Curt Merckel

Curt Albert Julius Merckel (born September 4, 1858 in Stettin , † November 12, 1921 in Hamburg ) was a German engineer and construction director in Hamburg.

Life

Curt Merckel was a son of the businessman Karl Merckel and his wife Kathinka, nee Mackrodt. After attending a secondary school in Homburg , he moved to Hamburg with his family in 1873. Here he attended the secondary school of the evangelical reformed community, which he graduated in 1873. He then completed six months of military service and began studying civil engineering at the Hanover Polytechnic in autumn 1875 . Merckel finished his studies in July 1880 with a successfully passed final examination, but failed diploma examination. He then briefly took on construction tasks as a draftsman in a civil engineering office and was then unemployed for almost a year.

In October 1881 he got a position at the building deputation of the city of Hamburg and in 1882 became a member of the architects and engineers association of Hamburg. After he was transferred to the engineering department, he worked as an engineer for a daily allowance and was in charge of the construction of the Brooktorkaibrücke in 1883/84. In addition to the construction of the St. Annenbrücke in August 1885, he was in charge of the new construction of the Kornhausbrücke in the Speicherstadt . In the period that followed, Meckel applied several times, initially unsuccessfully, for higher positions in the building deputation. On April 1, 1888, he was given the post of construction conductor, 2nd class. Merckel had thus achieved civil servant status in the Hamburg state.

At the beginning of 1889, Merckel was appointed master builder and received an honorary gift of 1,500 marks as a token of recognition for his achievements. A year later, Merckel took over the management of the renovation of the town hall lock at Alsterfleet . When storage basins and filtration systems were to be built after the cholera epidemic of 1892 , the engineer took over the construction management on behalf of the new city water art in 1893. On August 1, 1893, Merckel was promoted to master builder 1st class and technical office manager for the general department of the Central Engineering Office.

Merckel, who was a Prussian citizen, acquired Hamburg citizenship on July 6, 1894. From August 10, 1895, he traveled through Germany for several weeks to inspect engineering and hydraulic engineering structures. The trip took him to Elberfeld-Barmen , Frankfurt am Main , Hagen , Halle , Cologne as well as Magdeburg Mannheim , Nuremberg , Remscheid and Stuttgart , Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Waltrop-Henrichenburg . In April 1896, the building deputation decided to appoint Merckel as building inspector. The engineer thus also managed the central office for mechanical equipment. The high school authorities commissioned Merckel to give public lectures in the winter semesters. Merckel taught from 1896 to 1907 mainly on the history of technology and wrote his first book in this context in 1899, entitled Engineering Technology in Antiquity .

When Merckel was appointed head of the sewerage department in July 1901, Merckel was responsible for building three new regular sewers . The expansion of the sewer system was decided in 1899 due to the increasing amount of wastewater with the increasing population and could be completed in 1904 according to plan. After Merckel was appointed building officer in October 1906, he represented the building officer Johann Friedrich Ludwig Ferdinand Sperber , who had been in office since July 1907, and in this position headed the general department of the central office. With the appointment to head a newly established department in July 1907, Merckel's area of ​​responsibility in the central office expanded. He was now also the supervisor of the departments for transport, the railroad, city expansion and cleaning as well as removal and surveying. On April 1, 1920, the engineer was promoted to construction director and held this position until his death after a brief illness in November 1921.

Curt Meckel had been married to the divorced Georgine Hass since August 9, 1886, who brought two daughters into the marriage. Merckel and Hass had two daughters and a son together, who died in fighting during World War I in 1916.

Works

In addition to the professional activity, the high school authority commissioned Merckel to give public lectures in the winter semesters. Merckel taught from 1896 to 1907 mainly on the history of technology and wrote his first book in this context in 1899, entitled Engineering Technology in Antiquity . Merckel also collected numerous documents on the redesign of the Hamburg wastewater system. In August 1910 he presented the building deputation with the book The Sewers of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg , which is still regarded as standard literature today.

literature

• Jürgen Gottschalk: Merckel, Curt . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 249-250 .