Carl Alexander von Martius

Carl Alexander von Martius

Carl Alexander von Martius (born January 19, 1838 in Munich , † February 26, 1920 at the Stauffenhof in Nonn ) was a German chemist and industrialist.

family

Carl Alexander von Martius came from a family originally from Umbria who came to Hungary with the scholar Galeottus Martius (1427–1497) in 1461 as a secret scribe and teacher at the court of King Matthias Corvinus and around 1731 with the pastor and princely Brandenburg- Kulmbacher inspector Georg Martius in Redwitz an der Rodach and with him is demonstrably represented for the first time in Germany. Carl Martius, son of the botanist and natural scientist Carl Friedrich Philipp Martius (1794–1868), who was raised to the Bavarian personal nobility in 1820 , married Margarete Veit on May 15, 1872 in Berlin (* August 24, 1853; † August 1, 1926 in Berlin the Stauffenhof near Nonn). Martius was raised to hereditary nobility on February 16, 1903 by Wilhelm II as King of Prussia.

Life

Martius studied chemistry. In 1859 he became a member of the Corps Bremensia . He was a student of Justus von Liebig and assistant to August Wilhelm von Hofmann in London and Berlin. In research and later in production, he mainly devoted himself to the manufacture of aniline oil and aniline colors from tar distillation products. Martius discovered dinitronaphthol in 1867, the wool dye "Martius yellow" named after him . This was the first technically applied naphthalene dye . He is also the discoverer of the azo dye Bismarck brown Y , which is still used in textile dyeing today and named after Otto von Bismarck , the founder of the empire .

In 1867 he and Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy the Elder founded the Gesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation mbH in Boxhagen-Rummelsburg near Berlin , from which in 1873, after buying the chemical factory Dr. Jordan in Alt-Treptow near Berlin, the Aktiengesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation ( Agfa ) emerged, the management of which he held after the death of his partner in 1880 until he left in 1898.

Also in 1867 he was a founding member of the German Chemical Society , in 1874 he was chairman of the Patent Protection Association and in 1877 he became a non-permanent member of the Reich Patent Office and a founding member of the "Association to protect the interests of the chemical industry in Germany". He was also a member of the Economic Committee, the Reich Insurance Office , the Railway Tariff Commission and in 1911 he participated in the establishment of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry .

Martius was one of the founding members of the German Association for the Protection of Industrial Property ("Green Association"), of which he was a member from 1891 onwards. In 1895 he was entrusted with the chairmanship of the association, from which he resigned in 1899. After his death he was awarded honorary membership. From 1916 to 1918 von Martius sat in the Prussian mansion .

literature

• CA by Martius . In: Commercial legal protection and copyright . tape 25 , supplement to No. 4 , 1920. [Obituary]
• Gothaisches Genealogical Pocket Book of the Noble Houses , part B 1941, page 356, Verlag Justus Perthes, Gotha 1941.
• Norbert Welsch and Claus Chr. Liebmann, Colors - Nature, Technology, Art , Spectrum Academic Publishing House, Heidelberg / Berlin 2003, p. 204.
• Acta Borussica Volume 10 (1909–1918) (PDF file; 2.74 MB)
• Michael Engel:  Martius, Carl Alexander von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 312 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl Alexander von Martius in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature list in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 39/661.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} C.A. von Martius , in: Commercial Legal Protection and Copyright , Vol. 25, Supplement to No. 4, 1920.