Egmont Websky

Egmont Websky

Egmont Websky. Etching by H. Wolff

Egmont Websky (born July 17, 1827 in Wüstegiersdorf , † February 26, 1905 in Breslau ) was a German textile manufacturer and member of the Reichstag .

Live and act

Father Martin Websky was a commercial councilor and ran a wholesale trade in linen , the main source of income for the people in southern Lower Silesia (see Gerhart Hauptmann : Die Weber ). Egmont Websky, the third of six children, came from a Berlin high school to Breslau to the Maria-Magdalenen-Gymnasium , where he passed his school leaving examination in 1847 . After initially working as a farmer for two years , he studied natural sciences in Berlin from 1849 to 1853 . With the thesis De oleo Brassicae Napi he completed his doctorate as Dr. phil.

Together with his father he founded a modern mechanical weaving mill for linen and cotton fabrics . He was neither a businessman nor a technician, but he knew how to meet the requirements of the new type of entrepreneur who was in demand with the emergence of new forms of economy in the middle of the 19th century. Egmont Websky recognized the responsibility of the entrepreneur towards the working person early on. For example, even before the statutory regulation for factory health insurance funds (1857), he introduced a support fund for his workers. This developed so well that he was even able to continue paying the women their full wages during a six-week confinement period . After the benefits were expanded to include accident insurance , a disability and death fund followed in 1869 . In 1867, a play school for children was set up which, with 350 employees, was able to take in around 50 children by 1875. He countered his people's housing problem by building houses and granting loans to buy their weaver houses. A “rest house” was built, a poor house and the “Katharinenheim” (named after his wife), in which textile workers found rest and care.

These achievements not only earned him the trust of his workers, they also served the community. Because Websky brought his experience to the German social legislation , which many countries became a model. He was a national-liberal member of the Reichstag from 1871 to 1877 and from 1887 to 1890. Under the impression of strong opposition and contradictions, he once said of one of the social laws : “ It is a law that one has to approach with true religious enthusiasm not to be deterred by its implementation. “From 1889 until his death , Egmont Websky , who had meanwhile been appointed a Privy Councilor of Commerce , was a member of the Prussian State Council . He received the rarely awarded Wilhelm Order “ for outstanding services to the welfare and refinement of the people in general as well as in particular in the socio-political field. "

With the establishment of the Silesian State Insurance Institute (1890) he became its chairman; in the same position he had brought about the merger of the Silesian textile trade association . In 1881 he was the initiator of the first Silesian trade and industrial exhibition in Wroclaw, which was a great success. From 1874 he was chairman of the Silesian Central Trade Association. As the second chairman of the Association for the Museum of Silesian Antiquities (from 1895 to 1899) he was the driving force behind the creation of the “Silesian Museum of Applied Arts and Antiquities”. Egmont Websky lived and worked according to the principle that he once formulated in 1869: “ I really consider every strengthening of community life, the strengthening of the awareness that I do not live alone, but for a certain group of my fellow men, for them Basis of the consciousness of our time. "

literature

• Joachim Greiff: Egmont Websky . In: Schlesische Lebensbilder . Volume 3, 1928, p. 321ff. (with picture)
• German Biographical Encyclopedia
• Annual report 1847 of the high school in St. Maria Magdalena in Breslau

Web links

• Egmont Websky in the database of members of the Reichstag