Portrait of Bertha Krupp in the Villa Huegel in Essen
Photo:EASTBLOCKWORLD.COM
The night before, the girl had played dominoes with her father, in the Turkish-decorated corner of the splendid Villa Hügel in Essen, under the open tent, next to the stuffed Arab stallion. The following morning Friedrich Alfred Krupp was dead. And his daughter Bertha suddenly became the richest woman in Germany, sole heir to an internationally active, vertically structured corporation with a good 41,000 employees at the time.
In his will, Krupp had decreed that the company should be converted into a stock corporation - his daughter received 159,996 of the 160,000 shares. The Krupp empire, the legendary "armory of the nation", a company that symbolized the industrial rise of Germany and its military expansionist like no other: this unimaginable wealth belonged to a teenager from now on, a pretty one too. In addition, introverted and much more serious than the younger, lively sister Barbara.
Krupp celebrated orgies in Italy
The inheritance on Bertha's narrow shoulders was like a huge burden - also because Krupp's death on November 22, 1902 was preceded by an unsavory mud fight. "Krupp auf Capri" was the title of the article, published on November 15, 1902 in "Vorwärts", as the SPD organ the natural enemy of the big capitalist, who was closely allied with the Kaiser. "In a lavishly furnished villa ... he paid homage to homosexual intercourse with the young men of the island," wrote the paper. Krupp celebrates orgies in Italy!
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