KRUPPSTAHL
Alfred Krupp
"...The anvil was my desk.' It was, and he approached it intently; with a painstaking thoroughness which his father had so conspicuously lacked he taught himself to be a master smith. Before he was twenty he would be producing fine steel. he was learning the 'feel' of the virtuoso, how 'in working up this steel, as also in hardening it, only a dark glowing heat is needed, and that with a dark glow it becomes just as hard as the English steel (englischer Stahl) with a much greater degree of heat'. But that skill was only the beginning. The ultimate secret was perfectionism. Alfred's version of the Sheffield process was to cook his metal in little sixty pound graphite pots and then pour them together. One false move and "pfui"; the steel had turned to iron. The first Krupp to have been born in Prussia, he imposed a goose-step discipline on his chefs, and while his habit of flying into screaming rages over trifles was doubtless unpleasant for them, it was also the making of him... Thus Kruppstahl became a product of Alfred's character."
In 1834, the first move towards a reunited Reich, 36 Teutonic states created a common market abolishing intra-union tariffs.
Alfred speaking of fine steel: it "must be fine-fibered not crystalline moreover, and dull but quite soft and tough, both cold and in a glowing stat." He learned Swedish steel (unlike Prussias) was untainted with phosphorus.
For generations spoon and forks had been produced by stamping patterns from metal and finishing them by hand. One afternoon (Alfreds brother) Hermann was examining a defective roll. Feeding scraps into it, he noticed the obvious that the roll created identical creases in each scrap and then drew the brilliant conclusion: what were forks and spoons except strips of metal with calculated imperfections? Experimenting in a corner of the shop, he engraved patterns on rollers. The resulting hand mill was then used to crank out superior tableware. Alfred... adopted the innovations s his own... and Hermann dutifully acceded."
"... Anglophilia which later infected his country's aristocracy was already evident in Alfred... (however) Alfred was attracted by the technical competence in the Midlands (not the English upper class). Sheffield, a magic name since his boyhood, had become Mecca for him."
"The factory air was filthy, and there was no way to keep it out of the house. Billowing clouds of oily grit withered his flowers, blacked his fountains, coated his hothouses with soot. At time he couldn't even see through the panes of his roof nest. The tainting smoke penetrated every room, ruining his bride's trousseau and besmirching her freshly washed antimacassars and linens before the laundress was out the door. Nor was this all. Alfred was installing heavier and heavier machinery, and the grunt of his steam hammers rocked the foundations of his home. Bertha couldn't keep glasses on her sideboard. If she put them out after breakfast, all would be cracked by lunch." When Bertha begged Alfred to go out once in a while, once suggesting a concert, "he answered sharply 'Sorry, it's impossible! I must see that my smokestacks continue to smoke, and when I hear my forge tomorrow, that will be music more exquisite than the playing of all the world's fiddles.'"
According to a family acquaintance: "Krupp is undoubtedly a technician of genius... but apart from that he was extremely narrow-minded. He took no interest in anything unconnected with his professional work. As a consequence, he concluded that a relative of his wife, Max Bruch, later a famous conductor, was completely wasting his time in devoting it to music. If Bruch had been a technician, Krupp remarked in all seriousness, he would have been of some use to himself and to mankind, but as a musician he was leading an utterly pointless existence."
No comments:
Post a Comment