August Saarbach
August Saarbach (also Augustus Saarbach , born December 25, 1854 in Mainz ; † June 15, 1912 there ) was an important wine merchant and press wholesaler of Jewish descent from Mainz. His companies for wine and press sales were leading in Europe and exist under the Saarbach company to this day. On his order, the Maxborn was built in the Mainz district of Gonsenheim - a fountain that reminds of his son Max, who died young.
Business life
August Saarbach's father, Eduard Saarbach (1812–1903), had already founded a wine shop in Mainz in 1840. The company specialized in top wines from the Rhine and Moselle . August Saarbach later took over the business and expanded it into an international company. In addition to the European nobility , his customers also included American millionaires and Indian maharajas . To this day there is a beverage distributor with the name Eduard Saarbach & Co. GmbH based in Traben-Trarbach .
From 1886/87 he built up an international press wholesaler in addition to the wine trade by taking over the distribution of the American daily New York Herald in Europe. Saarbach had previously met the American multimillionaire and newspaper publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. on a boat trip to the USA. Saarbach's News Exchange, which was newly founded for newspaper sales , later also distributed numerous other foreign newspapers such as the French newspaper Le Figaro . The successor company WE Saarbach GmbH , based in Hürth, is still active in press sales today.
Private life
On December 7, 1884, shortly before his 30th birthday, August Saarbach married Johanna Gutmann, who was a good eight years his junior. The couple had three daughters and three sons, all of whom were born in Mainz: Hedwig (1885–1957), Wilhelm (1887–1970), Anna (1888–1976), Elizabeth (1891–1944), Max Friedrich (1895–1910) ) and Ernst Alphons (1897–1989).
The family initially lived in a house at Kaiserstrasse 46 in Mainz Neustadt , but in 1909 they moved to a villa at Heidesheimer Strasse 45 in Mainz-Gonsenheim . On March 2, 1910, the second oldest son, Max Friedrich Saarbach, died at the age of only 15 - presumably of meningitis . The following year the Saarbachs had the Maxborn built on their own property on the corner of Heidesheimer Strasse and Lennebergstrasse in memory of their son .
August Saarbach died on June 15, 1912 at the age of 57 and was buried in the main cemetery in Mainz . His wife lived in Mainz until her death and died on July 24, 1940 in a Jewish retirement home . Of the five Saarbach children who were still alive, four survived the Nazi era and World War II - some of them had already emigrated from Germany in the 1930s .
Web links
- biographical information on the Saarbach family
- Information about August Saarbach, his family and Maxborn on the website of the city of Mainz ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- about the origins of Saarbach's News Exchange on the WE Saarbach GmbH website
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Saarbach, August |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Wine merchant |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 25, 1854 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mainz |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 15, 1912 |
| Place of death | Mainz |