Emil Gminder

Emil Andreas Gminder (born July 18, 1873 in Reutlingen ; † July 23, 1963 there ) was a German entrepreneur in the textile industry . He continued the Reutlingen textile company Ulrich Gminder GmbH / AG (UG) (1814–1963), a full-fledged textile company consisting of a spinning mill , weaving mill and finishing that his great-grandfather Ulrich Gminder founded in 1814 as a dye works .

Life

Emil Gminder was the fourth of nine children of the textile entrepreneur Carl Gminder and his wife Maria Gminder nee. Display alarm clock. He grew up in his parents' villa on Friedrichstrasse near the train station in Reutlingen.

In 1891 Gminder finished his commercial apprenticeship . He spent the following year at the Reutlingen weaving school . He then did a mechanical engineering training in Winterthur , later he went to Great Britain. In 1893 Gminder returned to Reutlingen. Here he began to familiarize himself with Otto Johannsen's textile technology center in the field of spinning. His final exam he made, he did his military service as 1894. Then, one-year volunteer in an artillery - regiment in Ulm from.

On October 9, 1899, he married his second cousin Elise Gminder, daughter of Louis Gminder and Karoline Gminder, born in Reutlingen. Baur.

From 1904 Gminder was managing director of Ulrich Gminder GmbH; However, he was only the representative of part of the Gminder family, there were always several managing directors (e.g. Louis Gminder) due to the two family lines Carl and Louis Gminder. After the death of his father Carl Gminder, he took over the supervision of the construction of the Gmindersdorf workers' settlement , which had been commissioned by the brothers Carl and Louis.

In 1905 a Roman villa was discovered in Betzingen . Gminder provided the necessary labor for the excavations and hired a specialist to take drawings of the Roman relics.

Gminder campaigned for popular education. A testimony to his attitude is a letter to the Volkskaffeehausverein on September 21, 1917, in which he wrote: “Educate the people more and more to their own judgment.” As a result, in 1918 Gminder founded an association for popular education. In 1922, he built the first adult education center in Germany, which later became the Reutlingen adult education center .

In 1920 Gminder invented the cotonization of flax and hemp fibers . This made it possible to produce a cotton- cotonin mixed fabric. He applied for this patent ("Process for the production of fiber material by breaking up bundle fibers into individual fibers") in the USA in March 1931. Further patents followed such as B. also one for spinning.

The so-called Gminder half-liners , a cotton-linen blend fabric produced by UG with this process , was very well known and popular due to its versatility for clothing and in the household and its durability. However, the vast majority of the company's turnover has always been generated by the production of a wide variety of cotton fabrics.

Emil Gminder is buried in the Reutlingen city cemetery Unter den Linden.

Fonts (selection)

• The first gas mantle in Reutlingen . In: Reutlinger Geschichtsblätter , 45th year 1938, p. 19.

honors and awards

The city of Reutlingen awarded Emil Gminder honorary citizenship in 1953 . In the same year he was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit. The Emil-Gminder-Haus in Reutlingen was named after him.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Source: Mormon database on the Internet (www.familysearch.org)
2. ^ History of the Roman villa of Betzingen
3. ↑ Wolfgang Alber (Ed.): "Educate the people more and more to their own judgment". From popular education to advanced training. 75 years of the Verein für Volksbildung eV Reutlingen 1993.
4. ↑ Case study VHS Reutlingen ( Memento of the original from November 11, 2003 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ cotonization - fiber preparation: the exposure of the fibers and their separation into smaller fiber bundles or even individual fibers.
6. ↑ United States Patent 1796598 of March 17, 1931: Process of treating the fibers of textile material .
7. ↑ United States Patent 1666894 of April 24, 1928: Spinning .