Adolf von Brüning

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Adolf von Brüning
Farbwerke share issued to Adolf von Brüning from 1881
Evangelical town church Höchst in 1905
Brüning's tomb in the main cemetery in Frankfurt

Johann Adolf Brüning (von Brüning since 1883, born January 16, 1837 in Ronsdorf (now part of Wuppertal ), † April 21, 1884 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German industrialist , chemist and politician .

life and work

Brüning attended grammar school in Elberfeld and, after graduating from high school, studied chemistry from 1854 to 1856 with Carl Remigius Fresenius in Wiesbaden . In 1856/57 he switched to Adolph Strecker at the Christiania Technical University , and in 1858/59 to Robert Bunsen in Heidelberg . In between, he completed his military service as a one-year volunteer with a mounted field artillery regiment in Berlin in 1857/58 .

In March 1859 he received his doctorate and then joined the Berlin company W. Spindler , a dye works, textile printing and dry cleaning company. In 1862 his college friend Eugen Lucius offered him to found an aniline paint factory with him, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Meister and Ludwig August Müller in Höchst am Main, then in Nassau . Since the Free City of Frankfurt tolerated no industry within its borders, the chemical factories that were being built in rapid succession had to settle in the communities upstream and downstream of Frankfurt.

Brüning married Clara Spindler (1843–1909), the daughter of his previous boss Wilhelm Spindler , on July 14, 1863 in Berlin , and moved with her to Höchst.

On January 2, 1863, the tar paint factory Meister Lucius & Co was founded, which later became the world's largest chemical company, Hoechst AG. As technical director, Brüning had a 25 percent share in the profits and became a partner in 1864, while August Müller soon left. Since 1865 the company has operated as Farbwerke Meister Lucius & Brüning . The first products were aniline and fuchsine .

Brüning's most important discovery, aldehyde green , was the first green textile dye that retained its hue even under gas light. When it was possible to win the French Empress Eugénie as a customer and to supply large quantities of Höchst dyes to the textile industry in Lyon , this brought the breakthrough for the newly founded company. In 1869 the Farbwerke brought alizarin , a red dye, onto the market, which quickly became the most successful product of the Farbwerke. In 1872 Brüning succeeded in developing a new manufacturing process for fuchsin that managed without the toxic arsenic acid .

In January 1880, the company founders converted the company into a stock corporation , the Farbwerke vorm. Meister, Lucius & Brüning AG . The Farbwerke existed under this name until they were merged into IG Farbenindustrie AG in 1925 .

Brüning's scientific and economic successes quickly provided him with a large fortune, which he used for extensive social and community engagement. He was a pioneer in the field of work organization, occupational health and safety and company social welfare. In 1873 he received a gold medal for the company at the world exhibition in Vienna . In 1874 he founded the Aid Fund for Sick Workers , a company health insurance fund that also provided social security for workers and their relatives in the event of accidents, disability, occupational diseases, old age and death. The company medical service he initiated was a pioneer in research into occupational diseases. The first workers' apartments were built in the Seeacker settlement from 1874 to 1875. In 1875 he had the Höchst City Hospital modernized and in 1879 set up the Kaiser Wilhelm Augusta Foundation , a pension fund for Höchst workers, which also granted mortgage loans for house building.

Brüning belonged to the Association for Social Policy and the National Liberal Party . As a patron of the Frankfurt Artists' Society, he arranged for the purchase of numerous works of art and in 1877 founded the Central German Arts and Crafts Association , which he headed until his death.

From 1877 to 1882 Brüning, which belonged to the Protestant Reformed Church , financed the construction of the Protestant town church in Höchst, the first Protestant church building in the traditionally Catholic Höchst.

From 1874 to 1881 Brüning represented the Nassau constituency of Höchst in the Reichstag , where he belonged to the right wing of the National Liberals around Johannes von Miquel . Together with him, Brüning designed the Heidelberg program in 1884 , with which the National Liberals approached Bismarck's policy . He was one of Bismarck's advisors when drafting the Health Insurance Act of June 15, 1883.

Brüning also worked as a newspaper publisher. In 1876 he acquired the Frankfurter Presse and in 1880 merged it with the Frankfurter Journal , the oldest newspaper in Frankfurt. On December 6, 1882, together with Miquel and Hermann Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg , he founded the German Colonial Association in Frankfurt , whose efforts he supported with large donations. He had the Deutsche Colonial-Zeitung produced in his printing works.

For his merits and achievements, he was raised to the Prussian nobility on September 28, 1883.

In 1878 he moved into a villa with his wife and six sons at Mainzer Landstrasse  80, and later he also owned a country estate in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe . His eldest son Gustav von Brüning (1864–1913) succeeded his father in 1893 at the Höchst paintworks.

At the beginning of 1884 Brüning fell ill with a kidney disease that quickly worsened. He died on April 21, 1884 in Frankfurt am Main and was buried in the main cemetery. After his death, his wife Clara moved back to Höchst, where she was socially committed in a variety of ways. In 1907 she acquired the Red House and the dilapidated Höchst Castle with the associated gardens and fortifications. She had the property restored historically true to history and opened the green spaces to the population.

In memory of Adolf and Clara von Brüning, the city of Höchst renamed the park at the castle and the adjacent street as Brüningpark and Brüningstrasse. Brüningstrasse is still the postal address of the Höchst industrial park , which emerged from the former inking works. The Brüning fountain on the Höchst market and a portrait painted by Norbert Schrödl , which is now in the Höchst industrial park, are reminiscent of Brüning .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Brüning, Gustav Adolf Wilhelm von. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
personal data
SURNAME Brüning, Adolf von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brüning, Adolf; Brüning, Johann Adolf; Brüning, Johann Adolf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist and politician (NLP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Ronsdorf
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 1884
Place of death Frankfurt am Main