PEEBLES PROFILES
EPISODE 190
Bertha and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach
HEIRESS TO A FAMILY DYNASTY
Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was born Bertha Krupp on March 29, 1886 in Essen, home of the Krupp family company since the 16th century. Her mother was Baroness Margrethe von Enden.
When Bertha was born, Krupp was owned and managed by her grandfather Alfred. Upon his death in 1887, her father Friedrich inherited ownership and control. However, the absence of a male heir put the future of the company in doubt… as Bertha’s only sibling was her younger sister Barbara.
When Friedrich Krupp died in 1902, young Bertha was the heiress to the family interests. But it was considered unsuitable for a woman to exercise control over the vast Krupp coal, steel, and state-connected armaments empire. Kaiser Wilhelm II personally led a search for a suitable husband for Bertha.
Enter Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach…
Sixteen years older than Bertha, Gustav was born in the Dutch city of The Hague on August 7, 1870. He was a grandson of Henry Bohlen and a relative of Charles E. Bohlen and Karoline of Wartensleben. When the Kaiser was searching for a suitable man to lead the Krupp empire, Gustav was a Prussian diplomat serving at the Vatican in Rome.
Bertha and Gustav were married on October 15, 1906. At the wedding, the Kaiser announced that Gustav would be allowed to add the Krupp name to his own. The couple became known as Bertha and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. Gustav assumed executive control of the company and became chairman in 1909. Although Bertha became sole owner of the company, her sister Barbara received a large cash settlement.
The couple would have eight children, Of them, only the eldest son Alfried took the surname Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. Claus and Eckbert were killed on action during the Second World War. Harald spent ten years as a captive in the Soviet Union.
After 1910, Krupp became a member and major funder of the Pan German League (Alldeutscher Verband), which mobilized popular support in favor of the 1912 and 1913 army bills. This tandem of legislation raised Germany’s standing army to 738,000 men. Krupp’s sole proviso in providing the finance was that the rank and file should never know who was paying the bills!
BIRTH OF A MILITARY MACHINE
The name Krupp first appeared in historical records in 1587 when Arndt Krupe (later Krupp) joined the merchants’ guild in Essen, located in the heart of the Ruhr Valley. He was a trader who arrived in town just before an outbreak of the plague. Arndt ran a flourishing business in the wine and grocery trade. Soon, he became one of Essen’s wealthiest men by purchasing the properties of those families who fled the epidemic. His children married into the town’s wealthiest families.
After Arndt died in 1624, his son Anton took over the family business. Anton oversaw a gunsmithing operation during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). It was the first instance of Krupp’s long association with arms manufacturing.
For the next century, the Krupp family continued to acquire property and became involved in municipal politics in Essen. By the middle of the 18th-century, Friedrich Jodocus Krupp (Arndt’s great-great-grandson) headed the 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). Helene greatly expanded the family’s holdings over the decades, acquiring a fulling mill, shares in four coal mines, and (in 1800) an iron forge located on a stream near Essen.
But the family’s rise to international significance did not begin until the arrival of Friedrich Krupp. During the Napoleonic Wars, Friedrich founded the Gusstahlfabrik (Cast Steel Works) in 1811… and started smelted steel production five years later when the German Confederation was established. His son (and successor) Alfred was eccentric, had difficulty sleeping, and was suspicious of everyone! However, he succeeded brilliantly in the art of casting steel. Alfred was the Krupp responsible for the beginning of the munitions business.
Nicknames “Alfred the Great” and “The Cannon King”, he perfected his technique by manufacturing rails and seamless-steel railroad wheels before turning to guns. In 1851, Alfred’s cast-steel cannon was the sensation of London’s Crystal Palace Exhibition. Eight years later, Krupp became the arms manufacturer for the Kingdom of Prussia.
In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the Prussians largely owed their triumph to Krupp’s field guns. Their accuracy and range easily outperformed Napoleon III’s bronze artillery. Almost overnight, Krupp guns became a status symbol among the nations of 19th-century.
In many ways, Alfred Krupp was the founder of modern warfare. But he was also the first industrialist to introduce sick pay, a free hospital for his workmen and their families, pensions, and homes for retired workers. By the time of Alfred’s death in the summer of 1887, he had armed forty-six nations! As much as any other single individual, Alfred had set the stage for the Great War…
Friedrich Alfred Krupp (Alfred’s son) was born in 1854. He shared his father’s uncanny business sense and remarkable gift for management. By doing so, Friedrich tripled his own fortunes in a seven-year span. But public outrage over events in his private life plagued him. As a result, Friedrich committed suicide in 1902 at the age of only forty-eight… leaving the company to his daughter Bertha… and her husband Gustav.
THE GREAT WAR
When the First World War began in August 1914, Krupp was the largest firm in Europe. It had over forty THOUSAND employees in Essen. They manufactured large mortars that the German Army used to bombard forts in Belgium and France. German troops nicknamed the enormous howitzer Dicke Bertha (“Big Bertha”), in honor of the woman who owned the family business.
By the end of 1917, Krupp was producing nine million shells and three thousand cannons a month, including the famous “Big Bertha”. Krupp also produced ships, submarines… and was heavily involved in nearly every area of war technology!
Soon the name “Big Bertha” spread to the other side of the front line. Allied troops used the translated name to refer to all German long-range artillery… particularly those that shelled Paris in the early weeks of the German 1918 spring offensive. “Big Bertha” entered the lexicon with the introduction of the Paris Gun, an artillery piece constructed of three barrels welded together with a range of seventy-five miles! Its appearance was a major surprise to Parisians who had previously only come under attack from enemy aircraft, since previous artillery reached a maximum of only thirty miles.
REBUILDING AND REARMING
The end of the war was (unsurprisingly) disastrous to the Krupp firm. Most of the factories were forcibly dismantled and given to the victors. In addition, Gustav Krupp was formally branded a war criminal. Along with Bertha and family, he retreated into the Austrian Alps to the secluded Blühnbach Castle, which they had bought from the Habsburgs after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
In exile, Gustav immediately tried to overturn the effects of the Treaty of Versailles. He was instrumental in various evasions that allowed German rearmament. However, he was convicted by a French military court on charges of “inciting a riot”. In fact, several Krupp workers were killed by French soldiers.
Nevertheless, Gustav served a year in prison… even though he had been sentenced to fifteen! Thus, he missed the worst era of German hyperinflation… and soon, Gustav began the recovery of the firm. Krupp openly manufactured civilian trinkets and invested in the latest equipment that would ultimately be turned to other purposes (the so-called “black production”).
In the 1930s, as the Treaty of Versailles was being systematically dismantled… and with Germany preparing for war, Krupp once again turned to making armaments. By the time the Second World War began in September 1939, Gustav was suffering from failing health. It declined steeply when he suffered a stroke in 1941, which caused partial paralysis.
Two years later, a decree known as the Lex Krupp was issued, which passed full ownership of the Krupp empire (vital to the war effort) from Bertha to her son Alfried. When he assumed full control of the company, Bertha took her ailing Gustav to a family estate in the Tyrol… where they remained until the end of the war.
FINAL YEARS
After the fighting ended in Europe, Gustav was indicted as a war criminal. However, due to his stroke, Gustav was declared medically unfit to stand trial. He eventually died in his residence near Werfen, Salzburg (in Austria) on January 16, 1950 at the age of seventy-nine.
The next year, Bertha returned with her son Alfried to Essen, where the latter resumed control of the company. Although it no longer made armaments, Alfred rapidly restored Krupp to a dominant position in the West German economy.
In her final years, Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach had become a much-loved figure in Essen. She was recognized for her charitable work and frequent visits to injured or ill Krupp workers and their families. Sadly on September 21, 1957, Bertha died at the age of seventy-one. She was buried in the family crypt just outside Essen.
LEGACY
By the time of Bertha’s death, only Alfried and his only child Arndt had the right to use the Krupp surname. In 1966, Arndt refused to take his family’s inheritance, thus he forfeited his right to the Krupp surname. With the death of his father Alfried in 1967, the Krupp surname became extinct.
Beginning in 1968, the company became known as Friedrich Krupp AG. Then in 1991 (just after East and West Germany became one country again), the firm acquired Hoesch AG and was renamed Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp.
In 1997, Krupp attempted a hostile takeover of the larger Thyssen, but the bid was abandoned after resistance from Thyssen management and protests by its workers. Nevertheless, Thyssen agreed to merge the two firms’ flat steel operations. It led to the creation of Thyssen Krupp Stahl AG, a jointly owned subsidiary (60% by Thyssen, 40% by Krupp). The merger also led to the layoff of 6,300 workers!
Later that year, Krupp and Thyssen announced a full merger, which was completed in 1999. It led to the formation of the industrial conglomerate ThyssenKrupp AG, a company that still operates today!
PHOTOS
Pictured below is the couple in 1906 with the inscription:
Die Verlobung der reichsten Erbin Deutschlands (“The engagement of the richest heiress in Germany”)
The second picture is of the married couple in 1910.