Arthur Müller (entrepreneur)

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Arthur Muller

Arthur Müller (born on 23. October 1871 as Aron Müller in Stuhm , West Prussia , died on 19th January 1935 in Berlin ) was a German entrepreneur and inventor. He was best known as one of the founders and directors of the German Airfield Society , which initiated, built and operated the Johannisthal Airfield , the first commercially operated German airfield in Berlin-Johannisthal.

Life and economic activity

Aron Müller was born the third son of the merchants Jeanette and Max Müller, he had three sisters. Little is known about his youth. From 1885 he attended grammar school in Schweidnitz , Silesia , and also completed a commercial apprenticeship. On November 7, 1912, Müller was given permission by the Berlin police chief to officially change his Jewish first name Aron to Arthur.

Land- und Industriebauten AG

From 1895 he worked as a representative for several fertilizer and feed companies. He invented a special feed made from molasses and an American corn-glucose product, which was positively assessed by the Bonn Agricultural University . In 1902 Müller gave up the feed business and devoted himself to a new activity. He knew from his connections to farmers that they often lacked storage space. Therefore, he developed together with a technician barns in lightweight construction , consisting of a wooden skeleton, which could be covered with wood or tarpaulins. He had this invention patented . After the inclusion of further shareholders to finance the company's expansion , it traded as Arthur Müller Land- und Industriebauten AG from 1908 . The lightweight structures developed by Müller were also used in the aviation industry as balloon and airship hangars, but soon also as aircraft hangars. For the first International Airship Exhibition in Frankfurt in 1909 , he built all the airship halls at his own risk and rented them to the organizer.

Johannisthal Airport

Cover sheet of the program for the commissioning of the Berlin-Johannisthal airfield from September 26, 1909

From the director of the Frankfurt exhibition, Georg von Tschudi , he learned about the plans to build a motorized airfield in Berlin. Until then, zeppelin landings and first engine flight attempts had taken place on military training areas such as Tempelhofer Feld , which in the long term hindered the development of civil aviation. Through his earlier contacts in the agricultural sector, Müller was able to ensure that the German Airfield Society that was to be founded could lease the area of ​​the future Johannisthal airfield cheaply from the Prussian forestry treasury.

In order to finance the airfield, income from entrance fees from visitors to daily flight operations and from major flight events was intended from the start. Most of the airfield structures required for this, such as wooden sheds as aircraft hangars, spectator barriers, ticket booths and spectator stands were built by his company, Arthur Müller Land- und Industriebauten AG . The airfield was opened with a competition from September 26, 1909.

The Terrain-Aktien-Gesellschaft, founded by Müller at the Johannisthal-Adlershof Airport (Tagafia), finally acquired the area of ​​the Johannisthal Airport, whereby 31% of the area had to be given free of charge to the communities of Johannisthal and Adlershof for municipal purposes. In addition, Müller had a personal right of first refusal at the airfield for a substantial amount from Terrain-Aktien-Gesellschaft.

Müller got into escalating legal and journalistic disputes with several former business partners, as they accused him, among other things, of having fraudulently appropriated the property in Johannisthal via the Tagafia. Several newspapers and magazines (including Die Bank ) published articles against Müller; Finally, in May 1913, Albert Greeven published a pamphlet entitled Modern Foundations , which struck anti-Semitic tones. The image in it of Müller as a speculator has shaped his image to the present day. The article The story of a foundation through the Tagafia in the magazine Die Bank was also evaluated by Lenin . To a certain extent, Müller wrote the Thersites font , not Gracchus , in which he dealt with the motifs of his opponents as a counter-representation to modern foundations .

Luft-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft AG

In 1912, with the participation of the Deutsche Kolonialbank at the Johannisthal airfield , he founded the Luft-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft AG (LVG), which during the First World War developed into the second largest aircraft manufacturer in the German Empire after the Albatros Flugzeugwerke .

AMBI works

Since aircraft production in Germany was initially prohibited after the First World War due to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty , Müller concentrated on other business areas. After taking over the halls of the AEG and the Rumpler works , railway wagons were repaired there. In the summer of 1919 Müller summarized his company's AMBI-works ( A rthur M üller B auten- and I ndustriewerke) together. After the air traffic had shifted from Johannisthal to Tempelhof , he sold the airfield site in Johannisthal. AMBI-Werke was a conglomerate that was active in the construction, building materials, mechanical engineering, wagon construction, chemistry, foundry and timber trade sectors, among others.

From 1923 onwards, Müller and his two sons traveled to the USA for three years . There he made contacts with Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co. , which had developed a process for the production of all-steel bodies for automobiles. The deep-drawn sheet metal parts were connected to one another by spot welding and no longer nailed to a wooden body frame as with the composite construction method. After his return, the contacts with Budd led to the establishment of the joint venture AMBI-Budd Presswerk .

For the Leipzig spring fair in 1926, a traffic tower was built on Augustusplatz , on which an AMBI traffic controller was mounted. In contrast to the traffic tower at Potsdamer Platz , which was equipped with light signals, the AMBI traffic controller had rotatable shape signals and was cheaper to buy.

The Berlin address books 1926 and 1929 give an impression of the diverse office and production locations of the AMBI plants.

Death and grave

In 1934 Müller suffered an accident at work on his company premises in Johannisthal, as a result of which one of his legs had to be amputated. He also suffered from diabetes .

Arthur Müller died on January 19, 1935 at the age of 63 in Berlin from the consequences of the accident and his illness. After cremation in the Wilmersdorf crematorium two days earlier, the urn was buried on January 25, 1935 in the Müller family's hereditary burial in the interdenominational cemetery Heerstraße in Charlottenburg in today's Berlin-Westend district (grave location: 5-C-2). Arthur Müller himself bought the grave site in 1927. His brother Hermann Nathan and a daughter-in-law had been buried there before him. The hereditary burial was dissolved in 1987 after the period of use of 60 years had expired.

Arthur Müller's remains were no longer affected by this. When his widow Thekla was allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1941, she took the urn with her and had it reburied in a grave in Linden Hill Cemetery in the New York borough of Queens .

family

Arthur Müller married Thekla Benari (1873–1953) from Coburg in autumn 1898 . The marriage resulted in two sons, both of whom were able to emigrate. Thekla Müller was also able to emigrate to the USA in 1941.

The whereabouts of the company

Thekla Müller was forced to hand over her shares in the AMBI group to a trustee . In addition, she was forced to sell her other assets well below value. After her emigration, the trust assets were confiscated by the German Reich.

After 1945

After long legal disputes, the family was compensated by the Federal Republic of Germany from 1956. No compensation was paid in the GDR , although most of Müller's properties and businesses were in Johannisthal and even the SMAD regulations provided for the return of expropriated Jewish property.

Honors

After Arthur Müller's death, the “leaders and followers” ​​of the AMBI-Werke published an obituary in which they recognized Müller as an outstanding personality. In view of the meanwhile prevailing conditions, that was not a matter of course.

Otherwise Arthur Müller's merits were kept secret for a long time. During the Nazi era he was ostracized as a Jew, in the GDR he was considered a land speculator. It was only after the fall of the Wall that his services were recognized. Since 2002 a street in a newly created residential area on the southwest side of the former Johannisthal airfield has been named after him. A street was also named after Arthur Müller at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, which is under construction .

literature

  • Rainer Karlsch , Thomas Flemming, Burghard Ciesla : 100 years of innovation from Adlershof - the cradle of German motorized aviation . In: Wista-Management (Ed.): Adlershof stories . tape 1 . Berlin June 2009, p. 72 ( reading sample [PDF; accessed on January 28, 2017]).
  • Günter Schmitt: When the classic cars flew. transpress Verlag für Verkehrwesen 1987, ISBN 3-344-00129-9 , p. 17 ff.
  • Monika Tatzkow , Hartmut Henicke: Arthur Müller: Life, Work, Legacy. proprietas-verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-00-005740-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stuhm Jewish birth register, 1871, entry no.200
  2. ↑ Cradle of German motorized aviation, p. 7
  3. ^ Stuhm Jewish birth register, 1871, entry no.200
  4. ↑ When the classic cars flew p. 18
  5. ↑ When the classic cars flew p. 26 ff
  6. ↑ Lenin Works, Volume 39, “Hefte zum Imperialismus”, page 163 ( digitized version, PDF ). Lenin quoted from Ludwig Eschwege's essay "The history of a foundation" in the magazine "Die Bank", Wochenhefte für Finanz, Kredit- und Versicherungswesen, Bank-Verlag 1912, page 420 ff.
  7. ↑ Thersites, not Gracchus. Responses to the brochure of Mr. Albert Greeven. Along with the print of Albert Greeven's brochure. Charlottenburg, self-published in 1913.
  8. ↑ February 1926, Leipzig, Augustusplatz - traffic tower, AMBI traffic controller (enter AMBI in the search mask). In: Image database of the Federal Archives , accessed on August 9, 2019.
  9. ↑ Entries of the AMBI-Werke in the Berlin address book 1926
  10. ↑ Entries of the AMBI-Werke in the Berlin address book 1929
  11. ↑ Alexander Kauther: The entrepreneur and visionary Arthur Müller (1871-1935) in Johannisthal . Print version of a PowerPoint presentation (PDF; 640 kB). Second edition. Freundeskreis Heimatgeschichte Treptow, Berlin-Treptow 2014. pp. 30–32.
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cohn, Aron (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Stool
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1935
Place of death Berlin