Anton Biró

Anton Biró (* around 1820; † December 1, 1882 ) was an imperial and royal court locksmith and founder of the iron construction workshop and bridge construction institute Biró in Vienna .

history

Anton Biró's construction workshop (before 1900)

Locksmithing

In 1854 he founded a locksmith's shop. From humble beginnings with increasing construction activity in Vienna from the 1870s onwards, this company soon developed into one of the busiest locksmiths in the Danube monarchy . Anton Biró tried to take into account the wishes and ideas of the architects of the new Vienna and drew and trained art locksmiths in order to meet the higher demands associated with the richer furnishing of the new buildings. He was also one of the first to achieve significant success in the resurgent art locksmithing industry.

Biró participated to a large extent in the work for the monumental buildings of the Vienna city expansion and many private palaces .

The training that the construction of the Vienna apartment and commercial building received in the 1870s gave the company the opportunity to work extensively in the field of iron construction. As early as the early 1870s, the workshop was set up for steam operation and with the appropriate machine tools. The company's deliveries began to extend to all crown lands and until the end of the 1870s were also in significant quantities in Hungary.

The head of the company was awarded the Imperial Court title and the Golden Cross of Merit for his services . The company won awards at exhibitions such as the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873 , Munich in 1876 and the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878 . Biró also acted as a juror at the exhibition in Trieste in 1882 .

After his death, his sons Josef and Ludwig Biró took over the management of the company, which was significantly expanded in 1884 by moving to the new factory buildings at Fasangasse 49 and Hohlweggasse 30 in the 3rd district of Landstrasse . At the end of the 1890s, the buildings included a locksmith's workshop and a construction workshop, an assembly hall, a forge, a drilling, a machine and boiler house , a pump house, a rice floor , various magazines and depots, as well as a technical and commercial office, a photographic studio, as well as foreman and supervisor apartment. Four hydraulic riveting machines , six punching and cutting machines, a beam saw and bending machine, 30 drilling machines, two sheet metal straightening machines and a compressor for the pneumatic operation of various machine tools worked. A dynamo machine and an accumulator system provided the electrical lighting and the drive for electric drills.

Of an average of 300 employees in the company, around half worked in the locksmith's shop, the other half in the construction workshop.

Of the staff employed, a foreman had been with the company for 39 years in 1898, and a foreman for 37 years. Six foremen had been with the company for more than twenty and around 15 workers for more than ten years.

Like their father, the brothers Ludwig and Joseph Biró received the title of imperial purveyor to the court. The Anton Biró company was renamed L. and J. Biró & A. Kurz through the continuation of the sons and the collaboration with A. Kurz . This merged in 1905 with the office of Rudolph Philip Waagner and has been called Waagner-Biro since 1924 .

Work

The construction site of the Linz railway bridge in March 1900, view in west direction (upstream)

Set up for bridge construction since 1892, the Biró factory played a key role in the construction of the Vienna light rail and in deliveries of bridges for the Imperial and Royal Austrian State Railways . Among the ironwork listed company:

• the grating on the side portals and on the giant gate of St. Stephen's Cathedral ;
• the locksmith work in the palace of the German embassy in Vienna ;
• in the Hofburg in particular the magnificent gate towards Michaelerplatz ;
• the rich lattice gates at Fürst von Fürstenberg 's palace gardens in Donaueschingen and
• at the princely Konak in Sofia .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Anton Biró . In: Presented by the industrialists of Austria under the high protectorate of His K. and K. Highness of the Most Serene Archduke Franz Ferdinand (Hrsg.): Die Groß-Industrie Oesterreichs . Festival ceremony for the glorious fiftieth anniversary of the reign of His Majesty the Emperor Franz Josef I. Volume 2 . Leopold Weiss, Vienna 1898, III. Metal industry, p. 282-283 .