Krupp

The Krupp family are the founder of Friedrich Krupp AG, the largest business firm in the German Empire. The Krupp family are based in the Rhenish city of Essen, and can trace their roots back to 1587, when a man named Arndt Krupp moved to Essen and grew wealthy buying real estate from families fleeing the Black Death. During the Thirty Years' War in the seventeenth century the Krupp family first began manufacturing armaments.

In the eighteenth century the Krupps established an iron foundry, which grew in the nineteenth century to a steel factory under Friedrich Krupp (1786 - 1826). Friedrich's son Alfred Krupp (1812 - 87) expanded the business to the manufacture of railroad wheels and steel cannon. Alfred's son Friedrich Alfred "Fritz" Krupp (1854 - 1902) had ambitious plans to expand the company's reach beyond the Germanic Confederation. In 1894 he entered into talks with Diego Cortez y Catalán of the Mexican firm Kramer Associates about seizing control of the Ottoman Empire. The talks eventually broke down, and the Krupp firm and K.A. remained rivals in the international business world.