Word: krupp
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Like Germany itself, the Krupp industrial machine, which has eagerly supplied the arms for military adventures since the days of Bismarck, rose stronger than ever from the ashes of both World Wars. Then, three years ago, a policy of borrowing short and lending long brought the mighty family empire to the brink of insolvency. In return for government guarantees of bank credit, Alfried Krupp, heir to the Krupp power and fortune, grudgingly agreed to relinquish his one-man rule. A public foundation headed by leading government and business officials was established to administer the family stock. Alfried, the last...
...concern has again rebounded from disaster. Company officers have just reported that after five losing years Krupp showed a profit of $12 million in 1969. The firm's vast range of products-among many other things, it makes tanks and false teeth, grows orchids and owns supermarkets-yielded sales last year of $1.6 billion, compared with $1.4 billion in 1968. The financial woes have been substantially eased. Short-term debt has been reduced by roughly $100 million, to a manageable $30 million...
American Lessons. One sign of the bankers' new faith in Krupp is that last month Hermann Abs, West Germany's most powerful private banker, stepped down as chairman of the supervisory board, which was established to keep an eye on management during the switch away from family control. Abs' successor is Berthold Beitz, 56. a gregarious supersalesman who had been Krupp's general manager for 14 years. Since Beitz was the prime mover behind Krupp's disastrous financial policy, the promotion represented something of a comeback...
...Beitz is unlikely to regain direct management control from the man who is largely responsible for Krupp's resurgence: Chief Executive Gunter Vogelsang, 50. Vogelsang (his name means "bird song" in German), who comes from a family of Rhineland managers, is an icily efficient financial specialist with the sturdy build and wavy hair of an idealized halfback. He learned much of his management technique in two lengthy tours of the U.S., during which he visited IBM, National Cash Register, Bethlehem Steel, Republic Steel and other firms. A publicity-shy man with few outside interests, he regularly puts...
Such imagery, put to the service of moral passion, has won Grass renown outside Germany as his country's most committed writer. "Much of what is the active conscience in the Germany of Krupp and the Munich beer halls," Critic George Steiner once put it, "lies in this man's ribald keeping." Characteristically impatient with grandiose claims of any sort, Grass rejects this sort of praise out of hand. For other reasons, a great many of his fellow countrymen reject the judgment too, particularly former Nazis, the middle class and petty shopkeepers of the older generation from whom Grass himself...