Carl Reuther (entrepreneur, 1834)

Carl Reuther around 1900

Franz Carl Reuther (born August 17, 1834 in Hennef an der Sieg ; † February 9, 1902 there ) was a German industrialist and industrial pioneer.

Life

Photo of the workforce at the C. Reuther & Reisert machine factory in 1882. Far right Carl Reuther, Eduard Reisert at the scales

Franz Carl Reuther was born on August 17, 1834 as the son of Peter Reuther and Franziska Röttger on the Zissendorfer Hof in Hennef an der Sieg. His father ran a farm there and had a job at the district administration. He was also head of the Hennef postal expedition and assistant court clerk.

Carl Reuther attended elementary school and then, at his father's request, trained as a locksmith in Bonn . After the Anschluss he went on a journey as a journeyman . The military service followed after the end of which he went hiking again. This time also to Liege and Paris , where he met his future wife. Particularly through his work in Liège, at that time a stronghold of mechanical engineering , he gained a wealth of specialist knowledge. He started his own business as a mechanic and manufactured presses and punches until an illness forced him to give up this business. In 1861 he returned to Hennef and took over the position of assistant court clerk and in 1862 that of a postal expedition assistant. In spring 1863 he reopened a workshop in his parents' house and had wagons built in the barn for the Bröltalbahn . In the following years he expanded production to include agricultural machines based on the Anglo-Saxon model, as well as decimal scales and safes. At that time he employed up to 18 people in his workshop.

In order to expand further, Carl Reuter founded Carl Reuther & Co. Landwirtschaftliche Maschinenfabrik Hennef in 1869 with the investor Josef Schmitz de Prée and built a new factory with an administration building and a residential building between Frankfurter Strasse and Sieg . Around the middle of the 1870s, 150 employees were producing 2,000 chopping and threshing machines and 5,000 mowers a year. In 1879 the company was converted into a public limited company. After disagreements, Carl Reuter resigned and retired in 1880.

After getting to know the Cologne engineer Eduard Reisert, both founded the Hennef machine factory C. Reuther & Reisert (later Chronos-Werke) in Hennef on July 1, 1881 . The first factory building was erected next to Carl Reuther & Co AG in the same year. In the period that followed, they jointly developed the world's first calibratable, automatic scale and received patent protection for it in December 1882. On April 12, 1883, the Imperial Normal Aichungs Commission also granted approval as a value meter for the so-called Chronos scales, which became world-famous in the following years. In 1897 he donated land and funds to the community to set up a commercial advanced training school. Carl Reuter died in 1902 and his son Wilhelm Reuther succeeded him.

Appreciation

Today the work of Carl Reuther is an important part of the industrial history of Hennef an der Sieg and part of the tourist town marketing. The Zissendorfer Hof is considered the cradle of industrialization in Hennef.

Historical traces

Birthplace Siegfeldstr. 23 (Zissendorfer Hof) in Hennef

Site of the former Chronos works. The house on the top left

• His birthplace at Siegfeldstrasse 23 is now a listed building .
• Some of the Chronos works he helped build are now a listed building and are part of Quartier Chronos .
• The commercial advanced training school of the Carl Reuther Foundation founded by him in 1897 was the first advanced training school of its kind in Hennef and still exists today as the Carl Reuther vocational college of the Rhein-Sieg district in Hennef .
• The old building of the commercial advanced training school from 1899 was demolished in 1983 for the new market square.
• Four early masters from Carl Reuther Maschinenfabrik founded their own companies in Hennef. Including in 1878 the master locksmith Johann Steimel with the Johan Steimel machine factory , in 1879 Philipp Löhe with the Ph. Löhe machine factory and iron foundry and Johan Friedrich Jacobi with the Joh. Fried. Jacobi iron and metal foundry and Joseph Meys in 1881 with the Josef Meys machine factory.
• His house at Frankfurter Straße 95, built around 1900 according to plans by the architect Josef Bröhl, was restored from 2010 to 2011 and is a listed building. It is still owned by the Reuther family today.
• The Chronos scales, which he helped to develop , is recognized today as a world invention from Hennef in the permanent exhibition Weights, Scales and Weighing Through the Ages and in the Hennef scales hiking trail .
• In Hennef there is Reutherstrasse named after him.
• In August 2009 the city of Hennef celebrated the 175th birthday of Carl Reuther with a ceremony.

Web links

Commons : Carl Reuther  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Helmut Fischer: Hennef an der Sieg: 91 villages - one city . Sutton, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86680-815-7 , pp. 40 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Wolfgang Euler, Heinz Weisser, Rudi Keinath: History of the Scales - Part 4. (PDF) Retrieved on June 6, 2018 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} The Hennef scales hiking trail. In: booklet. City of Hennef, accessed June 7, 2018 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} City of Hennef (ed.): List of monuments of the city of Hennef (Sieg) - Part A - Architectural monuments . June 2016, p. 10 ( hennef.de [PDF]).
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Historic Buildings. Verkehrs- und Beschönerungsverein Hennef eV 1881, accessed on June 6, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Hennef "Quartier Chronos". In: Database of Werkstatt-Stadt. Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research, July 3, 2014, accessed on June 7, 2018 . 
7. ↑ Konrad J. Richter: The school of Carl Reuther . In: Contributions to the history of the city of Hennef, Volume 4 . 2010, p. 13 ( vvv-hennef.de [PDF]).