Albert Poensgen (entrepreneur)

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Albert Poensgen

Albert Poensgen (born June 6, 1818 in Kirchseiffen near Hellenthal , † February 3, 1880 in Düsseldorf ) was a German industrialist and royal. Prussia. Commerce Council . He comes from the widespread Eifel entrepreneurial family Poensgen , who operated iron works in the Schleiden area as Reidemeister since the middle of the 15th century . Some lines have moved to Düsseldorf and were instrumental in building up the Rhenish iron, steel and pipe industry.

Live and act

Poensgen headquarters in Schleiden-Gemünd, Kölner Strasse 57–59

Albert Poensgen was the son of the Düren textile manufacturer Daniel Gisbert Poensgen (1774-1817) and Gertrud Schmidt. The father died before Albert was born and had founded a flannel factory in Düren in 1807, aided by the English continental barrier . With the lifting of the continental blockade, however, the company had to be liquidated. Albert Poensgen was only able to attend the Protestant primary school in Schleiden. He then began an apprenticeship with his relatives Carl Poensgen (1802–1848) and Reinhard Poensgen , both owners of smelters and rolling mills in Schleiden. In 1840 he went to England to familiarize himself with the iron rolling and tube technology there. He then founded a factory for wrought iron gas pipes with his brother-in-law Friedrich Wilhelm Schoeller in 1845 under the company "Poensgen & Schoeller" in Mauel near Gemünd . In 1850 he became the sole owner of this company.

Until the middle of the 19th century the traffic situation of the Eifelhütten between Liège and Cologne was favorable, especially since ore and coal could be taken from the local area. When the capacities of the smelters and the absorption capacity of the markets grew with technical progress, the Eifelhütten fell behind because the ore base was no longer sufficient and the coke smelting was an additional transport task. This was all the more disadvantageous because with the advent of the coke oven in the Ruhr area from 1850 onwards, more and more ironworks were built, which quickly found a connection to the expanding railway network. When Poensgen's efforts with the authorities to initiate the construction of a convenient railway to the Eifel ("the railway of Mr. Poensgen") failed and he could not find suitable land in Cologne, he moved his factory on April 27, 1860 from Gemünd to Düsseldorf. His first pipe mill was built there in the Oberbilk district , followed 10 years later in Oberbilk and Lierenfeld by puddling and universal rolling mills .

His older brother Julius Poensgen also came to Düsseldorf a short time later and built a factory for the production of lead pipes, which later became the “Gebr. Poensgen AG ”, a company for laundry machines. Two other members of the Poensgens family, the brothers Gustav Poensgen and Rudolf Poensgen , relocated their father Reinhard Poensgen's (1792–1848) iron and steel mill from Gemünd to Düsseldorf at almost the same time. This is how the Mariahütte and a rolling mill were built in Oberbilk in 1860, with which they primarily supplied Albert Poensgen. Finally, in 1864 another relative, Carl Poensgen , founded his own steel works in Oberbilk, which worked according to the new English Bessemer method . Thus, in the middle of the 19th century, five Poensgens dared to jump from the Eifel to Düsseldorf and laid an important foundation stone for their future significance as an important iron, steel and tube city.

In 1872 Albert, Gustav and Rudolf Poensgen put their works into a large company, the " Düsseldorfer Röhren- und Eisenwalzwerke AG ". Poensgen ”together. After Albert Poensgen's death in 1910, this company was merged with " Phoenix AG für Bergbau und Hüttenbetrieb ". The ring around the main core of the Rhenish-Westphalian industry was closed when the Phönix Group merged with the Thyssen Group , Rheinische Stahlwerke , Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG and a number of other mining companies to form " Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG ". This mining group, which consists of iron, steel and mining companies and has its administrative headquarters in Düsseldorf, has become one of the largest German companies. Ernst Poensgen , son of Carl Poensgen and maternal grandson of Albert Poensgen, was a member of the board of “Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG” from 1926, initially as deputy chairman, from 1935 to the end of 1943 as chairman. Helmuth Poensgen , grandson of Albert's brother Julius, was also a member of the board of the “Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG” from 1926 to 1945.

The cities of Gemünd and Schleiden appointed Albert Poensgen, who had been a member of the Gemünder Municipal Council since 1845, an alderman since 1850, as well as chairman of the examination commission for handicrafts and chairman of the tower building association of the Protestant parish, as their honorary citizen on April 24th, 1860 . In Düsseldorf the "Albert-Poensgen-Straße" reminds of him. After the death of her husband, Albert Poensgen's widow set up an Albert Poensgen Foundation worth 15,000 marks, the interest of which was used not only to support the needy but also to support social and cultural events in her old home town of Gemünd.

family

Gravesite Albert and Emma Poensgen in the north cemetery in Düsseldorf by sculptor Karl Janssen (2016)

Albert Poensgen was married to Emma Rotscheidt (1828-1892), daughter of Johann Wilhelm Ludolf Rotscheidt, Reidemeister and large landowner in Gemünd. Together they had seven children, 5 sons and two daughters, including his son Albert Poensgen , a physician and founding and management member of several institutions of the German Colonial Society , their daughter Clara Poensgen (1846–1910), a supporter of the Düsseldorf arts and the women's movement that was beginning at the time . She was married in Düsseldorf to the aforementioned Carl Poensgen from the Schleiden line. The youngest son Paul (1861–1920) became a farmer, had been married to Aline Geselschap (1866–1931) since 1889, and in 1890 bought the Garath manor and broke through the tenant business there for the first time.

literature

  • Lutz Hatzfeld:  Poensgen. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 568 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Edmund Strutz (Ed.): German Gender Book , Volume 123, 1958, Verlag CA Starke, Glücksburg, Ostsee.
  • Josef Wilden: Five Poensgen create a new Düsseldorf , Düsseldorf, 1942
  • Heinrich Kellerter, Ernst Poensgen: The history of the Poensgen family ; Ed .: A. Bagel-Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1908
  • Horst Wessel: The entrepreneurs of the Poensgen family in the Eifel and in Düsseldorf , in: Bewegen -verbindungen-Gestalten, entrepreneurs from the 17th to the 20th century , writings on the Rhenish-Westphalian economic history, vol. 44, foundation Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv zu Cologne, Cologne, 2003
  • Lutz Hatzfeld: The Albert Poensgen Mauel stock corporation - Düsseldorf, studies on the rise of the German steel tube industry from 1850 to 1872 ; Verlag Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, 1964, ISBN 978-3-933025-06-7 .

Web links

Commons : Albert Poensgen (1818–1880)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Poensgen, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Hellenthal
DATE OF DEATH February 3, 1880
Place of death Dusseldorf