Alexander Weniaminowitsch Bari

Alexander Weniaminowitsch Bari

Alexander Weniaminowitsch Bari ( Russian Александр Вениаминович Бари ; born May 6 ^{. Jul} / 18th May  1847 ^greg. In St. Petersburg , † April 6 ^jul. / 19th April  1913 ^greg. In Moscow ) was a Russian engineer and entrepreneur .

Life

The Bari family originally emigrated to Russia from France . Alexander Bari's father Weniamin Matwejewitsch Bari, born in Latvia , had received his education in Germany , knew twelve languages ​​and taught foreign languages ​​in the imperial page corps in St. Petersburg. He exchanged letters with Karl Marx , represented his views in public, so that he was noticed by the police in 1862 and then emigrated with his wife Henrietta Sergejewna and their children, first to Switzerland to Zurich and then in 1865 to the USA .

Alexander Bari, the second son of the family and named after Alexander von Humboldt , studied civil engineering at the ETH Zurich after attending grammar school with a diploma in 1870, before traveling to the USA as an assistant mechanic on his family's steamship . There he took on the US citizenship and worked as an engineer assistant in bridge construction and mechanical engineering companies in Detroit and later as an engineer in an engineering office in Philadelphia . His knowledge, skills and drive made him known quickly, so that in 1875 he won the competition to build the pavilions for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and soon became chairman of the Philadelphia Engineering Society. At the exhibition he supervised and advised the scientific delegation from the Moscow Technical University , to which the young Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov also belonged. In recognition of his services, Bari was elected as a corresponding member of the Pedagogy Council of the Moscow Technical University in 1877 .

Sinaida Jakowlewna von Grunberg (from a German family and sister of Bari's sister-in-law) had also come to Philadelphia, who now became Bari's wife. Since Sinaida did not want to stay in the USA, Bari gave up his USA career and returned to St. Petersburg with his wife and daughter Anna in the summer of 1877, while retaining his US citizenship. The couple had five more children: Olga, Yevgenia, Viktor, Lidija and Vladimir.

Together with his younger brother Wilhelm, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Mining College, Bari founded a small company for the design and construction of electric motors , which, however, did not receive any orders. Together with Nikolai Sytenko, engineer-lieutenant colonel out of service and member of the Imperial Russian Technical Society , Bari founded the company Bari, Sytenko & Co. for the construction of plants for the Russian oil industry. To do this, he settled in Moscow with his family . Ludvig Nobel , who knew Sytenko, hired the company to organize the oil production in Grozny and Baku . To do this, Bari hired the young engineer Schuchow , whom he had met in Philadelphia. Together they carried out Nobel's mandate to Nobel’s complete satisfaction, so that Nobel was able to found the oil production company Branobel (Russian abbreviation for Nobel brothers ), which became one of the most important oil companies in Europe. In the autumn of 1878, the Bari company commissioned the first Russian oil pipeline with a length of 10 km on the Apscheron peninsula . In 1879 the company built the second oil pipeline for the company GL Lianosow & Co. In 1880 Bari, Sytenko and the titular councilor Nikolai Rubinski set up an oil processing plant in Kuskowo in the Moscow district and founded a Russian-US-American operating company for processing Baku oil. Schuchow directed the construction work, and operations began in 1881. At the All-Russian Industrial and Crafts Exhibition in 1882 , the Kuskovo plant was recognized for its high quality. In 1882, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev became the plant's chemical-technical advisor.

Advertisement for the main office of the engineer AW Bari (1895)

In 1882 Bari sold his stake in the Kuskovo plant to the entrepreneur Pyotr Ionowitsch Gubonin in order to concentrate on his own activities. As early as 1880 he had founded the technical engineering office AW Bari with his friend Schuchow as chief engineer and technical manager. Schuchow quickly developed a new steam boiler model, for which the AW Bari boiler factory was built in 1884 . Five years later the plant had branches in St. Petersburg, Kharkov , Nizhny Novgorod and Yekaterinburg .

From 1885, the Bari office participated in the construction of the Volga oil transport fleet at its own shipyards in Saratov and Tsaritsyn . Other projects included oil pipelines, grain elevators , railway bridges and the hyperboloid structures and mesh roofs developed by Schuchow . In 1892 the Bari office participated in the development of the Russian railway network . Pavilions were built for the All-Russian Industrial and Crafts Exhibition in 1896 . The Bari office participated in the renovation of the Mytishchi water pipeline and the construction of the wagon factory in Mytishchi.

The Bari family associated in particular with Dmitri Iwanowitsch Mendelejew , Nikolai Yegorowitsch Schukowski , Sergei Alexejewitsch Tschaplygin , Fyodor Ossipowitsch Schechtel and Iwan Iwanowitsch Rerberg . In 1898 Bari met Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , and he and his daughter Anna Tolstoy visited Moscow.

During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the employees of the Bari office went on strike with the workers of the surrounding factories. In 1909 Bari hired his son Viktor to manage the company. From 1910, the Bari office also took on armaments contracts and to a greater extent during the First World War . When Bari died in 1913, the widow took over the office, which Viktor continued to manage. Bari found his grave in the German Cemetery in Moscow.

On April 28, 1918 Izvestia reported on the discovery of a counterrevolutionary conspiracy surrounding Vladimir Bari, who was then arrested and personally interrogated by Felix Edmundowitsch Dzerzhinsky . He was released through the intervention of the USA consul and emigrated. Soon afterwards Viktor Bari also emigrated with his family. Olga (Olga Bari-Aisenman) was a talented artist and a member of the artists' association World of Art and did not leave the Soviet Union .

literature

• OA Weltschinskaja: Apartment No. 2 and its surroundings: a Moscow section. Russki Put, Moscow 2009, ISBN 978-5-85887-317-4 ; Journal Nasche Nasledije 2007 No. 83–84 (Russian).

Web links

Commons : Alexander Weniaminowitsch Bari  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} ChimStalKon: Alexander Bari - founder of the first Russian engineering company . (Russian, accessed November 23, 2015)
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} alliruks Journal: Russian-American subjects . (Russian, accessed November 23, 2015)
3. ^ Moscow-South: The firm of the engineer Bari . (Russian, accessed November 23, 2015)
4. ↑ ^{a b c} My Moscow: Bari Alexander Weniaminowitsch (Russian, accessed on November 23, 2015)
5. ↑ ^{a b} E. L. Lebedew: Company Bari in Saratow (Russian, accessed on November 23, 2015)
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Karin Noack: The engineer Vladimir Gregorjewitsch Šuchov. In: Great Engineers - Internet Lexicon of Civil Engineers. BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, (accessed on May 14, 2019)
7. ↑ ^{a b} M. Tschusowa: The company of the engineer Bari in the Simonowa suburb (Russian, accessed on November 23, 2015)