Carl Emil Buchholz

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Carl Emil Buchholz (* 1. August 1865 in Ohl ; † 1. December 1932 in Hannover ) was a German gunpowder - and explosive - producer .

Life

Carl Emil Buchholz was born as the son of the gunpowder manufacturer Carl August Buchholz and came from an old Upper Bergisch-Sauerland family of powder mill operators. After finishing school he studied at the Technical University of Hanover . Here he became a member of the Corps Slesvico-Holsatia in 1887 . He then joined his father's company, Cramer & Buchholz, with headquarters in Rönsahl . With the invention of dynamite by Alfred Nobel , all black powder manufacturers had to contend with increased cutthroat competition. Before joining the company, it was in 1887 that a cartel agreement was concluded with the Wolff & Co. company and in 1889 for the powder cartel between Cramer & Buchholz , Wolff & Co. , the United Rheinisch-Westphälische Pulverfabriken AG based in Cologne and came to the Rottweil-Hamburg powder factory , which for 37 years, until the end of 1925, assured each of the four contracting parties that they would maintain their independence and autonomy and regulated the distribution of the total operating results of all four companies together according to a fixed distribution key. The development of low-smoke powder could only slow the cutthroat competition in the 1880s. The Cramer & Buchholz company suffered a serious setback when the use of black powder in hard coal mines was banned in the German Reich in 1900 and only dynamite or other safety explosives were allowed to be used.

Buchholz reacted to this development by founding the Rönsahler Dynamitfabrik in Gogarten , which was later incorporated into the Rheinisch-Westfälische Sprengstoff AG based in Cologne. When smokeless powders based on gun cotton and nitroglycerin replaced black powder in the military sector , Buchholz increasingly relocated production to the powder factory in Rübeland in the Harz Mountains, as there were suitable production facilities there, unlike Rönsahl. As a result, he moved the headquarters from Rönsahl to Hanover. After the First World War, he had to sell the Cramer & Buchholz company to Cologne-Rottweil AG ( United Cologne-Rottweiler Pulverfabriken AG until 1919 ) and was given a seat on its supervisory board . With the closure of the last powder mill in 1930, an era of more than 300 years of black powder production in the border area between Sauerland and Oberbergisches Land ended.

In 1898, the Cramer & Buchholz company was involved in founding the Central Office for Scientific and Technical Investigations .

Awards

literature

  • Erich Kahl: The gunpowder museum in the Villa Buchholz . In: Wipperfürther Vierteljahresblätter , No. 95 (January – March 2005), p. 2 f. ( Digitized version , with family picture from around 1910; PDF; 563 kB)
  • Richard Escales: Black powder and explosive nitrate. 1914. (as reprint 2003, ISBN 3-8330-1124-6 )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Corps Slesvico-Holsatia, Corpsliste , winter semester 1981/82, p. 32, no. 179
personal data
SURNAME Buchholz, Carl Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German gunpowder and explosives manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Ohl
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1932
Place of death Hanover