Republic of Money: The Arms of Krupp to Gatsby to the Psychedelia of Millbrook (pic-heavy)

Hannah Bell

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Sat Nov-13-10 02:23 AM
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Republic of Money: The Arms of Krupp to Gatsby to the Psychedelia of Millbrook (pic-heavy)

Edited on Sat Nov-13-10 02:54 AM by Hannah Bell

KRUPP

The Krupp Family is a 400-year-old German business & family dynasty. It produced steel & weapons for the nazis using concentration-camp slave labor.

MILLBROOK

Millbrook estate was Timothy Leary's headquarters for about five years in the 1960's. There he and a changing cast of residents experimented with psychedelia during "endless parties, epiphanies and breakdowns, emotional dramas of all sizes, and numerous raids and arrests..."

You wouldn't think there was a connection, but the Republic of Money is a small place.

KRUPP

Bertha Krupp (1886-1957), the namesake for the WW1 howitzer ("Big Bertha"), inherited the Krupp empire from her father.

She married Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach (1870-1950).

He then became Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach and ran Krupp from 1909-1941. Their son Alfred ran the company for the rest of WW2, and resumed control after doing five years for war crimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Krupp

Despite the toney name, Gustav's parents were Americans.

BOHLEN

Bohr Bohlen (b. 1754), son of Heinrich Bohlen of Germany, immigrated to Philadelphia & got rich in the gin trade, then expanded into finance. He married an American (b. NYC 1770) and their child Caroline Bohlen married Pennsylvania immigrant coal & iron magnate Arnold Halbach (1787). This was the founding the "Bohlen & Halbach" line.

Bohr Bohlen's first wife died. With his second wife, he had another child, Civil War Brigadier General Henry Bohlen:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bohlen

BOHLEN + KRUPP

Then the children of the two half-siblings married each other to produce Gustav von Bohlen and Halbach Sr, who produced Gustav von Bohlen & Halbach of Krupp:

Gen Henry Bohlen (b.1810)
+ Emilia Borie
\
Sophie Bohlen (b. 1837)

Caroline Bohlen (b.1800)
+ Arnold Halbach
\
Gustav Bohlen-Halbach (b. 1831)
+ Sophie Bohlen (b. 1837)
\
Gustav von Bohlen & Halbach + Bertha Krupp

The Bohlens were a well-connected family. Caroline & Arnold Halbach's *other* child married a German Graf & founded a line leading to the present Dutch royal family, and Bohr Bohlen's brother John was a Director of the First Bank of the US and died a millionaire in 1850.

The First Bank of the US was chartered by Congress in 1791, the monied interests' first try at a national bank/Federal-Reserve-like entity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bank_of_the_United_States

6 STEPS TO MILLBROOK

Here's the short version of how we get to Millbrook:

John Bohlen (d. 1850)
+ Jane
\
John Bohlen (d. 1874)
+ Murray
\
Charles Bohlen (b. 1866)
+ Eustis, niece of George below
\
"Chip" Bohlen (b. 1902)

***

George Eustis Jr. (b. 1828)
+ Corcoran
\
Eustis +
Hitchcock (b. 1866)
\
Hitchcock (b. 1900)
+ Mellon
\
Hitchcock siblings + Timothy Leary

Here's the long version:

BOHLEN

John Bohlen of the First National Bank had a grandson, Charles Bohlen, born 1866: his business title was "gentleman of leisure". Charles married Celestine Eustis.

Their child was "Chip" Bohlen; Soviet expert & diplomat, architect of the Cold War.

He translated for FDR at the Tehran & Yalta Conferences. So while one great-grandson of Heinrich Bohlen was arming the Nazis, another was translating for the Allies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bohlen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wise_Men

EUSTIS

George Eustis Jr. (b. 1828), brother of James Biddle Eustis
+ Corcoran
\
Eustis +
Hitchcock (b. 1866)

Charles Bohlen's wife Celestine Eustis was the daughter of James Biddle Eustis. He was the grandson of a US Minister to the Hague & the son of a Louisiana Supreme Court Justice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Biddle_Eustis

James' middle name honored Nicholas Biddle, Director of the *Second* Bank of the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Biddle_(banker)

James' brother, George Eustis Jr, was Celestine Eustis Bohlen's uncle. He married William Wilson Corcoran's daughter Louise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilson_Corcoran

Corcoran was a co-founder of Riggs Bank and an associate of George Peabody. His father was twice mayor of Washington DC. Corcoran's name lives on in the DC area here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corcoran_Gallery

George Eustis Jr & wife Louise Corcoran had several children.

One was William Corcoran Eustis, military attache & philanthropist. His great-granddaughter Wendy Pepper was a finalist in the first season of Project Runway.

Wendy went to the Madeira School (tuition $46K), a private preparatory boarding school, before university & her Runway appearance.

You can see how the family could afford her tuition by perusing her wedding announcement.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/11/style/weddings-wendy-pepper-and-john-stewart.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Corcoran_Eustis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Pepper

HITCHCOCK

Eustis +
Hitchcock (b. 1866)
\
Hitchcock (b. 1900)
+ Mellon
\
Hitchcock siblings + Timothy Leary

George Eustis & Louise Corcoran's other child, Louise Mary, married Thomas Hitchcock. Hitchcock was the son of a newspaper baron. He became a polo player and horse trainer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hitchcock

His son was "Tommy", born in 1900.

GATSBY

F. Scott Fitzgerald modeled Tom Buchanan (Great Gatsby) after Tommy Hitchcock. Here's the money quote:

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”

Tommy was a polo player & horseman, like his father. He was also a pilot, military attache, & Lehman Brothers partner (Robert Lehman, head of the firm, was a polo buddy).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Hitchcock,_Jr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lehman

Tommy married Margaret Mellon, daughter of William Larimer Mellon, the founder of Gulf Oil. Margaret was part of the steel, banking, oil & spying Mellon dynasty that includes Richard Mellon Scaife:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Larimer_Mellon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife

Tommy & Margaret's kids were Rachel, Peggy, Tommy & Billy. Here's Billy with Tim Leary at Millbrook:

MILLBROOK

"Leary's activities interested siblings Peggy, Billy and Tommy Hitchcock, heirs to the Mellon fortune, who in 1963 helped Leary and his associates acquire the use of a rambling mansion on an estate in the town of Millbrook (near Poughkeepsie, New York), where they continued their experiments. (The estate belonged to the Hitchcock family.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary

"Thanks to a sizable inheritance and a family trust fund that provided him with
$15,000 per week in spending money, Billy Hitchcock was in a position to offer a lot
more than moral support to the psychedelic movement. He first turned on to LSD
after his sister, Peggy, the director of IFIF's New York branch, introduced him to
Leary. They hit it off immediately, and Hitchcock made his family's four-thousand acre
estate in Dutchess County, New York, available to the psychedelic clan for a
nominal five-hundred-dollar monthly rent.

Millbrook was a constant party, but one infused with a sense of purpose and
optimism. The residents saw themselves as the vanguard of a psychic revolution that
would transform the entire society...

"We lived out a myth which had not yet been integrated into our
personalities. Millbrook was itself the work of art .... like Kafka's Castle, it gave
out messages into the aether in the form of one high resonant sound which
vibrated on the ears of the world, as if it were trying to penetrate beyond the
barrier separating 'us' from 'them.' We felt satisfied that our goal was Every
Man's, a project of Every Man's private ambition. We sought for that unitary state
of divine harmony, an existence in which only the sense of wonder remains, and
all fear gone."

Billy Hitchcock, the millionaire padrone, never really entered into the close
camaraderie of the Millbrook circle. He lived a half-mile from the "big house" in his
own private bungalow, a four-bedroom gardener's cottage with a Japanese bath in the
basement.

There he carried on a social life befitting a scion of one of the country's
wealthiest families. Hitchcock never totally broke with his old routines even though
he had begun turning on. He still kept in close contact with his friends from New
York and with various brokers and investors who visited his bungalow for private
parties...

Hitchcock would usually be on the phone all
morning talking with Swiss and Bahamian bankers, setting up business meetings and
fast-money deals. By afternoon he had taken care of his monetary affairs and would
occasionally join the scene at the mansion.

Why Hitchcock decided to throw his weight behind the psychedelic cause is still
something of a mystery. Was he simply a millionaire acid buff, a wayward son of the
ruling class who dug Leary's trip? Or did he have something else up his sleeve?

"Mr. Billy," as his servants affectionately called him, claimed he got involved
with LSD because kicking the establishment in the teeth was exciting. Of course,
since Hitchcock was the establishment, some questioned what he was really up
to. Michael Hollingshead, for one, never fully trusted him...

Hitchcock's interest in LSD did not appear to be a simple matter of spiritual
enrichment. He was not one to wax poetic over the prospect of merging with the
Oversoul. When asked at the outset of one group session what question he
wanted answered by the acid trip, he replied, "How can I make more money on
the stock market?"

More here:

http://www.herbogeminis.com/IMG/pdf/acid_dreams.pdf