Bernhard Dräger

Alexander Bernhard Dräger (born June 14, 1870 on the Howe in the Kirchwerder parish ; † January 12, 1928 in Lübeck ) was a German engineer and manufacturer. He developed the world's first anesthetic machine as well as portable breathing apparatus and was an important entrepreneur for the Drägerwerk .

Live and act

Bernhard Dräger was a son of Johann Heinrich Dräger and his wife Emma, ​​nee Puls. He spent his childhood in modest economic circumstances in Kirchwerder. In 1881 the family moved to Bergedorf , where the father had founded a shop for clocks, sewing machines and other technical devices. He attended the Hansa School in Bergedorf and moved to Lübeck with his parents in 1886. At the Katharineum in Lübeck he received the upper secondary qualification in 1888.

After finishing school, Dräger volunteered in the repair workshop of the Lübeck-Büchener Railway until Easter 1889 . After his father founded a company together with the financier Carl Adolf Gerling in the same year, Dräger switched to this company. The shop offered all kinds of merchandise and had a small repair shop. The entrepreneurs also sold so-called "beer printing machines". These were used to dispense draft beer using carbon dioxide and had a valve to reduce the pressure. Due to the unsatisfactory quality of this valve, father and son Dräger designed their own component. In 1889 they received a patent for this. They produced this “Lubeca valve” in their own workshop and thus achieved the breakthrough for the professional use of compressed gases.

In 1890 the partner Gerling died. Since then, the Drägers company has operated as "Lübeck Beer Pressure Apparatus and Armatures Factory Heinrich Dräger". Bernhard Dräger was appointed authorized signatory in May 1893. In the same year he attended the Technical University of Charlottenburg for two semesters and sat in with Franz Reuleaux . He took the subjects of kinematics, machine element and tool science. He then fundamentally reorganized the development work of his own company and developed into its most important engineer and inventor.

Together with his father and the brothers Rudolf and Heinrich Thiel , he founded in 1895, the Dräger company at that time still mainly producing beer pressure equipment, the "Deutsche Bierkaß-Automat Gesellschaft". He also became the official co-owner of the fast-growing family company that year. On August 14, 1897 he married Elfriede Charlotte Margarete Stange (July 16, 1876 in Kirchwerder; † May 14, 1959 in Lübeck). His wife was the daughter of the doctor Otto Stange from Bergedorf. The couple had a daughter and two sons, including Heinrich Dräger . In the same year, Dräger built a house at the company's headquarters on Moislinger Allee. This was named "Villa Elfriede" after his wife.

The Dräger company was successful because it succeeded in switching from the previously practiced technique of tapping beer using ambient air to using carbon dioxide precompressed in bottles. In 1896, Bernhard Dräger developed a forced draft burner (pressure and suction nozzle) that used the injector principle and, together with the valve for pressure reduction, represented the technical basis for other Dräger devices. An oxygen machine followed in 1899, which released oxygen from a high-pressure bottle in a safe and precisely regulated manner. Based on this, the company was able to develop further devices for respiratory protection, diving, aviation, medical and autogenous technology.

In 1901, Dräger developed an inhalation device with which pure oxygen could be used in medical applications and for resuscitation. There was also a portable oxygen rescue device that made it possible to breathe and work in toxic gases. The device was very successful and found customers worldwide. In 1902/03 a first anesthetic machine, designed jointly with Otto Roth , was added. In the years that followed, numerous other portable breathing devices were created. The Drägerwerk became a leading international specialist company. In 1907, Bernhard Dräger opened a branch in New York .

During the First World War , Dräger limited its development to respiratory protection. Due to many orders from the state to equip the army with gas masks and breathing apparatus as part of the gas war, the largely manual production was replaced by mass production with extensive mechanization. On August 16, 1915 , the war volunteer and later tank general Karl Mauss wrote to his schoolmate Heinrich, son of Bernhard Dräger, from the field that all officers already had their Dräger tubs and that the self -rescuer could be found in every trench. While 300 people worked here before the war, it was at the time of the November Revolution of 2000.

For Drägerwerk, the end of the war meant a sharp drop in orders and poorer sales opportunities abroad. In the medical department, the workers who had previously made gas masks could only continue to be employed because Dräger's wife established a textile department. The Lübeck welfare office passed these goods on to the residents. Nevertheless, the number of employees fell to 200 in 1920. Business operations were temporarily suspended due to inflation.

After the end of the war, Bernhard Dräger was able to expand his development activities again. He worked on lung-automatic mining equipment that was used in the field of mine rescue and fire services and set new standards in mine rescue. In 1922 and 1924 devices for high-altitude breathing technology and a freely portable high-altitude oxygen apparatus were added. In the year of his death, an anesthetic machine appeared that worked with laughing gas for the first time .

Dräger had owned a representative villa near the factory since 1917. Since 1918 he has owned the Nütschau estate near Bad Oldesloe , but he did not live there permanently. He belonged to several clubs and associations and was a leading figure in the Lübeck Chamber of Commerce and in the employers' association .

On January 16, 1928, Wilhelm Mildenstein , senior pastor of the Luther parish, held the funeral service for the chairman of the parish council in the Marienkirche .

personality

As an engineer, Dräger always worked with the awareness that he was responsible for the people who use his devices. He was considered a self-critical perfectionist and often put the technical optimization of the products before economic considerations. The interior of its production facilities was exemplary in terms of technology, organization and hygiene. In 1904 the company paid employees for the first time with a well thought-out bonus system. You could thus participate in the company's success. He also set up a workers' committee that was allowed to discuss the internal affairs of the factories.

Honors

The Technical University of Charlottenburg named Dräger Dr.-Ing. hc

literature

• Michael Kamp : Bernhard Dräger: inventor, entrepreneur, citizen. 1870 to 1928. Wachholtz Verlag GmbH, 2017, ISBN 978-3-52906-369-5 .
• Alken Bruns: Dräger, Bernhard . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 125–129.
• Franz Hollmann:  Dräger, Bernhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 95 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Berndt, Rolf: Review of the Bernhard Dräger biography Bernhard Dräger: inventor, entrepreneur, citizen. 1870 to 1928. , in: TauchHistorie. Journal of the Historischen Tauchergesellschaft eV , 09/2018, p. 77.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Alken Bruns: Dräger, Bernhard . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 125.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Alken Bruns: Dräger, Bernhard . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 126.
3. ^ Alken Bruns: Dräger, Bernhard . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 125 and 126.
4. ^ Michael Kamp: Bernhard Dräger: Inventor, Entrepreneur, Citizen. 1870 to 1928. Wachholtz Verlag GmbH, 2017, ISBN 978-3-52906-369-5 , p. 372.
5. ^ Alken Bruns: Dräger, Bernhard . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 127.
6. ^ Alken Bruns: Dräger, Bernhard . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 127–128.
7. ^ Alken Bruns: Dräger, Bernhard . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 128.
8. ^ ^{A b} Alken Bruns: Dräger, Bernhard . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 129.
9. ↑ (Dräger review 394, p. 2)
10. ^ Alken Bruns: Dräger, Bernhard . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 128–129.