FRIEDRICH KRUPP AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT, an industrial company founded at Essen in 181r. Alfred Krupp (q.v.) (1812--1887) supplied his steel in the shape of rolls, coining dies, weldless tyres for railway vehicles, etc., etc. At an early date, iron and coal mines were acquired. The excellent quality of his steel brought him the highest award, the Council Medal, at the Great Exhibition of London (1851), where he exhibited a homo geneous solid cast steel ingot weighing over 2 tons. His son started the manufacture of armour plates and in this connection acquired the Gruson Works at Magdeburg in 1895 and the Germania Shipbuilding Yard at Kiel in 1902. In 1896 he began the erection of what was to become one of the largest blast fur nace plants in Europe, situated at Rheinhausen near Duisburg. In 1903, the Krupp firm was converted into a Joint Stock Company, the shares of which are all owned by the Krupp family. The basic activities of the undertaking are the manufacture and working of high-grade and special steels. The company also owns coal and iron mines, blast furnaces, a shipbuilding yard, and en gineering works where locomotives and waggons, motor vehicles and a great variety of other machinery are built.
A community of interests has been entered into with the West phalian Wire Works at Hamm and the Coal Mining Company Ver. Constantin der Grosse at Bochum. The administration of numerous other interests held by the Krupp firm in various other concerns is vested in the A. G. fur Unternehmungen der Eisen und Stahlindustrie in Berlin. On the 1st of July 1928, the Com pany had in its employ a total of 71,500 officials and work men.
See Krupp 1812-1912 (Essen, 1912) ; W. Berdrow, Friedrich Krupp, der Grander der Gussstahlfabrik, in Briefen and Dokumenten (Berlin, 1915) ; W. Berdrow, Alfred Krupp (Berlin, 1926). (A. GoE.)