Wilhelm Theodor Grillo

Wilhelm Theodor Grillo (born October 15, 1819 in Essen , † January 23, 1889 in Düsseldorf ) was a German entrepreneur .

Live and act

Grillo was born in 1819 as the older son of the Essen merchant Wilhelm Grillo , attended high school and completed a commercial apprenticeship. In 1842, at the age of 23, he founded a hardware store in Mülheim an der Ruhr . From here, Grillo participated, sometimes with his younger brothers Friedrich (1825-1888) and August Grillo (1823-1897), sometimes with his brother-in-law Daniel Morian , often alone in various mining projects and thus developed activities in Essen and Mülheim, but also in Hamborn , Oberhausen , Gelsenkirchen , Herne and Wanne . Together with his brother-in-law and brothers, he founded the Styrum share establishment for the iron industry near Mülheim an der Ruhr, which went into operation in 1857 .

He was particularly interested in zinc and the zinc paint industry. So he founded in 1849, among other things, a zinc rolling mill in Neumühl , 1855, two mills and a plant for the production of zinc white in Oberhausen and in 1881 a zinc smelter in Hamborn. He also built a zinc welding plant in Mülheim an der Ruhr in 1865. The Grillosche Gasfabrik supplied the company's own lighting network and the gas network of the city of Oberhausen. Grillo’s activities significantly boosted the industrial development of Oberhausen, Hamborn and Mülheim an der Ruhr.

The company he set up exists in the Grillo works in Duisburg-Marxloh to this day. With 1,455 employees, it generates sales of around 638 million euros and is wholly owned by Wilhelm Grillo's descendants.

Grillo had been married to Katharina Kolkmann (1826–1895) since 1843 and had four daughters and five sons, including: Wilhelm (1845–1888), Julius (1849–1911), Friedrich (1858–1919) and August (1861–1895) .

literature

• Barbara Gerstein:  Grillo, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 69 ( digitized version ).
• Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads . Ed .: City of Essen, Historical Association for the City and Abbey of Essen. Klartext, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 , p. 124 .
• Thomas Rother: Founders & Heirs. The big families in the Ruhr area . Pomp, Bottrop, Essen 1998, ISBN 978-3-89355-160-6 , pp. 81-90 .
• Monika Fehse: The founder of the zinc processing industry - Wilhelm Grillo . In: Horst A. Wessel (ed.): Mülheim entrepreneurs: pioneers of the economy. Business history in the city on the river since the end of the 18th century . Klartext, Essen 2006, ISBN 3-89861-645-2 , p. 301-312 .

Web links

• Biography in the portal Rheinische Geschichte