Eduard Züblin
Eduard Züblin (born March 11, 1850 in Castellammare di Stabia , Italy ; † November 25, 1916 in Zurich ) was an engineer or civil engineer and building contractor. He is considered an important pioneer of reinforced concrete and the founder of the Stuttgart construction company Ed. Züblin AG
Life
Born in Italy in 1850 and trained as a mechanical engineer , he made the acquaintance of the new building material in 1895 and was immediately fascinated and enthusiastic about its possibilities. In 1880 he married Lina Bolte from Hanover. The couple had three children: Friedrich (called Fritz, 1882–1930), Margarethe (1884–1956, married Schürch) and Robert (1888–1928).
In 1898, Züblin founded his “Engineering Bureau for Cement-Iron Structures” in Strasbourg . After his own first attempts, he took over the general agency for the reinforced concrete system of the Frenchman François Hennebique in Strasbourg , a monolithic construction made of concrete and iron that was completely new at the time . Above all, the load-bearing capacity and fire safety helped this design to achieve a quick breakthrough.
Building with reinforced concrete
As an engineer, Züblin made decisive progress in building with reinforced concrete, and as an entrepreneur he was constantly opening up new areas of application for this building material. So he built bold arch bridges out of concrete, patented the idea of a wide-span hollow- core ceiling , constructed shed structures for hall structures, invented a new construction method for swimming pools and rammed the first reinforced concrete piles in Germany.
In the first few years, the company developed with the construction of industrial buildings (Strasbourg, Mühlhausen, Leipzig), public baths (Strasbourg, Colmar, Markirch), bridges (Switzerland, Alsace, Lorraine, Germany) and pile foundations (Hamburg, Metz, Trieste ) stormy and successful. The first foreign order was carried out as early as 1899, a cloth manufacture near Riga.
When the First World War broke out, there were branches in Basel, Brussels, Duisburg, Kehl, Milan, Paris, Riga, Stuttgart, Vienna and Zurich. Outstanding during this period were the foundations of Hamburg Central Station on 800 reinforced concrete piles in 1902 and the Langwieser Viaduct on the Chur – Arosa railway line in Switzerland from 1912, which was built in 1912 and with a 100 m arch support span, was the highest and most spanned reinforced concrete bridge in the world.
Eduard Züblin died in 1916, even before the rescue of the tower of the Strasbourg Cathedral , which was in danger of collapsing , was completed, which was achieved through the underpinning of a tower pillar and the permanent renovation of the rotten pillar foundation.
Today the Ed. Züblin AG in Stuttgart is one of the major global German construction companies with branches, factories and affiliated companies in Germany and abroad. Züblin is majority owned by the Strabag SE group.
literature
- Volker Hahn : Eduard Züblin - Life and Work of an Engineer in the Development Time of Reinforced Concrete , in: Wegbereiter der Bautechnik , Series Klassiker der Technik, VDI Gesellschaft für Bautechnik, Düsseldorf 1990
Web links
- Markus Kaiser: Züblin, Eduard. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Eduard Züblin at Ed. Züblin AG
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Züblin, Eduard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Civil engineer and contractor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 11, 1850 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Castellammare di Stabia , Italy |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 25, 1916 |
| Place of death | Zurich |