Hilmar Kopper (13 March 1935 – 11 November 2021) was a German banker, and former chairman of the Board of Deutsche Bank (1989–1997).

Life and career

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]

Publications

• 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.

References