West Germany: Who Should Pay the Playboy?

The latest chapter in the bizarre saga of the Krupp dynasty, whose fortunes were based on blood and iron, unfolded in Germany's Ruhr last week. It involved a playboy's high-spending habits — and a squabble over a major industrial merger.

When financial woes forced the family-owned Krupp empire to become a public corporation, lawyers drew up a unique contract in which the late Alfried Krupp's son and sole heir, Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach, renounced his rights to a $500 million inheritance. In return, Arndt, for the rest of his life, would receive 2½% of the sales from Krupp's Rossenray...

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