Follow Us
Like Us
Historical records matching Ralph Steven von Kohorn
view all
Immediate Family
-
Privateex-spouse -
Privatechild
-
Privatechild
-
-
father -
mother
-
About Ralph Steven von Kohorn
Baron Ralph Steven von Kohorn:
b Chemnitz, Germany, December 14, 1919;
m Diana Fay Storey (diss) 1 d, 1 s;
m Jillian Annette Bussell;
d Wellington, 16 January 2011, aged 91.
Baron Ralph von Kohorn lived a life full of travel, and documented it meticulously for others to travel alongside him.
As a pilot, businessman and boatie, he kept a record of every trip he took, wrote books on his journeys throughout New Zealand on his yacht Columbia, and mapped the Marlborough Sounds so other boaties could enjoy the life on the water that was one of his many passions.
Born the second son of Baron Oscar von Kohorn, a textile factory owner, and Viennese operetta star Vally Worth, Ralph von Kohorn grew up in Chemnitz, Germany, south of Berlin, but even as a child, travel was important. His family holidayed in Switzerland and the French Riviera, often taking staff and travelling by Rolls Royce. By the 1930s, as the National Socialists gained ground in the German political arena, the von Kohorns were attacked for their wealth, aristocratic title and monarchist leanings. Their cars were vandalised, threats were made in the local press, and Oscar von Kohorn was arrested one night, supposedly for protection. His wife bribed an official for his release with a necklace bought from a Danish princess.
Oscar decided that Germany was no longer safe and moved his business affairs out of the country. The family moved to Japan when Ralph was 16 and lived there for three years before emigrating to the United States. There, he studied chemistry at the University of Southern California. In his memoir, Cellulose to Cell Phones, Ralph von Kohorn writes that he was encouraged by his mother to use his "spare time to better advantage than chasing girls", and signed him up for flying school. The family moved again, to New York, where Baron von Kohorn worked for his father's textile firm which specialised in nylon and rayon production. He took up sailing on Long Island Sound, skiied, played tennis, and rode horses in Central Park. His knowledge of Japan saw him identify several factories for intelligence services during World War II, and he later joined the army and was assigned to a prisoner of war camp where he served as a translator.
In 1942, Baron von Kohorn started a meticulous log of his air travel as a passenger, born from his record keeping as a pilot. There were business trips around the US at first, but soon he had trips to Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Britain, Italy, Egypt, Slovakia, India, Sweden, Portugal, China, the Philippines, Pakistan, Australia, Tibet, Nepal, Fiji and Venezuela, in his log book. By 1983, he had amassed 1.5 million miles of air travel as a passenger, telling The Evening Post that he had travelled to nearly every country in the world but had still not visited Mongolia or Albania. He only travelled first class, and picked Bulgarian Airlines as the worst carrier he had flown with. "Their first class was terrible warm Russian champagne that sprayed everywhere, and a few slices of salami."
Ad Feedback
By December 1994, when he stopped keeping records, he had flown 2,800,000km, crossed the Tasman 80 times, the Equator 83 times, the Atlantic 73 times, and the Pacific 33 times.
Most of his travel was to expand the von Kohorn family business by setting up nylon and rayon plants in various countries. In 1949, a business trip took him to Australia where he met Diana Storey, daughter of a business contact. They married, and settled in an apartment on Park Avenue in New York, and later White Plains. Their first daughter, Karen, was born in 1956, followed by Kirk, known as Steven, 18 months later. The couple divorced in 1963.
It was also the year that Baron von Kohorn came to Wellington to set up a nylon plant at Shannon. The Von Kohorn International Corporation was sold to Universal American Corporation, with Baron Von Kohorn as managing director. He resigned the role in 1964 after wrangling over technical issues at the plant stalled production. He moved into other business ventures, including mining. For a short time he owned a majority of shares in the National Business Review, but a law prohibiting the foreign ownership of a publication saw him sell them fairly quickly.
Baron Von Kohorn married his second wife, Jill, in Auckland in 1967. They met in 1963; he was 43, she was 19. Baron Von Kohorn wrote the relationship "really gave the Wellingtonian society something to talk about. How terrible! An innocent young New Zealand girl gadding about town, for years on end, with a divorced older American man."
During his 40s, Baron von Kohorn stepped away from business to concentrate on travel, boating and serving on various boards and committees. He wrote 14 books, many about boating, including two volumes about voyages on his 44-foot motor cruiser Columbia. The New Zealand Cruising Guide, Central Area, which he wrote in 1979, is still in use.
In 1987, Baron von Kohorn was awarded the Wellington Civic Award for services to the city. He was a driving force behind Wellington's former maritime museum, was on the steering committee and board of the Sports Foundation, now SPARC, was involved in setting up New Zealand Oral History Archives, served as finance chairman for Cot Death Research and was on the board of directors for the Fulbright Foundation for 29 years.
Sources: Jill von Kohorn, John Bussell, Dominion Post library, Cellulose to Cell Phones by Baron Ralph Steven von Kohorn
- © Fairfax NZ News
view all
Ralph Steven von Kohorn's Timeline
| 1919 |
December 14, 1919
|
Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Saxony, Germany
|
|
| 1950 |
1950
Age 30
|
White Plains, NY
|
|
| 2003 |
October 28, 2003
Age 83
|
Wellington, New Zealand
|
|
| 2011 |
January 16, 2011
Age 91
|
Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, New Zealand
|
|
| 2012 |
May 26, 2012
Age 91
|
Greenwich, Fairfield, Connecticut, United States
|