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...