Arthur Sauer

Bust of Arthur Sauer

Arthur Sauer (born April 30, 1874 in Wiesentheid in Lower Franconia; † November 29, 1946 ) was a German chemist, entrepreneur and patron.

Life

Arthur Sauer was born in April 1874 in Wiesentheid, Lower Franconia, as the son of the Schönborn chancellery and domain counselor Kaspar Sauer. Starting in the winter semester of 1893/94, he studied chemistry in nearby Würzburg and received his doctorate in 1897 from the philosophy faculty of the University of Würzburg . Before that he was assistant to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen for some time . The title of his dissertation was "On isonitramines and their cleavage into sub-nitrous acid".

Sauer, however, moved into chemical practice, so that in 1897 he moved to relatives in Bensheim on Bergstrasse. In that year he also joined the company of the Worms pharmacist Rudolf Pizzala, which he took over a year later. The money for this was made available to him by Wilhelm Euler , a paper manufacturer and politician from Bensheim.

In the same year he married Anna Maria Feigel († 1945), a daughter from a wine trade family from Bensheim. The four children Maria (* 1899), Kurt (1901–1936), Doris (* 1910) and Lieselotte (* 1919) emerged from the marriage.

Before the First World War, Sauer ran for Friedrich Naumann's party in Bensheim and was hoping for a seat in the Reichstag. In the elections of 1912, however, he was defeated by the SPD candidate. Due to his age, he was spared being drafted into the First World War. Another attempt to get into the Reichstag in 1920 failed, whereupon he scaled back his political commitment and concentrated on his travels, his literary work and his company.

In his literary and philosophical publications during the First World War, echoes of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy can be recognized.

After the First World War, the economic development of his company was initially not favorable. For a short time he even considered parting with it completely. With the conversion of the production to remedies and cosmetics under the brand name Fissan , however, brought an upswing in the mid-1920s. August Sauer initially changed the name of the company to Deutsche Milchwerke Dr. A. Sauer and was successful with the products of the Fissan brand. From 1924 the company therefore took on the name Fissan-Werke .

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Sauer made numerous trips to Egypt, North Africa, Italy, Spain, Portugal and South America. There he collected lasting artistic impressions that would have an impact on his further structural and artistic developments in his company in Zwingenberg.

With Georg Fehleisen he met a young architect in 1927 who shared both his love for modern architecture in the Bauhaus style and anthroposophical attitudes. From 1928 Fehleisen therefore became the house architect of Arthur Sauer and his Fissan factories.

On May 1, 1937, the plant was named a National Socialist model company - and this continued until 1939, with the participating companies repeatedly having to face the competition. The "golden flag" of the German Labor Front waved on the Fissan buildings .

After the occupation of Zwingenberg by the American troops on March 27, 1945, the Fissan plant and parts of the plant settlement as well as the Villa Sauer were confiscated. The outsourced production was resumed on April 30, 1945. After expropriation and judicial proceedings, Arthur Sauer died on November 29, 1946 under unclear circumstances.

literature

• Dominic E. Delarue, Thomas Kaffenberger (editor): Designing living spaces. Heinrich Metzendorf and the reform architecture on Bergstrasse . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2013, ISBN 3-88462-340-0 .
• Bernd Philipp Schröder: Georg Fehleisen and the end of the Bergstrasse architectural tradition, in: Geschichtsblätter Kreis Bergstrasse, 2003, pp. 245–287.

Web links

• Dr. Artur Sauer, a pioneer of his time , in: Bergsträßer Anzeiger from December 6, 2010
• For an organic life's work ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), in: echo-online from December 10, 2010