Karl Ruprect Kroenen
Karl Ruprecht Kroenen is a villain of the 2004 film adaptation of Hellboy, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. The character and film are based on the Dark Horse graphic novels of the same name by Mike Mignola, in which Kroenen played a more secondary role. The film and comic incarnations of Kroenen contrast sharply.
Appearances
Film version
Karl Ruprecht Kroenen was born in Munich, Germany in 1897. A musical prodigy with angelic features and blonde hair, young Kroenen toured the capitals of Europe singing opera until his voice deepened with the onset of puberty, thereby ending his career. From a very early age, he demonstrated symptoms of sadomasochism, whipping himself with a fresh branch of oak each day, and finding pleasure in the pain. Kroenen also had an affinity for all things mechanical, leading to his hobby of designing clocks, toys, and complex automata.
As a teenager, he loathed his awkwardness. In an effort to enhance his face, he conducted a series of brutal experiments, removing his eyelids, upper lip, and lower lip. As a result, his face was horribly deformed, and he suffered from a sadomasochistic compulsion commonly referred to as surgical addiction. He later designed a tight-fitting gas mask to filter out germs; currently, he has a wide repertoire of masks to wear.
In 1930, he met the resurrected monk Grigory Rasputin for the first time. Obsessed with purity, Kroenen quickly became Rasputin’s most loyal disciple. He subsequently joined the Nazis, and rose quickly through the ranks, joining the Schutzstaffel in 1933, and achieving the rank of Obersturmbannführer, or Lieutenant Colonel. He became head of the Thule Society, a group of German aristocrats obsessed with the occult. He helped them to spearhead Project Ragnarok, engineering the portal generator that would conjure the Scarlet Beast, Hellboy, on October, 1944.
When Allied forces stormed the island off the coast of Scotland where Project Ragnarok was taking place, Kroenen lost his left hand when he tried to retrieve a live grenade thrown by the young Professor Trevor Bruttenholm. The grenade landed right beside the portal generator, and the spinning blades of the mechanism severed Kroenen’s hand. When the grenade exploded, a length of shrapnel impaled Kroenen through the heart. Shortly thereafter, he disappeared, although how he escaped and where he went remains a mystery.
After Kroenen's disappearance in October of 1944, records were found of his experiments to fuse steel to bone. This is further evidence of Kroenen's philosophy that humanity’s future lay in the marriage of flesh and machine. In 1956, an unmarked grave in Romania was found. Dental records identified the remains as those of Kroenen. Thus, Kroenen’s reappearance in 2004 is a mystery.
Using arcane science, Kroenen created a prosthetic hand and heart that operated on clockwork engineering. By cranking the key-like mechanism where his heart should be, he effectively wound up his wrists, allowing him to wield his baton swords, or tonfas, with superhuman skill and precision. He could also turn the key to “switch” his body off, remaining in a dormant state and appearing dead, until his masters, the Ogdru Jahad, reanimated him. He used this deceptive technique to infiltrate the BPRD headquarters.
A ruthless and cunning assassin, Kroenen is responsible for the deaths of countless people, including scores of Allied troops, and Hellboy’s father figure, Trevor Bruttenholm. He also critically wounded Agent Clay. In Kroenen’s lair underneath Rasputin’s mausoleum in Moscow, Russia, Hellboy avenged his friends when he threw Kroenen into his own trap—an impalement pit hidden beneath a trapdoor. Skewered on the stakes, the undead Kroenen then watched helplessly as Hellboy dropped a giant cog on him.
Czech actor Ladislav Beran, who played a drug dealer in the 2002 film Blade II, portrayed Kroenen in the film adaptation of Hellboy. According to Guillermo del Toro, Kroenen will not come back in the forthcoming Hellboy 2, but may return in a possible third film.
Comic Version
In the comics, Kroenen is a relatively unremarkable SS scientist (other than always wearing a mask). Kroenen was frozen inside a Nazi base that failed to survive, along with his companions in the Ragna Rok project. However, Rasputin managed to wake them from their long sleep. Kroenen later angered Rasputin by accidentally killing Leopold Kutz when he attacked Kroenen's friend, Herman von Klempt. Rasputin struck a bystander blind, causing him to push the self-destruct button and blow up the place. Kroenen was finally confronted and defeated by Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.
References
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