3 LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS, written and sent by Ivar Kreuger, handwritten letter dated New York 20 February 1932, telegrams December 1923 and 4 March 1932, all addressed to his private secretary Tyra Häckner.

Letter expanded about 24.5x20 cm

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History: Financier Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932) The “king of matches” belongs to those people whose name has become a concept although the imitation contains more darkness than light. Ivar Kreuger came from a family of businessmen in which matches as a commodity already existed. With unmitigated success, by the end of the 1920s, Ivar Kreuger controlled most of the entire world's match production and several large Swedish industrial groups.

After the stock market crash of 1929, Kreuger's giant empire began to have liquidity problems. By October 1931, the problems were so far gone that Kreuger had to turn to the Swedish Riksbank. At that time, the size of all the loans he had in Swedish banks corresponded to more than half of the Swedish foreign exchange reserves at the time. At this point, Kreuger is completely dependent on outside help to try to save his empire.

In February 1932 Kreuger once again turned to the Riksbank for a loan, which, however, requires transparency of the financial position of the Kreuger Group. The result of this was that the loan was denied. Shortly after this, Kreuger leaves Sweden and finds himself in New York at the beginning of 1932, which he soon abandons for Paris. On March 12, 1932, Ivar Kreuger is found dead in his Paris apartment. The circumstances of his death have never been fully understood. The gun that caused his death was found next to him and to this day there is speculation as to whether he was murdered or whether it was a suicide. The majority of opinions on the subject believe in suicide. Ivar's death triggered the so-called Kreuger crash. This bankruptcy is one of the largest in the world in modern times. The case went like a wave through both the Swedish and American economies and resonated throughout the rest of the world.

Provenance: Tyra Häckner (1894-1975) and then inherited to her son Jan Häckner there after his wife Astrid Häckner
and subsequently inherited to the current owners.

Tyra Häckner was private secretary to Ivar Kreuger from the late 1910s until at least 1924. The handwritten letter by Ivar Kreuger and two telegrams were all sent from Ivar Kreuger to Tyra. The oldest telegram is datedNew York December 1923 and contains instructions on Christmas cards as well as a question if the recipient has the opportunity to work the times specified in the telegram. The handwritten letter and one of the telegrams are from early 1932. Both of the latter are typical of the correspondence Ivar Kreuger had in the last months of life. The common denominator is
the bad conscience Kreuger had for the private individuals in his immediate vicinity who would suffer financially as they sit on shares tied to the Kreuger Group. The letter is dated New York 30 February 1932 and contains a lament that Tyra Häckner will lose out on Ivar's case with the “papers” she is sitting on. The letter writer goes on to ask the addressee to receive a check in the letter as a compensation. There are other known cases with a similar content. Kreuger's private secretary in recent years Karin Bökman receives on 5 March a letter dated 20 February in which he regrets the situation and asks Karin to accept the 10,000 US dollars that were in the letter. There are also other people in his vicinity who at this time receive hefty compensation in the form of cash and shares in companies that were liquid.

The last telegram is dated New York 4 March 1932 and is addressed to Tyra Häckner Saltsjöbaden. Ivar there asks Tyra to delay opening the letter from February 20. The reason is that he put a letter addressed to someone else in an envelope with Tyra's address. He asks Tyra to wait to open the letter until he is back in Stockholm. This is very interesting if you compare with a telegram that Karin Bökman receives two days later on March 6 in which Kreuger asks Karin not to attach herself to the contents of the letter with the $10,000 she received in February. We can probably assume in both cases that it was a matter of curbing speculation on Kreuger's part that he was about to take his own life. Eight days after Tyra received the telegram on 12 March, Karin Bökman finds Ivar Kreuger dead in his apartment in Paris.

NOTE There is no possibility to display the object.