Constantin Fahlberg

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Constantin Fahlberg - bronze relief on the grave of honor in Magdeburg
Constantin Fahlberg - signature 1888 (on the birth certificate of his daughter Constanze)

Constantin Fahlberg (born December 10 . Jul / 22. December  1850 greg. In Tambov , Russia; † 15. August 1910 in Nassau an der Lahn ) was a Russian-born chemist. During a series of tests on compounds from coal tar , which he carried out for Professor Ira Remsen (1846–1927) at Johns Hopkins University 1877–1878, he discovered the sweet taste of anhydro-o-sulfaminobenzoic acid, also known as benzoic acid sulfimide, a chemical "body", which he later gave the trade name saccharin .

Life

The baptismal register of the Pokrov Church in Tambow for the year 1850 names the parents of Constantin Fahlberg , Jeromin Maxim Fahlberg, from Livonia , of Lutheran faith, and his wife Barbara Trofimova, of Russian Orthodox faith, according to whose rite the son was baptized.

As a child he came to Tartu , Estonia , then Dorpat , where he attended elementary school until he was 11 and grammar school until he was 17. He then studied chemistry and physics at the Polytechnic School in Moscow in 1868/69, combined with industrial internships in various factories. From 1870 he continued these studies at the trade academy in Berlin with Carl Bernhard Wilhelm Scheibler . In Berlin he also carried out initial research into sugar . In 1871 he became a student of the Privy Councilor Carl Remigius Fresenius . He took up studies in Wiesbaden and Leipzig and from 1872 studied with Adolf Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe at the University of Leipzig , where he graduated in 1873 with a dissertation “About Oxi-Acetic Acid”.

After a few months in a leading position in the “Oberharz Chemical Laboratories”, he left Germany with the aim of getting to know the conditions and processes of cane sugar production in Central and South America. On December 4, 1874, he landed in New York as a passenger on the steamer Holsatia on the Hamburg-America Line . He opened a sugar laboratory in New York and spent research on sugar plantations in British Guiana .

  • "Tear" from the baptismal register of the Pokrov Church in Tambov

  • Transcription and assignment of the handwritten baptism document

  • Translation of the transcription

  • Obituary of the family in the Magdeburger Zeitung on August 17, 1910

  • Obituary of the company management in the Magdeburger Zeitung of August 17, 1910

  • Obituary by the workforce in the Magdeburger Zeitung on August 17, 1910

At the end of 1875, Emil Berliner was briefly his laboratory servant. (Berliner's scrapbook contains a note from 1886 with Fahlberg's account of the discovery of saccharine.)

In 1877, the sugar importers William H. Perot & Co hired him as one of the experts in a test case which "the United States against 712 sacks of Demerara sugar" led; Sugar that was suspected of having been artificially colored in order to be classified in a cheaper import tax bracket. The Baltimore merchants had the examinations for the expert's report carried out in the local laboratories of the Johns Hopkins University (JHU), which was under construction . Fahlberg, meanwhile a veteran of sugar chemistry, quickly completed his compulsory assessment exercise, while the start of the process was delayed by almost a year. He used the time up to the fall of 1878 to continue working in the laboratories of Johns Hopkins University on projects by Professor Remsen. Doubts about the quality of sugar paved the way for the discovery of a sugar substitute. The Demerara trial ended with the realization that both production errors in British Guiana and manipulation by importers could be ruled out. Various biographers claim that he completed his habilitation at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1878 and worked there as a private lecturer. However, the sources on which this information is based has not been clarified. In any case, there are no documents in the JHU archives that could prove Fahlberg's teaching activity. An exchange of letters between Professor Ira Remsen and his successor in the office of JHU University President, Dr. Frank Johnson Goodnow , from February 1918, expressly denies Fahlberg's license to teach at JHU.

Fahlberg's alleged habilitation and his professorship at JHU are part of permanently passed down false information, such as B. in Poggendorff : Biographical-literary concise dictionary for the history of the exact sciences , New German Biography , German Biographical Encyclopedia u. a. can be found.

As can be seen from the introductory sections to the US patents ("To whom it may concern:"), Fahlberg was also an American citizen.

First publication headers
Extract from "C. Fahlberg: 25 years in the service of ..."
Villa Fahlberg in Nassau around 1905
Fernanda Fahlberg, née Wall, with daughter Constanze on the veranda of the villa around 1931

The findings “About the oxidation of orthotoluene sulphamides” were published jointly by Constantin Fahlberg and Ira Remsen in the “ Reports of the German Chemical Society ” and in the “ American Chemical Journal ” founded by Ira Remsen and directed for a long time . Both texts only describe the chemical aspects of the object, without mentioning who the actual discoverer of its particular taste properties was.

Fahlberg describes this 25 years later in a lecture to participants at the V International Congress for Applied Chemistry in Berlin in 1903 . His plausible and credible description of the circumstances of the discovery of the sweet taste of the new substance clearly confirms him as the sole discoverer. On the other hand, it must be admitted that without Remsen's interest in the properties of coal tar compounds and his specifications for the test series, the discovery would certainly not have been possible at this point in time. Fahlberg himself stated about the details of the discovery, among other things, that after his work he noticed a sweet taste in his hands while eating.

From June 1880 to the fall of 1884 he worked at Harrison Brothers & Company in Philadelphia .

In order to develop a product for the chemical industry, however, it takes more than the discovery of an “interesting” substance. In the following years, Fahlberg worked intensively on the development of an economically justifiable process for the industrial production of his " saccharin " after conducting physiological compatibility tests on animals and in a self- experiment . While the starting materials are used very wastefully in laboratory tests, market-ready processes must also take into account the sensible recycling of by-products and their possible return to the production process. With a lot of imagination, Fahlberg explored the possibilities of saccharin. In addition to the obvious uses in dietetics as a sugar substitute in a wide variety of packaging, he also discovered technical uses such as disinfectants.

When it became clear to Fahlberg in the summer of 1884 that he could no longer finance this mammoth task on his own, he contacted his uncle Adolph List (1823–1885) in Leipzig to evaluate his patents relating to saccharin. As a result, a small test factory in a building on 117th Street and the Harlem River in New York was equipped with the necessary equipment and machinery. During the presentations of the saccharin-based products on the occasion of the exhibitions in London and Antwerp in 1884, the new material met with great interest and was also awarded various awards on other occasions. Encouraged by these successes, Fahlberg and List decided to set up a larger factory on German soil. The optimized process for the production of saccharin was registered for a patent together with List and the name saccharin was secured. The name was first published on November 18, 1885 in the German Patent Gazette . In 1885, still in preparation for the foundation in Germany, Adolph List died unexpectedly. In April 1886, around 8 years after Fahlberg's discovery, he founded the company Fahlberg, List & Co. together with his cousin Adolph Moritz List (1861–1938) and built the first production facility, making it the "oldest" saccharin factory in the world, in Salbke on the Elbe, today a district in the south of Magdeburg . Production started on March 9, 1887.

The founding of the saccharin factory in the heart of the most important beet sugar growing area in Germany at the time, the Magdeburg Börde , must have seemed like gauntlets to the "sugar barons". Hostility and political agitation from the sugar lobby were not long in coming, especially since the saccharin factory grew continuously thanks to the worldwide sales success. The first saccharin law of 1898 banned artificial sweeteners in foodstuffs and tobacco, with reference to the misuse by black sheep in the ranks of the canning industry. An obligation to declare as a political corrective would have done it, commented Fahlberg. The second saccharin law of 1902 brought the trade restrictions desired by the sugar lobby; banished saccharine to where sugar once began: in pharmacies. The imitators in Hoechst, Ludwigshafen and Leverkusen, who have since appeared on the scene, had their cessation of production paid for by the state; the closure of the saccharin factory in Salbke by the same standards would, however, have become priceless. In addition to the then temporarily reduced production of saccharin, the Fahlberg-List company manufactured an increasingly broad range of chemical products.

Former house in Salbke, photo 2008 shortly before the demolition

Fahlberg lived in Salbke at Schönebecker Strasse 80 . After Salbke was incorporated into Magdeburg, the address was changed to Alt Salbke 49 . In the late summer of 1896, 1898 and 1900, the Fahlberg family and the entire Salbke staff - including, of course, a butler, an educator for daughter Constanze (1888–1980), and a cook - spent several months in the villa in Nassau an der Lahn , where the family moved in 1902 after purchasing the spacious house, and where Constantin Fahlberg died on August 15, 1910. In 1906 Fahlberg left the company due to illness and handed over management to August Klages . Klages later lived in the property in Salbke that was formerly used by Fahlberg. The building later belonged to the Fahlberg-List company and served as the apartment of the respective director. After the political change in 1989, it was acquired by Canada-Bau Braunschweig GmbH and, after a successful renovation, it was demolished in 2008 in order to make a planned shopping center more visible.

After his death, Fahlberg was transferred to Magdeburg and buried in the city's southern cemetery.

From 1927 Fahlberg's widow Fernanda, nee Wall (1860–1932) negotiated the sale of the Nassau property with the Graeflich von Kanitz administration, who still owns the area around the house in Nassau, which was destroyed in 1945 by the effects of the war.

Publications

  • Quantitative determination of the single calcium sulfur in bone char. In: Journal for Analytical Chemistry . Vol. 10, No. 1; December 1871
  • About oxyacetic acid , 1873, Diss., Metzger & Wittig, 1873.
    • Also published as: About oxyacetic acid (glycolic acid) , 1873, in: Journal für Praktische Chemie, 7 (1), pp. 329-346. doi : 10.1002 / prac.18730070140
  • About a new method of measuring zinc determination. In: Fresenius Journal of Analytical Chemistry. Vol. 13, No. 1, December 1874 (neglecting a method proposed by Maurizio Galletti in 1856)
  • 25 years in the service of the saccharin industry taking into account today's saccharin legislation , 1903
    • Also published in: 5th International Congress for Applied Chemistry 2. – 8. June 1903, Volume 2 / Section IV, Berlin 1904, p. 625 ff.

literature

  • Lothar Beyer: From PhD student to important chemist: PhD in Leipzig - well-known as a chemist ; Passage-Verlag, 2005
  • Horst-Günther Heinicke: Fahlberg, Constantin. In: Guido Heinrich, Gunter Schandera (ed.): Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon 19th and 20th centuries. Biographical lexicon for the state capital Magdeburg and the districts of Bördekreis, Jerichower Land, Ohrekreis and Schönebeck. Scriptum, Magdeburg 2002, ISBN 3-933046-49-1 , p. 170.
  • George B. Kauffman , Paul M. Priebe: The Discovery of Saccharin: A Centennial Retrospect. Ambix 25: 3 (1978), pp. 191-207
  • Adolf Leber:  Fahlberg, Constantin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 744 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Constantin Fahlberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Ax: Nassau's most famous Russian - On the 100th anniversary of the death of Constantin Fahlberg ... In: Heimatjahrbuch des Rhein-Lahn-Kreis 2010, Bad Ems, 2009
  2. ↑ Document No. 1049 in the State Archives of the Tambov Governorate, GATO (Gosudarstwennji Archiw Tambowskoi Oblasti)
  3. ^ Vita in the appendix to Fahlberg's dissertation from 1873
  4. ^ The New York Times, December 4, 1874, Passengers arrived: Steamer "Holsatia"
  5. ↑ archive.org: "Emile Berliner, maker of the microphone"
  6. ↑ artificially-colored SUGARS ; NY Times of November 17, 1878
  7. ^ The New York Times, November 17, 1878, Importations of Demerara sugars investigated - proceedings in a test case at Baltimore
  8. ^ Horst-Günther Heinicke: Fahlberg, Constantin. In: Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon , p. 170.
  9. ↑ Ref. 274 in the "Ferdinand Hamburger Jr. Archives der JHU"; Inquiry from Dr.Goodnow to Prof. Remen on February 19, 1918, answer from Prof. Remen on February 26, 1918
  10. ^ Note from the editor of Magdeburger Biographisches Lexikon s
  11. ^ Reports of the German Chemical Society, Vol. XII, 469, 1879
  12. ↑ American Chemical Journal, 1880, Vol. 1, 170, 426
  13. ^ V. International Congress for Applied Chemistry, Berlin, June 2-6, 1903, Report II., Page 625ff
  14. ↑ German Patent Information System (Departis), patents DE 35111 (1884), DE 35933 (1885) and DE 64624 (1891)
  15. ^ History of Sugar; Christoph M. Merki, Sugar versus Saccharin, Frankfurt / Main, 1993
  16. ^ Editor Gust. Ad. Müller, address book for Fermersleben, Salbke and Westerhüsen 1900 - 1903
  17. ^ Magdeburg address book 1914, Part II, page 131
  18. ^ Magdeburg address book 1916, Part II, page 138
  19. ^ Magdeburg address book 1939, Part II, page 159
  20. ↑ Registration books in the Nassau City Archives | Building files (Kloft # 4091, # 4103, # 4107, # 4425) in the Graf Kanitz archive (as a branch of the Rhineland-Palatinate state archive)
  21. ↑ Maurizio Galletti: For the dimensional analysis of zinc . In: Zeitschrift für Analytische Chemie 1875, Volume 14, Issue 1, pp. 189–190 doi : 10.1007 / BF01675047
personal data
SURNAME Fahlberg, Constantin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chemist
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Tambov
DATE OF DEATH August 15, 1910
Place of death Nassau