Carl Duisberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carl Duisberg around 1923 on a photograph by Nicola Perscheid
Carl Duisberg (portrait of Max Liebermann )
Share of the paint factories vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Comp in Elberfeld on May 1, 1908 with the signature of Carl Duisberg
obituary
Monument to Duisberg in Carl-Duisberg-Park

Friedrich Carl Duisberg (born September 29, 1861 in Barmen (now part of Wuppertal ), † March 19, 1935 in Leverkusen ) was a German chemist , industrialist ( IG Farben ) and privy councilor .

Life

Carl Duisberg grew up in simple circumstances. His father Johann Karl worked as a bandmaker in the publishing system . A merchant provided the silk and cotton as a publisher; The father woven the yarn into ribbons on ribbon looms at home and received piece wages. To support the family, his parents also farmed as a sideline. The gifted son Carl was able to attend the Higher Citizens School in Barmen-Wupperfeld , today's Carl-Duisberg-Gymnasium in Wuppertal.

After passing the school leaving examination, Duisberg studied chemistry at the Universities of Göttingen and Jena from 1879 to 1882 and completed his studies with a doctorate on acetoacetic ester . After military service as a one-year volunteer with the Bavarian body regiment in Munich , he began his work at the paint factories vorm in 1883 . Friedr. Bayer & Co AG based in Wuppertal-Elberfeld . During his first year, he worked at the Chemical Institute at the University of Strasbourg . On behalf of Bayer, he succeeded in making several inventions in the dye sector, including the synthesis of benzopurpurine , which were registered as patents .

In 1888 Duisberg became an authorized signatory and head of scientific experiments at Bayer. He developed a close friendship with Friedrich Bayer , Managing Director of Bayer , who was ten years his senior , who also studied chemistry. Duisberg played a key role in the design and implementation of the company's move to Leverkusen . In 1900 he was appointed director and board member ; When Bayer left the board in 1911, Duisberg became general director and chairman of the board of directors of the paint factories in 1912 . Friedr. Bayer & Co. appointed. Inspired by traveling to the USA , where he developed the model of the amalgamation of public companies to form a trust such as B. at Standard Oil got to know as highly profitable, he wrote the "Memorandum on the Association of German Paint Factories" in 1904 . As a driving force and spiritual father, he was one of the founders of the colors interest group in 1916 .

As early as September 1914, before the transition from World War I to positional warfare, the German General Staff established a “Nernst-Duisberg Commission”. It was given the task of researching chemical warfare agents and "testing" them on the enemy. The Hague Land Warfare Regulations of 1907 allowed the use of such substances under conditions that could easily be enforced during war. In addition to Walther Nernst, numerous other renowned German scientists were soon working on these weapons, such as James Franck , Fritz Haber , Otto Hahn and Gustav Hertz , who, like Nernst, would later be honored internationally with the Nobel Prize . Duisberg could therefore feel justified in his commitment to the technical-industrial side of this event. In 1915 he was enthusiastic about a new development with the release of the deadly phosgene in a report to Major Bauer from the Supreme Army Command:

“In my opinion, you should [...] also try the T-Hexa grenades on the front. [...] The most important thing is the solid hexa-substance, which is atomized as a fine powder and, infected with pyridine, is slowly converted into phosgene as it sinks into the trenches. This chlorocarbon is the meanest stuff I know. […] The only right place, however, is the front where you can try something like this today and also not have the opportunity to try something like this again in the future. [...] I can therefore only urgently recommend once again not to let the opportunity of this war pass without also checking the hexa grenade. "

Duisberg was also - together with Walther Rathenau and Hugo Stinnes - one of the leading German industrialists who in 1916 successfully demanded repression against the civilian population of Germany-occupied Belgium and the deportation of Belgian civilians to Germany for forced labor . Both violated current war and international law.

Until 1926 Duisberg was with the paint factories vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co. operates from 1926 to 1935, he was appointed Chairman of the Industrieverbund IG Farben AG appointed.

In his famous speech entitled “Problems of the Present and Future of German Industry” at the “Economy in Need” conference of the Bavarian Federation of Industrialists on March 24, 1931, he called for economic understanding with Southeastern Europe and France .

"Only a closed economic bloc from Bordeaux to Sofia will give Europe the economic backbone it needs to maintain its importance in the world."

From 1925 to 1931 he was chairman of the Reich Association of German Industry . After the “ seizure of power ” by the National Socialists , he was a member of the newly founded Academy for German Law , where he chaired the committee for industrial property rights . At the same time he discreetly helped Jewish acquaintances.

Science funding was a major concern for Carl Duisberg. From 1917 until his death he was a member of the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society . In 1921 a Carl Duisberg Society was founded to promote studying abroad . He was instrumental in founding the German National Academic Foundation . On the 14th anniversary of Carl Duisberg's death, March 19, 1949, the Carl Duisberg Society was founded by the federal and state governments to promote young scientists.

Carl Duisberg was an avid collector of modern painting, so he laid the foundation for Bayer's art collection. As early as 1907, he had art purchased for Bayer employees and a collection of colored lithographs made for furnishing work and lounges at the Leverkusen plant . He initiated a cultural department; this was responsible for sports, theater, music and painting. Among other things, the sculptor Fritz Klimsch designed large-scale sculptures on his behalf in 1920/1921 and 1931/1932. The Nike found in 1920 their place in the former Bayer headquarters building (Bayer plant, buildings Q26), Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee 20. The sculptures , the resurrection , the humility , the show end and the Temple of Flora , modeled on the Temple of Apollo at Versailles, were set up in the park on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee in Leverkusen. With a special permit from the District President, Carl Duisberg and his wife Johanna found their final resting place in the Flora Temple. The Carl-Duisberg-Park named after him is open to the public.

Honors

Due to Duisberg's proximity to the war economy, in particular its massive commitment to the invention and production of poison gas and the role of IG Farben in National Socialism, the network organization “ Coordination against Bayer Dangers ” demanded that Duisberg's honorary citizenship be withdrawn from Leverkusen and renamed after him named public roads and facilities. In 2014, the city archives of Dortmund also advocated a renaming, and the street was renamed Kleine Löwenstrasse in 2015 . In Lüdenscheid was Duisbergweg renamed. In Bonn, Frankfurt and Wuppertal there are also corresponding applications in the city council, as well as in Dormagen, where the parliamentary groups of Alliance 90 / The Greens and Pirates / The Left are campaigning for the renaming, but no majority have been found.

family

Duisberg was married to Johanna Seebohm . His son, the film director Carl Ludwig Achaz-Duisberg (* July 18, 1889 in Elberfeld, † January 19, 1958 in Munich), married Anna Luise Block (1896–1982), a daughter of Josef Block and descendant of Moses and Joseph Mendelssohn . The daughter Hildegard (born January 19, 1892 in Schönfließ; † October 8, 1964 in Münster, Westphalia) married the anthroposophist and travel writer Hans Hasso von Veltheim (1885–1956). The second-born son Walther (1892–1964) studied chemistry in Dresden and Munich from 1912, received his doctorate from Richard Willstätter and in 1925 went to Bayer (IG Farben from 1926) as a patent attorney in the USA. Duisberg, Willstätter and Ferdinand Sauerbruch , who was born in the same town in the Bergisches Land as Duisberg and who had operated on Duisberg's daughter in 1919, were friends. From 1933 Carl Duisberg was a US citizen.

Fonts

  • My memories. Reclam, Leipzig 1933.
  • Kordula Kühlem (Ed.): Carl Duisberg (1861-1935). Letters from an industrialist. Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71283-4 . ( Excerpt from Google Books)

swell

  • Kordula Kühlem: Carl Duisberg (1861–1935), Letters of an Industrialist (= German historical sources of the 19th and 20th centuries. Vol. 68). Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71283-4 .

literature

sorted alphabetically by author

Web links

Commons : Carl Duisberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Werner Plumpe: Carl Duisberg 1861-1935. Anatomy of an industrialist. CH Beck, Munich 2016, p. 25.
  2. ^ Kordula Kühlem (Ed.): Carl Duisberg (1861-1935): Letters from an industrialist . Volume 68 of German historical sources of the 19th and 20th centuries, Oldenbourg Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71283-4
  3. ↑ See Jens Thiel: “Menschenbassin Belgium”. Recruitment, deportation and forced labor in the First World War. Essen 2007, pp. 109–113.
  4. ↑ Quoted from Wolfgang Schumann, Ludwig Nestler (Hrsg.): Weltherrschaft im Visier . Berlin 1975, p. 219 f.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 121.
  6. ↑ Jens Hacke: An exemplary manager. The entrepreneur and chemist Carl Duisberg modernized Bayer and founded IG Farben. In his biography, Werner Plumpe illuminates the abysses between business and politics. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 24, 2016, p. 12.
  7. ^ Carl Duisberg: The German Student Union . In: Ders .: Treatises, lectures and speeches , Part 2: From the years 1922–1933 . Verlag Chemie, Berlin and Leipzig 1933, p. 449ff.
  8. ^ Directory of honorary doctoral candidates at the TH / TU Dresden
  9. ^ Members of the previous academies. Carl Duisberg. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , accessed on March 17, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Carl-Duisberg-Str. in Bonn ( Memento of the original from August 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.strassenfotos.de
  11. ↑ a b c He is unsuitable as a model in General-Anzeiger of March 6, 2015
  12. ↑ Dr. Carl Duisberg House in Marburg
  13. ↑ a b Stephan Schneider: Dormagen. Politics should show their colors when dealing with the controversial chemist in NGZ-online on November 21, 2015 (accessed November 25, 2015)
  14. ↑ Demand of the CBG from September 2011
  15. ↑ City of Dortmund: Statement by the city archive from August 13, 2014.
  16. ^ A b Rheinische Post, December 15, 2014: Poison gas advocate Carl Duisberg: Initiative wants to rename the street
  17. ↑ RP ONLINE, December 17, 2014: Dortmund and Lüdenscheid abolish Carl-Duisberg-Strasse
  18. ↑ come-on.de, December 4, 2014: The “Duisbergweg” should disappear from the cityscape
  19. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau, February 5, 2015: Citizens want to rename Duisbergstrasse
  20. ^ Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Hans Rudolf Berndorff : That was my life. Kindler & Schiermeyer, Bad Wörishofen 1951; cited: Licensed edition for Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1956, p. 292 f.
predecessor Office successor
Carl Rumpff CEO of Bayer AG
1912–1925 		Ulrich Haberland
personal data
SURNAME Duisberg, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Duisberg, Friedrich Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist and industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Barmen
DATE OF DEATH March 19, 1935
Place of death Leverkusen