convicted Alfred as a war
criminal (in the so-called "Krupp Trial") for his company's use of slave labor. It
sentenced him to 12 years in prison and ordered him to sell 75% of his holdings. In
1951, as the Cold War developed and no buyer came forward, the authorities released
him, and in 1953 he resumed control of the firm.
In 1999, the Krupp Group merged with its largest competitor, Thyssen AG; the
combined company — ThyssenKrupp AG, became Germany's fifth-largest firm and one of
the largest steel-producers in the world.
Early
history
The Krupp family first appeared in the historical record in 1587, when Arndt Krupp
joined the merchants' guild in Essen. Arndt, a trader, arrived in town just before
an epidemic of plague and became one of the city's wealthiest men by purchasing the
property of families who fled the epidemic. After he died in 1624, his son Anton
took over the family business; Anton oversaw an extensive gunsmithing operation
during the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648), beginning the family's long association
with weapon manufacturing.
For the next century the Krupps continued to prosper, generation after generation,
becoming Essen's most powerful family and accumulating more and more property in
the city. By the mid-eighteenth-century, Friedrich Jodocus Krupp, Arndt's
great-great-grandson, headed the Krupp family. In 1751, he married Helene Amalie
Ascherfeld (another of Arndt's great-great-grandchildren); Jodocus died six years
later, which left his widow to run the business--a family first. The Widow Krupp
greatly expanded the family's holdings over the decades, acquiring a mill, shares
in four coal mines, and (in 1800) an iron forge located on a stream near Essen.
Friedrich's
era
In 1807 the progenitor of the modern Krupp firm, Friedrich Krupp, began his
commercial career at age 19 when the Widow Krupp appointed him manager of the
forge. Friedrich's father, the widow's son, had died 11 years previously; since
that time, the widow had tutored the boy in the ways of commerce, as he seemed the
logical family heir. Unfortunately, Friedrich proved too ambitious for his own
good, and quickly ran the formerly profitable forge into the ground. The widow soon
had to sell it away.
Friedrich continued to squander the family's money. In 1810, the widow died, and in
what would prove a disastrous move, left virtually all the Krupp fortune and
property to Friedrich. Newly enriched, Friedrich decided to discover the secret of
cast (crucible) steel. Benjamin Huntsman, a clockmaker from Sheffield, had
pioneered a process to make crucible steel in 1740, but the British had managed to
keep it secret since then, forcing others to import the material. But after the
Royal Navy began its blockade of Napoleon's empire, British steel became
unavailable, and so Napoleon offered a prize of four thousand francs to anyone who
could replicate the British process. And this prize piqued Friedrich's
interest.
Thus, in 1811 Friedrich founded the Krupp Gusstahlfabrik (Cast Steel Works). He
soon discovered, however, that he would need a large facility with a power source
for success, and so he built a mill and foundry on an Essen stream. Soon Friedrich
started pouring huge sums of time and money into the small, waterwheel-powered
facility, neglecting all other Krupp business. After much work, Friedrich produced
his first smelt steel in 1816.
Alfred's
era
Alfred Krupp (Alfried Felix Alwyn Krupp April 26, 1812 - July
14, 1887), son of Friedrich Carl, was born in Essen. Friedrich's death in 1826
left his widow as owner of the works. Alfred had to leave school at the age of
fourteen and take on the direction of the works. The prospect seemed a
cheerless one. His father had spent a considerable fortune in the attempt to
cast steel in large blocks: in order to keep the works going at all, the
family had to live in extreme frugality, while the youthful director laboured
alongside the workmen by day, and carried on his father's experiments at
night. For the next fifteen years, the works made barely enough money to cover
the workmen's wages.
In 1841, his invention of the spoon-roller brought in enough money for Alfred to
enlarge the factory and spend money on casting steel blocks. In 1847 he made his
first cannon of cast steel. At the Great Exhibition of 1851 he exhibited a 6
pounder (2.7 kg) cannon made entirely from cast steel, and a solid flawless ingot
of steel weighing 2000 pounds (907 kg), more than twice as much as any previously
cast.
Krupp's exhibit caused a sensation in the engineering world, and the Essen works at
once became famous. In 1851, another successful invention, one for the making of
railway tyres, made a profit, which Alfred Krupp devoted partly to enlarging and
equipping the factory, and partly to his long-cherished scheme - the construction
of a breech-loading cannon of cast steel. Krupp himself strongly believed in the
superiority of breech-loaders over muzzle-loaders, on account of the greater
accuracy of firing and the saving of time, but this view did not win general
acceptance in Germany till after the Franco-Prussian war, Krupp supplied his
perfected field-pieces throughout Europe and wished to fulfill an order of guns to
the Hapsburg empire on the eve of the Prusso-Austrian war, much to Bismarck's fury.
His greatest grievance against the French was that the French high command had
refused to purchase his guns despite Napoleon's support. Following the French
defeat he did sell them his guns. Once the quality of this product gained
recognition, the factory developed very rapidly. At the time of Alfred Krupp's
death in 1887 he employed 20,200 men; and including those in works outside Essen,
his rule extended over 75,000 people.
A curious incident took place before the Franco-German war. At the time that war
was approaching Alfred was in the process of building his palatial new home, for
which he needed French granite. Bowing to his demand, both the French and the
Prussian monarchs agreed to have a special shipment of granite delivered to him
from France despite the mutual trade embargo.
Krupp constructed special "colonies" for the employees and their families - with
parks, schools and recreation grounds - while the widows' and orphans' and other
benefit schemes insured the men and their families against anxiety in case of
illness or death. He tried to control most aspects of his worker's lives: he
demanded loyalty oaths, required workers to obtain written permission from their
foremen when they needed to stop working to use the toilet, and issued
proclamations explicitly telling his workers not to concern themselves with
national politics.
A furious reactionary, Alfred frequently proclaimed he wished to have "a man come
and start a counter-revolution" against Jews, socialists and liberals. In some of
his odder moods, he considered taking the role himself. According to William
Manchester, his great grandson Alfried would interpret these outbursts as a
prophecy fulfilled by the coming of Hitler.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Alfred
Krupp - Manifesting Generator - Biography
