Hilmar Kopper (13 March 1935 – 11 November 2021) was a German banker and former chairman of the Board of

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...

(1989–1997).

Life and career

Kopper was born in Osłonino (

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

), the second of four children of a Mennonite family. His family was expelled after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. As the family could afford academic education only for one child, Kopper's elder brother, he became a trainee at Deutsche Bank in 1954, at a regional branch named Rheinisch-Westfälische Bank in Köln-Mülheim. He would spend his whole career at the bank. He was sent to the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corp. in New York City, and then worked in Deutsche Bank's department for foreign affairs (''Auslandsabteilung'' in Düsseldorf. In 1972, he became a member of the board of the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank AG (German-Asian Bank). He was promoted to General Representative (''Generalbevollmächtigter'') in 1972, and became a board member in 1977. After the terrorist murder of Alfred Herrhausen, the bank's chief executive, in 1989, he succeeded him as chairman (''Vorstandssprecher''). During his tenure, the bank was redesigned to become a global player. He held the position until 1997, and then was chairman of the supervisory board until 2002. Kopper chaired the supervisory board of

DaimlerChrysler The Mercedes-Benz Group AG (previously named Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufacture ...

from 1998 to 2007. He was a former member of the Steering Committee of the

Bilderberg Group The Bilderberg meeting (also known as the Bilderberg Group) is an annual off-the-record conference established in 1954 to foster dialogue between Europe and North America. The group's agenda, originally to prevent another world war, is now defi ...

. He was also a jury member of the Franz Werfel Human Rights Award.

Controversy

Kopper received widespread public and media attention in 1994, when he used the word "peanuts" to describe a sum of DM 50 million. A jury of linguistic scholars subsequently voted the term as German

Un-word of the year Un-word of the year (german: Unwort des Jahres) is an annual selection of one new or recently popularized term that violates human rights or infringes upon democratic principles, made by a panel of German linguists. The term may be one that discri ...

, thus criticizing the widely differing definitions of a non-notable amount of money by bank managers and average people. With some self-irony, Kopper posed on a heap of peanuts for advertisement of ''

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' (; ''FAZ''; "''Frankfurt General Newspaper''") is a centre-right conservative-liberal and liberal-conservativeHans Magnus Enzensberger: Alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen' (in German). ''Deutschland Radio'', ...

'' (", or "There is always a clever mind behind it").

Private life

During Kopper's time as a trainee in the U.S., he met the author

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

by chance on a beach in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1958 and remained a life-long fan of his books. He married his first wife, Irene, in 1961. One of the couple's three children is the historian . They separated in 1999. Since 2003, Kopper was married to , the widow of

Willy Brandt Willy Brandt (; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as the chancellor of West Ge ...

. Kopper died after a short severe illness at age 86.

Publications

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kopper, Hilmar 1935 births 2021 deaths German bankers German Mennonites Members of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group Naturalized citizens of Germany Deutsche Bank people Polish emigrants to Germany Vistula delta Mennonites People from Puck County People from the Province of Pomerania Polish Mennonites