Word: essen
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Father's Dream. The Krupp dynasty was started by a young Essen merchant named Friedrich Krupp, who switched to making steel when Napoleon's blockade of England cut the Continent off from supplies of high-quality British steel. Friedrich died a failure at 40, leaving his 14-year-old son Alfred the company name, a rundown factory and an obsessive devotion to steel. Though his relatives called him "stupid" for following his father's dream, Alfred started at 15 to learn to produce high-quality steel. He went to England under an assumed name to study British...
...fact that the new cannon were easier to load and more accurate and durable than the traditional bronze models. With Krupp cannon, Prussia defeated Austria in 1866 and France in 1871. By 1887 Krupp had sold 24,567 big guns to 21 nations. Alfred Krupp became known in Essen as "Alfred the Great" and abroad as the "Cannon King...
...water plants and his own fleet of ships. Above the smoke and soot of the Ruhrgebiet, overlooking his busy factories, he built Villa Hiigel, a monstrous, boxlike pile made of stone and steel because Alfred feared fire. There he entertained the royalty and dignitaries who streamed to Essen to pay tribute to his genius. When he died in 1887, the Kaiser sent a special deputy, and messages of condolence poured in from all over the world...
...Jail. In 1943 Allied bombers started the rain of bombs on Krupp's Essen plant that eventually destroyed a third of it. That same year the aging, ailing Gustav got Hitler to declare legal the famed Lex Krupp, giving the Krupps the privilege henceforth to name one successor as the sole owner of the empire. He would arrange substantial allowances for the rest of the family, among whom stock had previously been split. Gustav stepped down, and Alfried, a sensitive, retiring young man. became ruler of the vast Krupp holdings. For the rest of the war, he left most...
Alfried was ten when he first went through a Krupp steel plant. At 17 he graduated with high grades from the nearby Bredeney Realgymnasium, a month later started work as an apprentice at the Krupp works in Essen. He had to leave Villa Hügel on his motor bike at 6 a.m. to get to the shop in time, once had his name put up on the plant's "lazy list" for being late. After his father decided that he should study steelmaking, he was shipped off to the Munich Polytechnikum -his first departure from home-later finished...