Frederick R. Koch

Early life and education Koch was born in Wichita, Kansas. His paternal grandfather, Harry Koch, was a Dutch immigrant, who founded the Quanah Tribune-Chief newspaper and was a founding shareholder of Quanah, Acme & Pacific Railway. Among his maternal great-great-grandparents were William Ingraham Kip, an Episcopal bishop; and Elizabeth Clementine Stedman, a writer.

Beginning in eighth grade, Koch attended a boarding school called Pembroke-Country Day School in Kansas City, Missouri. He attended high school at Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York. Among his private collections is the archival estate of George Platt Lynes and a vast archive of the works of society photographer Jerome Zerbe.

The Frederick R. Koch Foundation, which he founded, is a major donor to the Morgan Library & Museum and Frick Collection in New York City and to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Of particular note are The Frederick R. Koch Collections at the Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Library at Harvard University, and at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale president Richard C. Levin described the Koch collection as "one of the greatest collections to come to Yale since the year of its founding."

Starting in the 1980s, Koch bought, restored and maintained a number of historic properties in the United States and abroad. These properties include the Donahue house, a Woolworth mansion in Manhattan; the Habsburg hunting lodge Schloss Blühnbach near Salzburg, Austria; the Romanesque Villa Torre Clementina in Cap Martin, France; and Elm Court, a Tudor Gothic manse in Butler, Pennsylvania. Koch financed the reconstruction of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Swan Theater in England from its 1879 remains, although his role as the project's patron was kept secret for years. Sutton Place is the former residence of J. Paul Getty and the meeting place of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Koch purchased the property from another reclusive art collector, Stanley J. Seeger. He "redecorated the house and hung his art collection, but is said never to have spent a night under its roof before selling it for £32m" in 1999. Other sources say he operated it as the Sutton Place Foundation, open to the public for more than 25 years, and that he ultimately sold the property in 2005. Despite lavish philanthropy and millions spent on art acquisitions and property restoration, Koch was said to have a frugal streak. He reportedly "prefers taking the public bus in New York and typically flies commercial," according to Vanity Fair. and his brothers' suspicions regarding Fred's sexuality were central to a failed attempt to blackmail him into giving up his shares in Koch Industries. Fred consistently denied being gay, however, and told journalist Daniel Schulman that "Charles' 'homosexual blackmail' to get control of my shares did not succeed for the simple reason that I am not homosexual."

Legal battles Frederick Koch and his younger brother Bill had inherited stock in Koch Industries. In June 1983, after a bitter legal and boardroom battle, the stakes of Frederick and Bill were bought out for $1.1 billion, and Charles Koch and David Koch became majority owners in the company. Legal disputes against Charles and David lasted roughly two decades. Frederick and Bill sided with J. Howard Marshall III, J. Howard Marshall II's eldest son, against Charles and David at one point, in order to take over the company. In 2001, Bill reached a settlement in a lawsuit where he had alleged that the company was taking oil from federal and Indian land; this settlement ended all litigation between the brothers. CBS News reported that Koch Industries settled for $25 million.

Death Koch died of heart failure at his home in Manhattan on February 12, 2020, at the age of 86.