August Lauw

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Christian Emil August Lauw (born August 20, 1826 in Rastede ; † October 21, 1917 in Bockhorn ) was a German entrepreneur , manufacturer and brickworks owner .

Life

Lauw was the son of Rasteder bailiff and temporary member of the Oldenburg state parliament Carl Friedrich Heinrich Lauw (1790–1867) and his wife Anna née. Steinfeld (1796-1845). He grew up in Rastede and attended the lower classes of the old grammar school in Oldenburg , which he left early to go to sea. First he was a cabin boy and then an able seaman on Bremen merchant ships. In 1845/46 he acquired the helmsman's license and in 1849 became chief helmsman . With financial support from relatives and acquaintances, he had a barque built in 1851 with which he, as a captain, transported goods on the route from Brake to New York on his own account in the following years .

On September 22, 1854, he married Anna Margarethe Elisabeth Meinahlers (1836–1898) in Bockhorn, the daughter of a Bockhorn househusband and innkeeper. The marriage produced eight daughters and two sons. By getting married, Lauw decided to give up shipping and initially wanted to become a farmer. However, he quickly recognized the opportunities offered by the local brick making industry, which was expanding at the time. Since about 1838 the construction of roads and roads had been promoted by the Oldenburg government. At the same time, pavement and road construction in other large cities such as Bremen and Hanover had given brickworks an initial boost. This was reinforced by an enormous surge in demand from the construction of the Prussian war port of Wilhelmshaven from the end of the 1860s.

Lauw found lime-poor clay soils in the Frisian Wehde , which were an excellent raw material for the production of clinker bricks, which, due to their hardness and acid resistance, were also ideally suited as street paving. In 1855 he built his first brick factory and reinvested the profits in the purchase of additional land and brick factories, for example in the Ammerland , where there was also sufficient raw material in the form of forest and meadow clay for clinker, as well as the peat fuel, which was widely used at the time Crowd gave. At the end of the 1860s, the Hoffmann ring oven made it possible to manufacture bricks on an industrial scale. Lauw immediately took advantage of this technical innovation and built his first furnace of this type in 1869, which was soon followed by others. He expanded his property and also the clay deposits, which formed the raw material basis for his brickworks, through constant land purchases. After all, with seven ring kilns and around 2,000 hectares of land, he almost assumed a monopoly-like position in the Oldenburg clinker industry with its center in Bockhorn. Thanks to the progressive mechanization and modernization of the production processes, he was able to produce and sell around 12 million bricks and bricks per year as early as 1870.

Around 1900 he retired from business life and handed over the majority of his brickworks to his son Carl Friedrich Christian Lauw (1858–1917), although he kept overhead management until his death. At the same time he leased another brickworks in Klein Schweinbrück to his son-in-law Wilhelm Friedrich Bernhard Röben (1859–1925). The location still exists today as the nucleus of the internationally active building materials company Röben Tonbaustoffe . Lauw was buried in the family crypt in Bockhorn. Since his son died a short time after him, Lauw's grandsons August (1894–1945) and Günter (1906–1943) took over the inheritance and advanced the burning technology in the 1920s with the help of coal and peat-fired tunnel kilns and clinker press plates . The Bockhorn brickworks of the Lauws continued to produce with these technical innovations until the 1960s and early 1970s.

Lauw was Bockhorn's most important entrepreneur in the 19th century and was reverently called the clinker king , brick king or clinker baron . In Westerstede a street was named after August Lauw.

plant

  • Autobiography. Published by Erich Fimch in news about the Lauw family. Oldenburg. 1905. Pages 26-30. Second publication: Der Ammerländer . Calendar for 1951. Pages 89–91 and 158–159.

literature

Web link

Hans Begerow: clinker baron died 100 years ago. In: NWZ online. Article dated September 28, 2017 ( online ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sven Kamerar: Small businesses use globalization for themselves. In: Handelsblatt online. Article dated November 14, 2007 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Hans Begerow: He revolutionized the clinker fire. In: NWZ online. Article dated August 2, 2017 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Hans Begerow: Monument reminds of a brick baron. In: NWZ online. Article dated October 13, 2017 ( online ).
  4. ↑ August-Lauw-Strasse in Westerstede. In: neue-strassen.de - the street directory for Germany, Austria and Switzerland - non-commercial webpage. Retrieved November 24, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Lauw, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lauw, Christian Emil August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH Rastede
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1917
Place of death Bockhorn