Bernhard Neher

Bernhard Neher (born June 1, 1814 in Schaffhausen ; † March 31, 1865 there ) was a Swiss industrialist.

biography

The eldest son of Johann Georg Neher spent his first youth at his parents' house in Neuhausen am Rheinfall as well as in the city of Schaffhausen with his maternal grandmother, who ran an iron shop. This made it easier for him to attend elementary school. From 1824 he and his brother Johann Conrad visited Friedrich Peyer's sr. newly founded private school in Rosenberg. He developed an interest in natural science subjects, such as geography and astronomy and especially physics, where he was particularly enthusiastic about electricity. He reports that he was particularly interested in "experiments with electrifying machines and electrophors ...".

The government councilor and mineral collector Georg Michael Stierlin introduced Neher, together with like-minded people, to the secrets of mineralogy in his study on Sunday morning after visiting church . He also received lessons in chemistry from the pharmacist and naturalist Johann Conrad Laffon, as well as drawing lessons. After a stay in Lausanne , where he learned the French language , Neher studied at the Bergakademie Freiberg from 1833 to 1834 . His teachers there were Wilhelm August Lampadius ( metallurgical engineering ), Carl Amandus Kühn (mining and geology) and August Breithaupt (mineralogy and crystallography ). However, Neher was particularly encouraged by Sigismund August Wolfgang von Herder , who inspired him primarily with his practical innovations for mining. The studies that were part of the program that he completed in Freiberg were also underground.

Before coming back to Schaffhausen at the end of 1834 at the request of his father, Neher visited a large number of German ironworks in the Ruhr area and Siegerland as well as in Belgium . After his return to Switzerland, he alternated between running and Plons at Mels . Under his direction, a cupola furnace was built in Laufen in 1835 for smelting iron with coal. In 1836 he married Pauline Peyer in the courtyard, Friedrich Peyer's sister in the courtyard . At this point in time he also took over the management of his father's iron and steel works in Plons and of the mining operations in Gonzen , with Johann Georg Neher still in charge of his operations. Bernhard Neher was able to significantly advance the companies in Eastern Switzerland. In 1840 in Plons, with a workforce of 100, around 400 quintals of pig iron were smelted per week.

Bernhard Neher was a proven metallurgist, but did not have the entrepreneurial skills of his father or his brothers. For example, he considered the founding of the Schweizerische Waggons-Fabrik (later Swiss Industrial Company ) by his brother Conrad and brother-in-law Peyer together with Heinrich Moser to be a dubious venture. Politically, he was an opponent of radicalism and welcomed the Federal Constitution of 1848 in the hope that the "putsches and revolutionaries" would now come to an end.

In contrast to Bernhard Neher, his son Georg Robert Neher (1838–1925) had inherited the entrepreneurial spirit of his grandfather Johann Georg Neher and was director of the Swiss wagon factory for a long time . Georg Robert was also involved in founding the first European aluminum factory in Neuhausen, the origin of Alusuisse . His grandson Robert Victor Neher developed the process for the production of continuous aluminum foil .

literature

• Bernhard Neher's diary, 27 books, 1814–1864, manuscript in the iron library of Georg Fischer Aktiengesellschaft Schaffhausen.
• Karl Schib : Reichsverweser Archduke Johann and Bernhard Neher, ironworks owners in Schaffhausen, an exchange of letters from the time of the Baden uprising 1848–1850. In: Alemannisches Jahrbuch. 1956, p. 404.
• Karl Schib: Bernhard Neher. In: Schaffhauser Contributions to History. Biographies Volume I . 33rd year 1956, pp. 339–343 ( PDF, 62 kB )