Heinrich Ferdinand Eckert

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Bust of Heinrich Eckert at the Agricultural Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin

Heinrich Ferdinand Eckert (born February 3, 1819 in Schwiebus ; † December 9, 1875 in Berlin ) was a German agricultural machinery manufacturer. Alongside Rudolph Sack, he is considered the father of German plow making.

Life

Heinrich Eckert was the eighth child of the cloth maker Christoph Gottlob Eckert and his wife Johanna Christina geb. Hertzberg. In 1827 the family moved to Konstantynów Łódzki in Congress Poland , where the father found work in a weaving mill . Heinrich Eckert began an apprenticeship as a weaver in 1833, but broke it off and became an apprentice in the Stenzel locksmith's shop in Łódź . He returned to Schwiebus and completed his apprenticeship with his uncle, the locksmith Wilke. In 1838 he received his journeyman's certificate and two years later he went to Berlin. Here Eckert worked in various metalworking shops and in 1846 acquired the master's andCivil rights . He set up his first workshop in a basement at Elisabethstrasse 41, but moved to Landsberger Strasse 55 just a year later .

The meeting with Johann Pistorius , who commissioned him to adapt some plows obtained from England and America to the soil conditions in the Mark Brandenburg , was decisive for Eckert's development as an agricultural machinery manufacturer . In 1848 Heinrich Eckert developed the "Eckertschen Schwingpflug", which combined elements of the Ruchadlo - a Bohemian tilting plow - and the American swinging plow and was ideally suited for the sandy soils of northern Germany. The success of the model enabled Eckert to build the first mass-produced German plow factory in Kleine Frankfurter Strasse number 1 in 1849, employing 250 workers. In the years up to 1860 he developed a total of 20 different types of plows, which were exported to southern Russia and South Africa and successfully competed with the English models that had prevailed until then. As early as 1850 Eckert expanded its product range to include feed preparation machines and - after visiting the World Exhibition in London in 1851 to get ideas for further products - from 1853 to threshing and sowing machines , grain cleaning machines and drainage presses.

The demand for Eckert's agricultural machinery continued to grow, so that in 1856 he was able to lay the foundation stone for HF Eckert's factory of agricultural machinery and iron foundry . Two years later a foundry was added. In 1860 he turned to car manufacturing. His factory, which is now iron foundry and agriculture. Maschinen-Bauanstalt was called, also produced military vehicles for the German War of 1866, supplied the Oberpostdirektion with mail cars and the city ​​administration with street cleaning machines . Eckert now also built steam engines , steam boilers , drill and hoes and Locomobile . Although the company produced 15,000 plows a year, sales of iron constructions, for example for the Görlitz train station , were significantly higher. The company premises were expanded several times through acquisitions.

Street sweeper from the HF Eckert corporation around 1880

In 1871 Eckert converted his company into a stock corporation and called it AG for the construction of agricultural machinery and equipment and HF Eckert for the manufacture of wagons , and he became its general director. Eckert topped up the share capital of 600,000  thalers in 1873 by another 200,000 thalers. Eckert himself owned shares worth 150,000 thalers. Although the shareholders had been promised a dividend of ten percent, this was canceled in 1874. The share price had halved within three years. Eckert gave up management of the company and moved to the supervisory board . He now turned to construction projects. He bought land east of Berlin on what would later become Rigaer Strasse and commissioned the construction of four workers' houses , which he did not see to be completed. He died at the age of 56 on December 9, 1875 and was buried in the old Georgen cemetery . His company experienced its heyday at the turn of the century at the new location in Friedrichsberg on Frankfurter Chaussee 162–165 (since the first half of the 20th century Berlin-Lichtenberg , Frankfurter Allee 136–141) with 1200 workers and existed until the beginning of the 1940s Years.

Eckert's wife Emilie had died in 1864. Of his 13 children, only five survived.

In the Berlin district of Friedrichshain , a street is named after Heinrich Ferdinand Eckert.

literature

  • Gustav Fischer :  Eckert, Heinrich Ferdinand. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 291 ( digitized version ).
  • Erhard Bergt: Heinrich Ferdinand Eckert and his works for agricultural machinery . In: Local History Interest Group at the Kiezspinne FAS eV (Ed.): Eine Meile bis Berlin , 2013; Reprinted in: Our FORWARD 52 (PDF; 2.87 MB), 1913, pp. 6–8; 53 (PDF; 3.71 MB), 2014, p. 6.
  • Erhard Bergt: A founding father of industrial plow construction. The HF Eckert agricultural machinery factory in Berlin . In: Der Goldene Pflug 37, 2015, pp. 4–9.
  • Hans-Heinrich Müller : The production of agricultural implements and machines in Berlin during the industrial revolution . In: Yearbook for Economic History 1/1988, pp. 67–81 ( digitized version ).
  • Friedrich Steinhardt: Heinrich Ferdinand Eckert. A portrait of the first German plow designer on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Eckertwerke on October 1st, 1921 . Parey, Berlin 1921.
  • Multi-volume work: Catalog of the Actien-Gesellschaft HF Eckert Berlin-Friedrichsberg , 1904 , available in the ZLB Berlin. To do this, click on “VÖBB” on the start page and enter “Eckert, Heinrich Ferdinand” in the search window.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eckert, HF> iron foundry and agriculture. Maschinen-Bauanstalt . In: Allgemeiner Wohnungs-Anzeiger together with address and business manual for Berlin , 1870, 1, p. 148.
  2. ↑ Otto Glagau : The stock exchange and start-up swindle in Germany (PDF; 24.3 MB). Paul Frohberg, Leipzig 1877.
  3. ^ J. Neumann, E. Freystadt (ed.): Yearbook of the Berlin Stock Exchange. A reference book for bankers and capitalists . Mittler, Berlin 1885, p. 354 .
personal data
SURNAME Eckert, Heinrich Ferdinand
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eckert, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German agricultural machinery manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwiebus , Neumark
DATE OF DEATH December 9, 1875
Place of death Berlin