Friedrich Krupp

Friedrich Krupp ( born July 17, 1787 Essen, † October 8, 1826 ) was a German industrialist. He is considered the founder of the Krupp cast steel factory and it emerged the company Friedrich Krupp AG, which his son Alfred Krupp was to expand to temporarily largest industrial companies in Europe and that is dawned in the ThyssenKrupp AG 1999.

Family and Education

Friedrich Krupp, a portrait of him is unknown to this day, is the son of Peter Wilhelm Friedrich Krupp (1753-1795) and his wife Petronella, born Forsthoff. You belong to a long-established Essen merchant family, originally immigrated from the Netherlands.

Friedrich Krupp 1757 young widowed grandmother Helene Amalie Krupp, born Ascherfeld ( 1732-1810 ), had already made ​​up of a grocery store, which she had inherited from her husband Friedrich Jodocus Krupp a composite of various trading and manufacturing companies. Friedrich Krupp visited the castle high school until he was 14 years old, and graduated in business his grandmother a commercial apprenticeship.

1807 Friedrich Krupp received from his grandmother Helene Amalie Krupp occasion of his engagement to Helena Theresia Johanna Wilhelmine ( 1790-1850, daughter of Essen merchant ) transferred as a gift, the Good Hope, the second oldest ironworks in the Ruhr later, which it had acquired in 1799. Frederick, who had been employed at the age of 20 years by his grandmother there as a manager and since 1805 also acquired basic knowledge of metallurgy, -serviced not satisfactory at the cottage; she was also in competition with the nearby St. Antony Ironworks, which initially had locational advantages with respect to the water supply. Helene Amalie Krupp made ​​the transfer in 1808 to reverse.

The Good Hope later went to the brothers Franz and Gerhard Haniel and Heinrich Arnold Huyssen, who built the Gutehoffnungshütte the long time the largest employers in the later Oberhausen.

1808 married Friedrich Krupp his fiancée Theresa Wilhelmi. Since this year, Krupp operation with stakeholders a deal with Dutch colonial goods, taking over after the death of his grandmother in 1810 her grocery store.

From this marriage the daughter Ida (1809-1882) and the three sons Alfred (1812-1887), Hermann (1814-1879) and Friedrich (1820-1901) were born in the following years.

Building a Business

When Friedrich Krupp's grandmother Helene Amalie died in 1810, the inheritance went to him and his sister Helene, married Muller, to castle Metternich. After Krupp short time later, the grocery stores gave up, he founded the Heritage Seed money a workshop, which he renamed on November 20, 1811 in the company Friedrich Krupp designed to make the English cast steel and all resulting fabrications and in the commercial register of the still insignificant country town food could enter. Partners were the brothers George Karl Gottfried Wilhelm and Georg Ludwig von Kechel who had been in the cast steel manufacturing experience.

Target Krupp was the coveted cast steel, which no longer came from the Continental System Napoleon Bonaparte from England to Europe to produce on the continent. However, he was not the first. The production of English cast steel was well known on the continent since 1804 Johann Conrad Fischer ( 1773-1854 ) in Schaffhausen (see Georg Fischer AG) had broken the British monopoly. The gap in the market was initially given - but in the entrepreneurial skills lacking.

North of Essen city walls, on the site of an old fulling mill in the marshy lowlands of the Emscher Berne, Krupp built with the money inherited the buildings for a stretching and forging hammer. This location proved to be unfavorable, since only poorly developed. Added to this was the fluctuating and often low water level of Berne, which was not used for a continuous drive of the forging hammers. First Krupp could produce only cement steel. In 1812 he delivered the first filing of this material.

The cast steel factory at the Berne was completed in 1813, after about 30,000 rix-dollars were invested with minimal income. Krupp consumed basically from the family fortune. In addition, the General Partner of Kechel turned out to be unreliable. Close to bankruptcy, Krupp separated for a long, costly, legal way of them and in 1816 the sole owner of the company. This year it was the first time able to provide English cast steel. At this time, the continental blockade, however, was canceled for three years, and the true English cast steel was on the continent again in large quantity available.

Expansion

1817, the production was extended to Gerber tools, drills, turning tools, coin dies and Münzwalzen. Now also scored the most satisfied Prussian Mint in Dusseldorf with its customers, it brought something to Krupp reputation. Small amounts of cast steel were also sold to foreign customers. However, the first manufactured by Krupp cast steel rolls for coinage brought little success, since the authority had rejected nine of 14 specimens for quality reasons.

As was the factory at Berne on a bad location, enlarged 1818, the Krupp factory and laid the foundation stone for the construction of the Krupp cast steel factory west of the city of Essen on an area which was owned by the family since the 17th century. The new system went there, on the road in front of the Mühlheimer Limbeckerplatz Gate, today Altendorfer road, on 18 October 1819 in operation. It was applied to sixty furnaces, but only eight were present in the first construction phase. Also in this period Krupp had built there a guard house, which was later hyped by his son Alfred Krupp to the parent company Krupp. This new location near the mine Neuack, of the Krupp moved coals, was beneficial. Still had the old forge at the Berne still be maintained, as there was no water running at the new location.

1820 Krupp delivered primarily cutting tools, saws and blades. In 1823 he succeeded then produce the high-quality crucible steel, although the results were still unclear. Important metallurgical relationships were not explained. Moreover, different ores were used for financial bottlenecks out what led to different casting quality, which of course did not want the customers. Last Friedrich Krupp had invested his entire inheritance and included in addition to high levels of debt.

Early death

The company brought no appreciable income. The highly indebted founder of the Essenes cast steel factory could no longer cope increasingly his double burden as a producer and also the owner of several offices and honorary positions in the city of Essen. As Friedrich Krupp became seriously ill and bedridden. In 1824 he had to move for financial reasons in the warden house his factory. The befitting house flat market, right next to the Market Church in which lived the family of six, fell to the creditors.

On October 8, 1826 Friedrich Krupp died, 39 years old, in pulmonary edema. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery at the time of interest between the first and the second Weber Street, which is built over today. His grave stone is now in the municipal cemetery Bredeney.

The company Krupp employed at the time of his death seven workers. Therese widow continued support of her oldest, 14 - year-old son Alfred and other relatives to run the business. She stayed until 1848 Owner. Son Alfred led the company in the following decades, the international standing. The later company Friedrich Krupp AG, however, still had until the merger of ThyssenKrupp AG in 1999 inventory.

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