August wood

August Holz (* 1823 in Grünstadt , Palatinate ; † April 7, 1899 in Boston , USA ) was a miller in the Palatinate, came to wealth as an emigrant in the USA, and became a patron of his hometown of Grünstadt.

Life

August Holz comes from an old family in Grünstadt and was an existing miller journeyman in a Leiningen mill . After the revolution of 1848/49 he emigrated to North America for economic reasons. He probably did not know the other Grünstadt emigrant of the time, Franz Umbscheiden .

He hired himself out as a laborer in the Boston harbor and found a job as a goods inspector for a trading company specializing in grain products. In 1859 he opened his own trading office, which by 1880 had grown to a considerable size as "Holz & Cie." Since he could afford it, his love of home led him back to Grünstadt several times from the 1880s onwards.

Several donations made it possible to carry out important construction projects in Grünstadt, which were due to the growth in traffic and population at the time. The town hall was renovated and redesigned, the streets on the market were modernized according to his plans, and he made it possible for the parish to expand the parish hall. He made it possible for two associations in the city to build their own club premises, as well as for the volunteer fire brigade in 1892. The social and cultural life of the city in the German Empire was significantly shaped by wood. A green area near the town hall was called "August-Holz-Anlage" from 1894 until the road was expanded after 1900.

Afterwards, a memorial was to be placed elsewhere to commemorate wood in Grünstadt. Holz, who died in 1899, was posthumously negative in the press in the USA because of an inheritance matter from his descendants, who made various allegations against the testator. For this reason, the planned memorial was initially suspended. Since he had also supported the local Jewish community, his memory was completely forgotten with the burgeoning anti-Semitism of the 1930s.