Krupp
Krupp is the name of a prominent, 400 year-old German family from Essen, famous for their steel production and armament manufacture. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG in modern times, merged with Thyssen in 1999 to create ThyssenKrupp AG, a large industrial conglomerate.
Overview
The metal business was started by Friedrich Krupp (1787-1826), who built a small steel foundry in Essen in 1811.
His son, Alfred (1812-87), "the Cannon King," invested heavily in new technologies (notably the Bessemer process), acquired many mines in Germany and France, and became a significant manufacturer of railway material and locomotives. He also 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 for the Russian, Turkish, and Prussian armies especially. 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 varied around 50% of the total output. When Alfred started the firm, it had five employees. At his death there were twenty thousand - the world's largest industrial company.
In World War I some criticized Krupp's policy of selling cannons to the Central Powers as well as to the Entente, a policy which turned out to be highly profitable. Ford and GM are accused of doing the same during World War II however the German subsideries of GM and Ford were not controlled by the American parent company during the war.
After Hitler came to power, the Krupp works became the center for German rearmament. In 1943, by a special order from Hitler, the company was reconverted into a family holding, and Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1907-67), son of Gustav Krupp, took over the management. After Germany's defeat and the incapability of Gustav to be tried, Alfried was tried as a war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials for his company's use of slave labor and he was sentenced to 12 years and ordered to sell 75% of his holdings. In 1951, as the Cold War developed and no buyer could be found, he was released and in 1953 he resumed control of the firm.
In 1999 the Krupp Group merged with its largest competitor, Thyssen AG; the combined company—Thyssen-Krupp AG, became Germany's fifth largest firm and one of the largest steel producers in the world.
Early history
The first historical appearance of the Krupp family is 1587, when a man named Arndt Krupp joined the Merchants' Guild in Essen. Arndt was a trader, who took advantage of an epidemic of plague to buy up property around the city, becoming one of its wealthiest men. He died in 1624, during the Thirty Years War. His son Anton took over the family business; his tenure is notable for extensive gunsmithing during the war, beginning the family's long association with arms 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, the head of the Krupp family was Friedrich Jodocus Krupp, Arndt's great-great-grandson. In 1751 he married Helene Amalie Ascherfeld (another of Arndt's great-great-grandchildren); Jodocus died 6 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 4 coal mines, and in 1800, an iron forge located on a stream near Essen.
Friedrich's era
In 1807 the modern progenitor of the Krupp firm, Friedrich Krupp, began his business career at age 19 when the Widow Krupp appointed him manager of the forge. Friedrich's father, the Widow's son, had died when Friedrich was 8; since that time, the Widow had tutored the boy in the ways of business, as he was 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 was soon forced to sell it away.
Afterward, Friedrich continued to stumble into ways to lose the family's money. But 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 his goal would be 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 other Europeans to import the material. But after the Royal Navy began its blockade of Napoleon's empire, this option was no longer open, and so Napoleon offered a prize of four thousand francs to anyone who could replicate the British process. It was this prize that 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 if he was to succeed, and so he built a mill and foundry on an Essen stream. Soon Friedrich was 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.
to be finished
Alfred's era
to be written
Fritz's era
to be written
Gustav's era
to be written
World War I
Rebuilding
World War II
to be written
Alfried takes over
Expansion
Slave labor controversy
Aftermath
Post-war history
to be written
Source
- Manchester, William (1968). The Arms of Krupp: 1587-1968. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
de:Krupp