Dolf Kessler

Dutch Football Player And Entrepreneur

Dolf Kessler was born in Jakarta, Indonesia on April 2nd, 1884 and is the Dutch Football Player And Entrepreneur. At the age of 61, Dolf Kessler biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.

Date of Birth
April 2, 1884
Nationality
Kingdom of the Netherlands
Place of Birth
Jakarta, Indonesia
Death Date
Aug 21, 1945 (age 61)
Zodiac Sign
Aries
Profession
Association Football Player
Dolf Kessler Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

At 61 years old, Dolf Kessler physical status not available right now. We will update Dolf Kessler's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

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Dolf Kessler Religion, Education, and Hobbies
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Dolf Kessler Spouse(s), Children, Affair, Parents, and Family
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Dolf Kessler Career

Dolf made his debut as a football player at seventeen years of age, at the Hague football club HVV. At first he stood leftback, later he was a right winger. At HVV he became national champion four times between 1901 and 1905. On 30 April 1905 he was captain during the first official international match of the Dutch national team. They beat Belgium with a 4–1 score. The second interland and first home match also saw Kessler leading the team. For his third and last interland in 1906 Dolf had passed the captaincy on to Kees Bekker. Kessler seriously considered a career in football until later that year he dislocated his knee, ending his career in football. Sports, however, remained important to him.

Business career

In 1907 Kessler graduated from the Technische Hogeschool Delft (Delft University of Technology), as a mechanical engineer. He got a job as secretary for Henri Deterding, who had succeeded Dolf's father as the director of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company. He worked for the company until 1915, when he left to look for a different job. As Joost Jonker and Jan Luiten van Zanden write in A History of the Royal Dutch Shell, his fiancée, Elizabeth "Bep" Stoop (herself a daughter of a prominent oil explorer, Adriaan Stoop), "put his love for her to the test by asking him to choose between her and the Group." His younger brother Jean Baptiste August "Guus" Kessler Jr., who had married Bep's cousin, Anna Francoise "Ans" Stoop, continued with the Royal Dutch and eventually rose to head their father's company.

In 1918 Dolf joined the committee for the funding of the Hoogovens (Dutch Blast Furnaces). In 1920 he became economical director and from 1924 on he was also the director-general. He was considered a very innovative manager, steering the company through the difficult economic environment of the Great Depression; he also believed it was necessary to provide fair wages and establish a pension plan—unusual for that time. "His drive, entrepreneurship, imagination and leadership secured Hoogovens a firm foothold in a very competitive industry at a very difficult time." Dolf and his brother Guus, as leading figures in two major Dutch business concerns, at one point formed a joint venture between the Hoogovens and Royal Dutch Shell to combat a perceived threat to the oil business by IG Farben.

Kessler would remain the director of Hoogovens until his death from a brain tumor in 1945, with a short break during the Second World War, when the Germans kept him hostage in camp Beekvliet in Sint-Michielsgestel.

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