Adolph Libert Westphalen

Adolph Libert Westphalen 1902 (photography by Benque & Kindermann )

Gravestone Adolph Libert Westphalen, Ohlsdorf Cemetery

Adolph Libert Westphalen (born November 1, 1851 in Hamburg ; † January 3, 1916 in Zeithain ) was a German architect and fire director for the city of Hamburg.

Life

Westphalen comes from an old merchant family in Hamburg and was the son of the civil engineer Theodor Libert Westphalen (1817–1877) and Caroline Plath (1824–1859), daughter of the timber merchant Gottfried Plath (1782–1840) and granddaughter of the timber merchant Johann Christian Plath (1738–1817) ). His mother died when he was eight years old.

After finishing school in Hamburg, Westphalen did an apprenticeship as a carpenter, then volunteered in the Franco-German War in 1870 and was dismissed as an officer after the Peace of Frankfurt in 1871. In the same year he began studying architecture at the Technical University in Stuttgart and, after completing his studies, worked from 1874 as a freelance architect for the building construction office of the Hamburg building deputation. In 1885, Westphalen became a building inspector for the building police and had first contacts with the fire department .

After the founder of the Hamburg professional fire brigade Friedrich Wilhelm Kipping (1831-1892) died in an operation, Westphalen, at the suggestion of then Senator Gerhard Hachmann , trained as a 41-year-old in Berlin and Breslau in 1892 and was on April 14, 1893 appointed as Kippings successor as fire director of the city of Hamburg. In 1900 Westphalen became President of the Association of German Professional Fire Brigades (VdB) and also the first Vice President of the Great International Fire Brigade Council . In 1904 Westphalen made a study trip to America and visited the fire departments in New York , Philadelphia , Baltimore , Washington , Boston , Pittsburgh and Chicago .

During the First World War , Westphalen was drafted as a major in the reserve at the age of 63 and used as a battalion commander. But he was seriously wounded in Serbia in 1915 and was taken to a hospital in Zeithain in Saxony. Westphalen died here on January 3, 1916 as a result of the war wound and was buried on January 7, 1916 in the family grave at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg in grid square AA 9 (southwest of the north pond ).

Act

Westphalen's first big task was to reorganize the fire brigade. In 1894 Hamburg's population had risen to 665,000, but the number of fire fighters and guards remained the same. At that point in time there were only eight guard areas in Hamburg and the routes to get there were therefore very long. There was also the fact that the guards were very large, as the fire-fighting horses and cars were housed separately, and harnessing the horses in the event of an alarm took a long time. Westphalen had two modern guards set up in Bachstrasse in Barmbek and in Quickbornstrasse in Eimsbüttel in 1895 and 1898 , in which the horse boxes in the carriage shed were housed and in the event of an alarm the horses stepped independently on the drawbar of the wagons. For the first time in Hamburg, slide poles were installed in these two guards . In 1905 the guard was established at Kuhwärder Hafen in Steinwärder and in 1909 the guard in Admiralitätsstrasse in Hamburg's Neustadt district . It was the first watch that was designed from the outset for automobile operations, as Westphalen had already initiated the automobileization of the Hamburg fire brigade in 1907. In 1913 the fire station in Tankweg at the Petroleumhafen, which also included two fire engines, was put into operation and in 1914 the station in the Alsterkrugchaussee in Groß Borstel . Westphalen had six new fire stations built in just 16 years.

Westphalenturm in the Hamburg warehouse district

Another task in Westphalia was to improve the fire brigade's equipment. He introduced adjustable nozzles and hoses with the same coupling halves - instead of the previous screw couplings. In 1898 he ordered new steam sprayers from the Busch machine factory in Bautzen . These were the first steam syringes manufactured in Germany at his suggestion. Before that, these were imported from England. Westphalen also introduced fresh air devices and oxygen ventilators to the Hamburg fire department.

As a trained architect and former building inspector, Westphalen also paid particular attention to preventive fire protection. He is considered to be one of the founders of scientifically based preventive fire protection, which aims to increase the safety of buildings in the event of a fire. The fire brigade was now regularly consulted for expert opinions on important construction projects. In the Speicherstadt , he had stair towers - the so-called "Westphalentürme" - built for the first time, which were to serve as escape and rescue routes. Westphalen also had fire tests made of building materials in order to be able to assess their behavior in the event of a fire. He also introduced the orderly chimney sweep with defined sweeping districts.

One of his biggest missions was the fire in the St. Michaelis Church in 1906. 273 firefighters were deployed here.

Westphalen demanded in 1910 for the Hamburg fire brigade that the fire brigade officers must have a degree from a technical university and thus ensured better technical knowledge among the executives of the Hamburg fire brigade.

The Westphalensweg in Hamburg-St. Georg , which also houses the main station of the Hamburg fire brigade (Westphalensweg 1), was named after him in 1921. From 1965 until it was decommissioned in 1979, a fire-fighting boat of the Hamburg fire brigade was called Fire Director Westphalen . After that, another fireboat again bore the name of the fire director, but was sold to the United Arab Emirates in 1995 .

family

On April 11, 1882, Westphalen married the Hamburg merchant's daughter Helene Tidemann (1860–1941) in Berlin. However, the marriage remained childless. The businessman Theodor Libert Westphalen (1850–1937) was his brother and the astronomer Hermann Libert Westphalen (1822–1846) was his uncle.

Works (selection)

• Brief history of the development of the Hamburg fire brigade . Grefe & Tiedemann, Hamburg 1895 ( Google Books ).
• Reorganization of the Hamburg fire brigade . Hamburg 1894 ( Google Books - 29 pages).
• On the Loire, the Loir and the Sarthe. After 38 years . Hamburg 1908 ( Google Books - 35 pages).
• Report of the fire director Westphalen regarding the fire of the St. Michaeliskirche and the surrounding area in Hamburg on July 3rd, 1906 . Hamburg 1906 ( Google Books - 22 pages).

literature

• Architects and Engineers Association of Hamburg: In memory of fire director Adolf Libert Westphalen . Hamburg 1916 ( Google Books ).
• Hildegard von Marchtaler (Hrsg.): German gender book . tape 128 . Starke, Limburg an der Lahn 1862, p. 459 (also 10th Hamburg Gender Book , 1962).
• Manfred Gihl: Hamburg Fire Brigade Eins-Eins-Zwo. 125 years of the Hamburg professional fire service . EFB-Verlag, Erlensee 1997.
• Manfred Gihl: Westphalen, Adolph Libert . In: Franklin Kopitzsch , Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . Lexicon of persons . tape 1 . Christians, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1364-8 , pp. 344-345 .
• Hamburg Fire Brigade Historian V. (Ed.): The era of fire director Westphalen 1893 to 1916 . Hamburg 2004 ( feuerwehrhistoriker.de [PDF]).

Web links

• Brand director Westphalen on hamburg.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Celebrity Graves
2. ^ Gravestone at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg (accessed on May 8, 2015).