Carl Hugo Steinmüller

Carl Hugo Steinmüller (born February 18, 1872 in Gummersbach ; † March 31, 1959 there ) was a German entrepreneur . He was chairman of the supervisory board of the steam boiler and machine factory L. & C. Steinmüller .

Career

Steinmüller was born as the oldest child of the mechanical engineering entrepreneur Carl Steinmüller (1840–1909). Together with his brother Lebrecht, he founded a paper factory in 1874 , from which a flourishing and rapidly growing steam boiler production grew a short time later. The factory was soon the largest employer in the Oberbergisches Land and the family was one of the wealthiest in the region.

Education and training

Steinmüller first attended the secondary school in Gummersbach and switched to the technical and scientific secondary school in Mülheim am Rhein at Easter 1885 . In order to prepare for the intended takeover of the family business, he received two years of practical training in his father's factory and completed an internship in the Galloways boiler machine factory in Manchester . After his return he studied at the Technical University of Stuttgart and at the Technical University of Dresden . In Stuttgart he became a member of the Corps Teutonia .

Responsibility and entrepreneur

He joined the company in January 1897 and, instead of his uncle Lebrecht, who was ill, took responsibility for the 380 employees at the time together with his father. Under his leadership, thanks to several technical innovations, British supremacy on the market was broken. In 1904 Steinmüller became a co-owner of the company. After his younger brother Lebrecht joined the company, he gradually withdrew from the technical field and took over his father's duties.

Succession

When his father Carl Steinmüller died in 1909, the management of the company passed entirely to his two sons. They managed to maintain the company's position on the world market through scientifically based production methods. As early as 1914, the factory had over 1000 employees and maintained business relationships as far as South Africa, South America and Asia.

social commitment

The brothers also used their economic success to promote social causes. So that the employees could live in good living conditions, they provided inexpensive building land and built company apartments themselves . In 1908 Steinmüller helped found a child custody school and set up a company health insurance fund in his company. From 1909 to 1945 he was a city councilor or councilor in Gummersbach. He was also active in professional organizations: in 1920 he founded the Water Boiler Association, which was expanded in 1923 to unite the German steam boiler and apparatus industry, and Steinmüller became its second chairman.

time of the nationalsocialism

During the National Socialist era , the company came under increasing political pressure due to its economic importance. The Christian Steinmüller made concessions to the political leadership only reluctantly. After the death of his brother Lebrecht in 1937, he was able to evade membership in the NSDAP until 1941 , but then bowed to the pressure so as not to harm the company.

During the Second World War, 40 percent of the factory facilities were destroyed. The reconstruction after the end of the war took place quickly, so that in autumn 1945 over 1000 workers were employed again.

post war period

In the autumn of 1945, the British military government relieved Steinmüller of the management and forbade him to enter the plant because of the cooperation with the National Socialists that was attributed to him. He temporarily handed over management to his two sons-in-law, the engineer Jean Gustave Stoltenberg-Lerche and the businessman Wilhelm Kind, after his only son, Carl Eberhard, who was the hope for the factory, fell in 1944 . Only after the verdict Chamber judgment took Steinmueller again in 1948 the line of his company.

Honors

• 1921: Honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Darmstadt
• 1952: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1952: Honorary citizen of the city of Gummersbach

  in appreciation of the paramount importance of the company L. & C. Steinmüller, which he helped to achieve with world renown, in which good cooperation and generous social sentiment have combined workers, employees and owners to form an exemplary community

• 1956: Honorary membership of the Association of German Engineers (VDI)
• Honorary citizen of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

source

• Commemorative speech on the 50th anniversary of the death of CH Steinmüller given by Mayor Frank Helmenstein on March 31, 2009 (PDF file; 37 kB)

literature

• Karl Ritter von Klimesch (ed.): Heads of politics, economy, art and science. 1953.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Honorary Membership . In: VDI-Z. tape 98 , no. 23 , August 11, 1956, pp. 1432 ff .