Adolph Kirdorf

Adolph Kirdorf (born June 25, 1845 in Mettmann ; † July 8, 1923 in Munich ) was a German coal and steel industrialist .

Live and act

The son of Weber's Martin Kirdorf (1811-1847) and the Amalie Dickens (* 1811) and older brother of the industrialist Emil Kirdorf visited after 1862 at the secondary school in Dusseldorf high school graduation with the weaving in Mülheim on the Rhine in order after the early death of his father to take over the hand weaving mill Burberg & Kirdorf in Mettmann , which in the meantime was run by an uncle. This did not happen, however, as the father's company went bankrupt in 1870 because the company management had missed the mechanization that began in the 1860s, which was necessary for an economic upswing. Because of this negative development, Adolph's uncle chose suicide.

Instead, Kirdorf took on a position as technical director at the mechanical weaving mill Simons & Frowein in Leichlingen and then at the Dortmund Union , where he also received the power of attorney . In 1875 he was finally appointed commercial director of the Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein Rothe Erde , in order to reorganize and renovate it after the founding crisis and multiple changes of ownership.

After the Bessemer process had been introduced in Aachen two years before he took up his duties, Kirdorf consistently continued to modernize the mixed operation. In addition to the still existing Siemens-Martin furnace , in 1880 the Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein initiated steel production according to the Thomas process as one of the first smelters in Germany . Since there were no blast furnaces in Rothe Erde in which the iron ore could be smelted into pig iron , Kirdorf acquired several blast furnace plants and collieries for this purpose both in Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg , which belonged to the German Zollverein , and in the Community of Audun-le-Tiche / Deutschoth in Lorraine , which had been part of the German Empire since 1871 . He received the required amount of coal and coke from Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG , where his brother Emil was also the commercial director at the time. Kirdorf's strategy paid off and by 1887 the Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein took first place among the German steelworks with crude steel production of around 500,000 tons and increased this result to over a million tons of crude steel ingots by 1890.

In 1904, Adolph Kirdorf was one of the co-founders of the steelworks association in Düsseldorf , which had the aim of merging the heterogeneous production of the iron processing industry in an economic cartel or syndicate and which consequently, together with the Upper Silesian steelworks association, dominated the entire German and Luxembourg steel industry. This represented, among other things, the interests of the Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein. Furthermore, Kirdorf joined the Schalke Mine and Huts Association on January 1, 1905, which finally resulted in a formal merger in 1907 under the umbrella of Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG, where his brother Emil had meanwhile risen to become General Director. In 1906, Adolph Kirdorf arranged for the Eschweiler wire factory to be incorporated into the Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein, as it had been badly damaged that year by a flood of the Inde . Finally, in 1910, together with his brother, he began to build the Adolf-Emil-Hütte, named after them, in Esch-sur-Alzette , Luxembourg, in order to continue expanding in the steel industry with the Lorraine-Luxembourg ore reserves. This hut, completed in 1912, was considered one of the most modern facilities of its time. With that, the Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein, which now has eleven blast furnaces, is one of the most important heavy industry companies in Luxembourg, alongside the local Arbed with 15 blast furnaces and the German-Luxembourgish mining and smelting company owned by Hugo Stinnes, a Ruhr industrialist with 9 blast furnaces .

After the First World War and the associated collapse in the supply of raw materials, both due to the breakdown of smelters and mines in Lorraine and Luxembourg's exit from the German Customs Union, as well as the loss of sales markets in eastern Germany due to the Allied occupation of the Rhineland , Kirdorf was forced to close his company to the Franco-Belgian-Luxembourg consortium Société Métallurgique des Terres Rouges under the leadership of the Luxembourg steel group Arbed.

Adolph Kirdorf, whose sense of responsibility was shaped by the early death of his father and the bankruptcy of his father's company, always advocated a policy of social equality. For him, who felt politically inclined to the National Liberal Party , social peace and an open relationship with his workers were the basis for the successful development of his company.

For his services, Kirdorf was appointed secret councilor of commerce and in 1912 was awarded an honorary doctorate (as Dr.-Ing. E. h.) From RWTH Aachen University . Adolph Kirdorf found his final resting place in the hot mountain cemetery in Burtscheid / Aachen .

family

Adolph Kirdorf was first married to Klara (1853-1906) and then to Emma Hoesch (1856-1932), both daughters of the Düren paper manufacturer Matthias Eberhard Ludolf Hoesch (1818-1868), a son of Ludolf Matthias Hoesch . With Klara he had the son Max (1878-1923), who was also active as a coal and steel industry, but died in the same year as his father and only a month before, and two daughters. Of these, Adele (born December 10, 1885) first married Eduard Honigmann (1872-1916), son of the mine owner Friedrich Honigmann , and her second marriage was the general of the aviators Gustav Kastner-Kirdorf (1881-1945).

Literature and Sources

• Helmut Böhme:  Kirdorf, Adolph. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 665 f. ( Digitized version ).
• H. Becker: Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein Rothe Erde near Aachen. Commemorative publication for the 60th anniversary of the commissioning of his plants. 1847-1907. Aachen 1907.
• Wilhelm Rabius: The Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein in Rothe Erde. 1846-1906. The origin and development of a Rhenish steel mill. Jena 1906.
• Michael Käding: Red (h) e earths. In: Paul Thomes (Ed.): Raw material base and sales market. The heavy industry of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Aachen area. Aachen 2005, pp. 13-20. (= Aachen Studies on Economic and Social History , Volume 2.)
• Michael Käding: History of the Aachener Hütten-Aktien-Verein Rothe Erde. In: Paul Thomes (Ed.): Raw material base and sales market. The heavy industry of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Aachen area. Aachen 2005, pp. 83-142. (= Aachen Studies on Economic and Social History , Volume 2.)

Web links

• Information from the association for regional technical history

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Festschrift for the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Realgymnasium on May 28, 1838. Düsseldorf 1888. (mentioned in the list of graduates)