Adolf Knaudt
Adolf Knaudt (born June 15, 1825 in Boizenburg / Elbe ; † December 13, 1888 ; full name: Adolf Johann Knaudt ) was a German engineer and entrepreneur . In 1855 in Essen, together with the businessman Carl Julius Schulz, he founded the Puddling and Blechwalzwerk Schulz, Knaudt & Cie. which later became part of the Krupp Mannesmann ironworks in Duisburg .
Life
Adolf Knaudt was born as the son of the timber merchant and councilor Carl Heinrich Knaudt in Boizenburg an der Elbe and his wife Lucie Knaudt nee. Lambertz was born in Bremen . He married Johanne geb. Winter, with whom he had a daughter Ida, who was born in Essen in 1859. Another child was his son Otto.
In the early 1840s, Knaudt came to Hamburg and attended a private school there. He began an apprenticeship in Ernst Alban's machine factory in Plau am See . Here, as the best apprentice, Knaudt was given the task of operating the water-tube boiler that Ernst Alban had just developed . After three months as a boiler attendant, Knaudt went to the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna in the fall of 1845 . In January 1848 he took part in street fighting in the Academic Legion at the time of the German Revolution . Then he returned to his home in Mecklenburg and then took up a job as a locksmith in Berlin . At the beginning of the 1850s he and a college friend founded a chemical factory in Duisburg , which he left to his partner a little later for lack of success. In the process, Knaudt lost a large part of the fortune advanced by his father.
In December 1855, Knaudt and the businessman Carl Julius Schulz founded a sheet metal rolling mill in Essen on today's Hollestrasse. Knaudt had to borrow 10,000 thalers from relatives , which, with a total investment of 60,000 thalers, was his only stake in the new company. With the help of five puddling ovens , they began to manufacture wrought iron , which was then known as welding iron, and to sell it to machine factories. The new company also had two welding furnaces, two steam hammers and a roller train. Over the course of time, Adolf Knaudt had developed and introduced a number of technical innovations and brought Carl Schulz his financial skills.
Adolf Knaudt was also city councilor for the city of Essen from 1862 to 1868 . He died of a stroke at the age of 63, two years after his partner Carl Schulz. The heirs turned the company into a stock corporation with a new location in Duisburg.
The graves of the Knaudt and Schulz families were in the cemetery at Kettwiger Tor . In the mid-1950s they were reburied in the Ostfriedhof in Essen, as the cemetery at Kettwiger Tor was abandoned for urban planning reasons. In Essen, Knaudtstrasse in Huttrop is a reminder of him; in Duisburg , Schulz-Knaudt-Strasse is named after the two company founders.
literature
- Adolf Knaudt and the factory production of floors, corrugated pipes and other sheet metal parts for steam boilers. In: Contributions to the history of technology and industry. Yearbook of the Association of German Engineers. Volume 1, 1909.
Individual evidence
- ^ Verein für Computergenealogie eV: Familienbericht Knaudt ; Retrieved December 26, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Knaudt, Adolf |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Knaudt, Adolf Johann (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German engineer and entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 15, 1825 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Boizenburg / Elbe |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 13, 1888 |