Ivar Kreuger

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Ivar Kreuger (c. 1930) at his desk in the Match Palace in Stockholm.

Ivar Kreuger [ ˌiːvar ˈkryːgər ] (* March 2, 1880 in Kalmar , Sweden ; † March 12, 1932 in Paris ) was the founder of Svenska Tändsticks AB (STAB) ( German  "Swedish matches  AG " ) and the central figure in the European monopoly of ignition goods , a European tycoon . In 1929 he founded the company Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget , which still exists today. He shot himself when the bankruptcy of his trust became inevitable, presumably to avoid public disgrace.

life and work

Kreuger's ancestors (with the name Kröger ) immigrated to Sweden in the first half of the 17th century. Johann Kröger came to Kalmar as early as 1710. Kreuger's great-grandfather was a successful wholesale merchant there . His grandfather Peter Edward Kreuger already made matches and bought many Swedish match factories - the cornerstone of what would later become Kreuger's empire. Ivar Kreuger's father Ernst Kreuger (1852–1946) bought other companies.

Ivar Kreuger first studied engineering before becoming a businessman. He gained business experience in the US , UK and South Africa in his youth . On this basis - and on the basis of his father's legacy - he created a global corporation within a few years after the First World War . The core of the company conglomerate, which was restructured in 1913, was Svenska Tändsticks AB (STAB) , whose focus was on the use of the Swedish abundance of wood and the production of matches. Kreuger expanded very successfully to new national markets.

In this way, the company , which was renamed Swedish Match in 1980, grew into a holding company , which in the 1930s had around 150 subsidiaries with 260 factories and 750,000 employees and which controlled the match market in 33 countries and thus around three quarters of world production. In addition, Kreuger owned a large number of mining and smelting works, a large part of the Swedish paper industry including the associated forests and, since 1930, the majority of the telephone company Ericsson . In 1919 he entered the flourishing Swedish film business on a grand scale: he invested in the newly founded film production company Svensk Filmindustri , of which he became the majority shareholder, and in 1920 had Filmstaden built a Hollywood-style film city near Stockholm.

Tändstickspalatset (matchstick palace or matchstick palace) based on the plans of the architect Ivar Tengbom at Västra Trädgårdsgatan 15 in Stockholm was built as corporate headquarters in 1926/28 . The interior was designed in the style of Nordic Classicism by Sweden's most famous artists and designers at the time, among them Isaac Grünewald , Carl Milles , Carl Malmsten and Simon Gate . The curved boardroom with the curved table, which is still preserved today, became famous. The company also had representative offices in many European capitals such as Berlin and Paris.

  • The match palace

  • The entrance portal

  • Inner courtyard with Milles Diana fountain

  • Gilded house number

  • Kreuger's study

  • The boardroom.

His business strategy was based on the exploitation of the match monopoly in different countries. He took out huge loans in America, Holland, Switzerland, England, France - the rich industrialized countries - and lent the money to financially weak countries in Central Europe (Germany, Hungary, Romania, Poland) and some South American countries, for which he had the match monopoly in these Countries. The idea was not new; the Fugger family from Augsburg had already made use of it in the 16th century by granting rulers loans in exchange for monopolies (e.g. exploitation of the silver and copper mines). Kreuger adapted them to the time of the day by issuing bonds (bearer bonds) on his company. When Germany, Romania, Hungary and other countries stopped paying the interest and the amortization contributions, he too had to remain owed his payments to the creditor countries. With that his matchstick empire collapsed.

It ended with Kreuger's suicide in 1932 on avenue Victor-Emanuel in Paris. He was found shot and with a pistol that he had bought the day before. The police investigation revealed suicide. One motive would have been the impending collapse of his corporate empire. Kreuger & Toll AB had to file for bankruptcy a few weeks later. He was wrong about the political and economic situation and so became the victim of unfavorable circumstances. In contrast to this representation is the assessment by Frank Partnoy in his 2009 work, which describes a more negative role of Kreuger. As early as the 1920s, Kreuger used offshore companies to hide the debt of his companies from investors.

Ivar's brother Torsten Kreuger took the view that his brother had been murdered. The assumptions about who commissioned a murder range from the Swedish industrialist family Wallenberg to the American banking house JP Morgan to Josef Stalin . It is undeniable that Kreuger had numerous powerful enemies.

Part of his previous company now exists as Swedish Match AB , the world's largest match producer with extensive activities in the tobacco trade. The ignition goods monopoly he had acquired only expired in Germany in 1983.

Trivia

In the novel A Son of England (1935) by Graham Greene , the character of the Swedish billionaire "Erik Krogh" is clearly based on the model of Kreugers. Greene had previously reviewed a biography of Kreuger.

Peter van Eyck played Kreuger in the 1967 German television film Der Fall Ivar Kreuger .

literature

  • Frank Arnau : Talents on the wrong track. Alexandre Stavisky. Ivar Kreuger. Serge Rubinstein, Harry Domela . German Book Association, Stuttgart 1966.
  • Allen Churchill: The Match King. Ivar Kreuger's unbelievable life . Goverts, Stuttgart 1957.
  • Heinz Coubier : Ivar Kreuger . Tragedy. Dietzmann, Leipzig 1939.
  • Ilja Ehrenburg : The United Front. Berlin 1930, German The most sacred goods. Novel of great interests . Berlin 1931.
  • Torsten Kreuger: The truth about Ivar Kreuger. Eyewitness reports, secret files, documents . Seewald, Stuttgart 1966.
  • André Kostolany : Kostolany's best money stories . Econ, Düsseldorf 1996, ISBN 3-612-26246-7 .
  • André Kostolany: Kostolany's stock market seminar . Econ, Düsseldorf 1986, ISBN 3-612-26235-1 .
  • Ludwig Marcuse : The legend of our days . In: The day book. May 7, 1932 (article on Kreuger).
  • Otto Walter (Ed.): Ivar Kreuger - the catastrophe . 319 p. Plus numerous illustrations Walter, Olten and Konstanz 1932
  • Frank Partnoy: The match king . Ivar Kreuger, financial genius and pioneer of a century of Wall Street scandals (Original title: The Match King . Profile Books, London 2009, translated by Stefan Gebauer), Finanzbuch, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-89879-699-6 .

Web links

Commons : Ivar Kreuger  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Swedish financial mogul Ivar Kreuger - Empire made of matches , einestages.de.
  2. ↑ Matches: Triste Ware , Der Spiegel , 21/1983, May 23, 1983
  3. ^ Brian Edwards: Mood Spectrum in Graham Greene: 1929-1949 . Cambridge Scholars, Cambridge 2015 ISBN 978-1-4438-8253-8 p. 45
  4. ↑ The Ivar Kreuger case (1967) imdb.com
  5. ↑ The novel deals with the battles for the match monopoly. In his memoirs, the author Ehrenburg notes that Kreuger's private secretary, Baron von Drachenfels, wrote in his memoirs that shortly before his boss's suicide he saw The United Front on Kreuger's bedside table. (Ehrenburg, People - Years - Life II 1923–1941 , special edition Munich 1965, page 184)
personal data
SURNAME Kreuger, Ivar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ignition entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Kalmar , Sweden
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1932
Place of death Paris