Emil Müller (entrepreneur, 1807)

Use and purpose of the Hamburg-Bergedorfer Railway (1840)

Emil Müller (born January 11, 1807 in Lübeck , † June 28, 1857 in Wandsbek ) was a German businessman and entrepreneur .

Live and act

Emil Müller was the son of the businessman Nikolaus Hermann Müller (1771–1842) from Lübeck. He attended the Katharineum there , but left it without a high school diploma and began a commercial apprenticeship in 1823 in several commercial branches in Europe, including in Bordeaux , London and St. Petersburg .

Together with his father, he observed the political and economic developments that were taking place in Europe. Both of them recognized the possibilities that steam engines offered early on . Together they founded a steamship company that offered a connection from Lübeck to St. Petersburg . The route, which was first used in 1828, was quickly successful. The reason for this was also the Russian tsar, who promoted the company as a shareholder.

Since many travelers coming from London to St. Petersburg chose a passage via Hamburg and Lübeck, both cities benefited from the new connection. However, the road connection between the two Hanseatic cities turned out to be insufficient. A stagecoach needed a day for the 70-kilometer journey. Holstein , which was under the Danish government at the time, had little interest in a better connection between Hamburg and Lübeck. Rather, the cities of Altona and Kiel , which are also under Danish leadership, should attract as many passengers as possible from the competing route between Hamburg and Lübeck. For this purpose, the Altona-Kieler Chaussee was opened in 1832 .

Emil Müller campaigned for a railway line between Hamburg and Lübeck to promote the business of the steamship line. Since the railroad was viewed with skepticism in Germany at the time, Müller visited Great Britain in 1833 . He hoped to find business partners for a railway company there who could enable the construction of a line between Hamburg and Lübeck. In London he met the engineer Francis Giles , who commissioned his assistant William Lindley to assess the project. Lindley traveled to Hamburg and secretly surveyed the route. Since neither the Danish court nor the Lübeck council had been informed about the surveying work, the work led to diplomatic disagreements.

On July 2, 1835, Muller and Giles formed a railroad committee and published a prospectus for potential shareholders. The prospectus made it clear what payments should be made to the Danish government, which created further diplomatic entanglements. In 1835 Müller wrote the work on the intended Hamburg-Altona and Lübeck Railway to connect the North Sea with the Baltic Sea . He dedicated the work to the Danish king, who, however, never saw it. The entrepreneurs were initially able to find numerous supporters for their project. However, the number of potential shareholders in Hamburg and Lübeck remained low due to the political controversy. Although there was greater interest on the part of possible shareholders in London, Müller resigned from the company due to the low prospects of success. The project, planned from then on under purely British leadership, was unsuccessful and the company dissolved in 1839.

Müller continued his search for supporters for the construction of railway lines. To this end, he wrote several articles that were printed in newspapers. His plans met with a great response in Holstein; the Danish government felt pressured to act. Since further independent plans were to be suppressed, this led to the establishment of a Danish government commission under Heinrich von Reventlow-Criminil in 1839 and, at the end of 1840, to the establishment of the Altona-Kieler Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft , in which Müller was not involved. Since 1839, Müller had been managing director of a company that planned and carried out the Hamburg-Bergedorfer Eisenbahn , which opened in 1842 . As managing director, he probably had a decisive influence on the fact that his friend William Lindley led the planning and construction of the route. In 1840 he wrote the book Benefit and Purpose of the Hamburg-Bergedorfer Railway , in which he outlined how important the railway line was for Hamburg. With this work he wanted to advertise further new railway lines.

Emil Müller died on June 28, 1857. A few weeks later, he did not live to see the connection between Hamburg and Lübeck he wanted to open .

Fonts

• Use and purpose of the Hamburg-Bergedorfer-Eisenbahn. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1840. ( Preview on Google Books )

literature

• Müller (Emil). In: Hans Schröder, Carl Rudolph Wilhelm Klose, AH Kellinghusen, Friedrich August Cropp, Christian Petersen (eds.): Lexicon of Hamburg writers up to the present , volume Maack-Pauli . Hamburg 1870, p. 403 f. ( Preview on Google Books )
• Lorenz Steinke: Müller, Emil . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 260-262 .