András Mechwart

Andreas / András Mechwart von Belecska (1899)

András Mechwart , born as Andreas Mechwart , from 1899 András Mechwart von Belecska (born December 6, 1834 in Schweinfurt , † June 14, 1907 in Budapest ) was a German mechanical engineer and entrepreneur in Hungary.

Life

The son of the carter Johann Georg Mechwart (1802–1837) and Elisabetha Hoffmann (1805–1883) trained as a locksmith after primary school. His journeyman was a Chubb , with whom he a municipal scholarship attained, which allowed him to be at Augsburg Polytechnic begun studying mechanical engineering complete 1855th Until 1859 he worked at the Nuremberg machine works Cramer and Klett , which mainly manufactured wagons and mill equipment.

In November 1859 he made his way to Przemyśl , where he had received a good job offer from the management of the Galician Karl Ludwig Railway . On the way there, in Buda , during a visit to his long-time friend Anton E. Eichleiter (1831–1902), his boss Ábrahám Ganz persuaded him to stay: Mechwart joined the factory as an engineer. 

In 1866 he married Louise Eichleiter, his friend's sister, with whom he had three children: Ernst became a landowner, Hugo a mechanical engineer and Emma married a lawyer from Budapest.

After Ábrahám Ganz's death at the end of 1867, he, Eichleiter and Ulrich Keller were commissioned by the Swiss heirs to manage the company, which had been renamed Ganz & Co. In 1869 the factory, sold by the heirs, was renamed Ganz & Co. Eisengießerei und Maschinenfabrik AG with Mechwart as general director. In this role, Mechwart brought the company to an unexpectedly high boom in a relatively short time . 

In 1872 a branch was opened in Racibórz , in 1878 an electricity company was founded (with the participation of Déri , Bláthy , Zipernowsky ), in 1880 the factory of the First Hungarian Railway Waggonfabrik AG was purchased and a technical office was set up in Milan, in 1887 the Leobersdorfer machine factory was further expanded, then leased the blast furnace from Petrova Gora . 

The parent company in Buda also continued to develop. In 1873 Andreas Mechwart also introduced the hard -shell cast roller for grain rolling mills into the milling industry . He had rollers with notches manufactured and revolutionized grain processing with this method . From 1873 600 to 1500 roller mills were added. 

Between 1874 and 1894, Mechwart had 22 of his inventions patented, the nine most important of which concerned grain processing. He received the last patent in this area in 1886. 

Mechwart expanded the Budapest company to include steam technology, electrical engineering and vehicle construction. With the construction of mills, agricultural machinery and railway wagons, he made a decisive contribution to the industrialization of Hungary. The development of cast train wheels can also be traced back to his inventive talent. 

Mechwart's social feeling is evidenced, among other things, by the fact that in 1884 he founded a pension fund for his employees, which he then supported annually with significant sums. The workers also had an aid fund at their disposal, which enabled them to take out interest-free loans. The plant had 22 workers' houses with 445 apartments; Canteens, bathrooms, doctor's rooms and health insurance were part of the standard in the company branches. Andreas Mechwart paid his workers above average; Last but not least, he also founded an in-house apprenticeship school. 

When he retired in 1899, he was ennobled by King Franz Joseph I and given the surname "von Belecska"; In this place, Bellitsch in Tolna County , he owned lands including a small castle. 

Awards, honors

• Commander's Cross of the Franz Joseph Order 
• Order of the Iron Crown III. class 
• Royal Prussian Order of the Crown  
• Great Gold Medal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1898) 
• Elevation to the Hungarian nobility with the title "von Belecska" (1899)

Posthumously

• Naming Mechwart liget (Mechwart Park) in Budapest
• Dedication of a room in the foundry museum of the Hungarian Technical Museum
• Name of an asteroid after him: (255257) Mechwart .

See also

• History of Ganz
• Károly Zipernowsky

literature

• Josef Mentschl:  Mechwart von Belecska, Andreas. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 582 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Th. Quirchmayer-Z. Szász:  Mechwart from Belecska Andreas. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 6, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1975, ISBN 3-7001-0128-7 , p. 180.
• Otto Klug, Katalin Kiss-Lengyel: Andreas Mechwart. The German engineer who became a Hungarian industrialist . - PDF Online , accessed on January 7, 2011.
• Klaus Herrmann: Highlight in the DLM: The Mechwart milling machine. In: Der Goldene Pflug, magazine of the Agricultural Museum of the University of Hohenheim, 39, 2017, pp. 14-17.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Th. Quirchmayer – Z. Szász:  Mechwart from Belecska Andreas. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 6, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1975, ISBN 3-7001-0128-7 , p. 180.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Andreas Mechwart †. In:  Pester Lloyd , June 15, 1907, p. 3, top right. (Online at ANNO ).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Klug: Andreas Mechwart , p. 2.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Klug: Andreas Mechwart , p. 3.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Leobersdorf. General Director Mechwart (...). In:  Badener Zeitung , April 23, 1898, p. 5, top center. (Online at ANNO ).
6. ↑ Mechwart Memorial Room ( Memento of the original dated November 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 429 kB) in the Neue Zeitung 41/2001, accessed on January 4, 2010. 

Remarks

1. ↑ Both left the management in 1875.
2. ↑ Order class unknown.