Alfred Knorr

German entrepreneur who headed the family business, the Knorr food manufacturing company (known for its ready-made soups and cooking ingredients, and today part of the Unilever group). Alfred Knorr was the last born of the five children of the company founder Carl Heinrich Theodor Knorr (1800–1875).

Alfred Knorr took part in the Franco-Prussian War from 1870–1871 in the service of a medical corps. After the death of their father, the company founder, in 1875, Alfred and his brother Carl Heinrich Eduard Knorr (1843-1921) took over the company management.

They laid out experimental gardens to improve the soup ingredients and, with the construction of a mill in the southern district in 1884, laid the foundation stone for the company's long-standing premises (today at Knorrstrasse 1). The 1860s gave the company a tremendous upswing. In addition to soup preparations, it produced dried vegetables, canned military products and the well-known Knorr oatmeal. In 1885, packing stations were opened in Austria and Switzerland in order to avoid an increase in import duties in these countries. Knorr ready-made soups were not only offered as powder in bags, but from 1886 as bars, from 1889 in sausage form (the legendary Erbswurst pea sausage), in 1897 as tablets and in 1910 in the form of soup cubes.

Alfred Knorr married and had four children. He died on 28 May 1895 at the age of 48. His brother Carl Heinrich Eduard Knorr then took over sole management of the company.