Hilmar Kopper

Kopper was born in Osłonino in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of (Poland), the second of four children of a Mennonite family. His family was expelled after World War II.^[1]

As the family could afford academic education only for one child, Kopper's elder brother, he became a trainee at Deutsche Bank in 1954,^[1] at a regional branch named Rheinisch-Westfälische Bank in Köln-Mülheim. He would spend his whole career at the bank.^[2] 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,^[3] and became a board member in 1977.^{[2][3] [4]} After the terrorist murder of Alfred Herrhausen, the bank's chief executive, in 1989, he succeeded him as chairman (Vorstandssprecher).^[5] During his tenure, the bank was redesigned to become a global player.^[3] He held the position until 1997, and then was chairman of the supervisory board until 2002.^[4][5]

Kopper chaired the supervisory board of DaimlerChrysler from 1998 to 2007. He was a former member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group.^[6] 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, thus criticizing the widely differing definitions of a non-notable amount of money by bank managers and average people.^[7] With some self-irony, Kopper posed on a heap of peanuts for advertisement of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ("Dahinter steckt immer ein kluger Kopf [de], or "There is always a clever mind behind it").^[3]

Private life

During Kopper's time as a trainee in the U.S., he met the author Ernest Hemingway by chance on a beach in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1958 and remained a life-long fan of his books.^[8] He married his first wife, Irene, in 1961.^[3] One of the couple's three children is the historian Christopher Kopper [de]. They separated in 1999.^[3] Since 2003, Kopper was married to Brigitte Seebacher [de], the widow of Willy Brandt.^[2]

Kopper died after a short severe illness at age 86.^[5]

• Kopper, Hilmar (1997). Die Bank lebt nicht vom Geld allein : Beiträge zu Kultur und Gesellschaft 1994–1997 (in German). München: Piper. ISBN 3-492-22584-5. OCLC 45050456.