Adolph Mueller

This article is about the German entrepreneur Adolph Müller. For other people see Adolf Müller .

Adolph Müller (born September 18, 1852 in Sachsenberg , † October 13, 1928 in Berlin ) was a German entrepreneur . In 1887, he founded Germany's first industrial accumulator production facility in Hagen .

Life

Adolph Müller was a trained businessman and devoted himself early to self-study to the new techniques of the 19th century, as they emerged particularly from the use of electricity. In the mid-1880s he worked at the electrotechnical factory Spiecker & Co in Cologne .

In 1885, Müller received information from the electrician Nikolaus Schalkenbach from Trier , who worked with the brothers Hubert and Henri Tudor , about the trouble-free operation of the Tudor batteries in Rosport, Luxembourg . Müller was impressed by the flicker-free lighting that was achieved by using the Tudor batteries. Together with Henri Tudor, he agreed to equip the city of Echternach as the first city with an electrical lighting control center in 1886, and then to begin in Germany with the introduction of accumulators produced in Rosport.

Encouraged by the manufacturer Wilhelm Post and supported by financiers in his closest circle of friends, Müller founded the Büsche & Müller company in Hagen in December 1887 . To do this, he acquired an old hammer mill in Hagen-Wehringhausen from the Hagen textile manufacturer Hermann Harkort and had it converted. In January 1888 he was the first in Germany to start the industrial production of lead-acid batteries with nine fitters, 40 workers and employees.

A year later, Paul Büsche was replaced by the technician Johannes Einbeck , who worked as a private lecturer at the Technical University of Charlottenburg , so that the company now traded under the name Accumulatoren-Fabrik Tudorschen Systems Müller & Einbeck .

1890 Mueller & Einbeck through significant participation of the two Berlin electronics companies Siemens & Halske and AEG (General Electric Company) and especially the Deutsche Bank in the Accumulatoren Factory Corporation, Berlin-Hagen (AFA) converted in the 20th century in Germany became known under the name VARTA and in the GDR under the name BAE .

In 1891 the first battery- powered electric tram ran in Halle (Saale) , and in 1895 also in Müller's hometown of Hagen. In 1893, Müller brought the Baker Runabout electric vehicle with him from the USA and tried in vain to encourage German wagon builders to replicate it. In 1903, Müller founded the electric cab company Bedag (Berliner-Elektro-Droschken-Aktien-Gesellschaft) in Berlin , but without the expected success.

literature

• Wilfried Reininghaus:  Müller, Adolph, accumulator manufacturer. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 342 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Burkhard Nadolny , Wilhelm Treue : VARTA - A company of the Quandt Group 1888–1963 . Verlag Mensch und Arbeit, Munich 1964.
• report 100 years of Varta: 1888–1988 stories about history.
• Ralf Blank : Arms export on the eve of the First World War using the example of the Accumulatoren Fabrik Berlin-Hagen AG. In: Fundus. History, Politics and Culture of the Late Modern Period. 1, 1998/1999, Göttingen 1999, pp. 106-126.
• Ralf Stremmel: Adolph Müller (1852–1928). In: Wolfhard Weber (Hrsg.): Engineers in the Ruhr area. Münster 1999, pp. 74–97 (= Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiographien, Vol. 17).
• Ralf Stremmel: The Varta accumulator factory in Hagen and its workers before the First World War. In: The Märker. 50, 2001, pp. 67-77.