Erhard Ackermann

Erhard Ackermann (born August 18, 1813 ; † 1880 ) was an entrepreneur in the stone industry in the Fichtel Mountains . He is considered to be the inventor of the machine grinding and polishing of hard stone , especially granite .

Early life

Erhard Ackermann was the third son of master mason John Ackermann and his wife Dorothea. Erhard Ackermann was her second last born child and grew up in a family of six children. It is believed that he only attended school for three to four years. He learned masonry and stone masonry from his father . After completing the journeyman's examination, he went on a hike that took him to Munich. There he met Anna Maria Riess, the daughter of a weaver. He married her. He and Anna Maria had five children, a son and four daughters. He presumably also passed the master's examination.

job

Ackermann founded a granite factory in Schönlinder Strasse in Weißenstadt in the Fichtelgebirge. His economic breakthrough came when in 1844, after the completion of the Nuremberg – Bamberg railway line , he received an order for the Bamberg – Hof railway line , for which he supplied granite for the construction of supporting and bridge pillars and columns. Sales of the polished tombstones and grave borders he made also increased. In order to increase production, the existing energy, which was based on water power, was no longer sufficient to drive the mechanical devices. He had a steam power station built on the premises and later electrified. He continued to develop the technology of grinding hard stone from flat and curved surfaces. Ackermann was no longer able to satisfy the increasing demand at his company headquarters and gave it up. Ackermann moved his company to Bayreuther Straße in Weißenstadt, in what is now the Kurpark. Today (2015) a ruin of his stone grinding shop with display boards about the history of granite processing can still be viewed in this spa park.

In 1873 Ackermann's company had 173 employees and had developed from a manual to an industrial company that manufactured stone products in series. His company supplied, for example, the columns for the colonnades in Karlsbad , for what was then the German Art Museum and Reich Post Office in Berlin. 27 columns in the Walhalla or the base of the "Golden Cross" , which is reminiscent of Grand Duchess Wilhelmine of Hesse and the Rhine , was built in 1866 by the Ackermann company. The company received orders not only domestically. Its polished stone was also used in the construction of the Votive Church in Vienna and the Royal Palace in Belgrade .

In 1909 the stone industry company Grasyma took over the Ackermann company.

Grinding technology for hard stone

The breakthrough to modern hard stone grinding technology was only possible when the abrasives could be bound in round grinding tools. The hard stone grinding technology requires a water supply that serves as a coolant and to remove the grinding sludge. Today diamond is mainly used as an abrasive. One of the first in German-speaking countries to polish large granite surfaces by machine at the end of the 1820s was the Berlin stonemason Christian Gottlieb Cantian . He worked and polished the large granite bowl, which is almost seven meters in diameter, in the Lustgarten in Berlin with a steam engine . He mainly used loose abrasives such as steel and quartz sand .

The prerequisite for the further spread of hard stone grinding was the electrification and construction of so-called articulated arm grinding machines , which were electrically powered. Before that, polishing was done by hand or with a water-powered or steam-powered grinding machine. The stone quarrying areas in Germany are usually located away from economic conurbations, so electrification there was delayed. However, the spread of Ackermann's grinding technology, which took place earlier and spread around the world, was rapid and at that time led to the increased installation of hard stone in buildings from the early days .

Before that time, granite grinding and polishing was tedious, tedious, and very expensive. Grinding and polishing with the articulated arm grinding machines was mainly done by women in the early days. Today it is mainly automatic or semi-automatic machines that grind hard stone. For the realization of Ackermann's idea up to the invention, it was important that there were numerous production facilities for porcelain in the Fichtelgebirge at that time. These were able to produce grinding tools that were able to grind the hard stone relatively consistently until it was polished.

Recognitions

Ackermann was honored with the Austrian Franz Joseph Order. He received recognition for his professional achievement at the world exhibitions in Paris in 1867 and in Vienna in 1873 .

In 1988 Weißenstadt dedicated a city memorial year to Erhard Ackermann.

See also

• Stone grinding machine
• Grinding line
• Processing of natural stone surfaces

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Günther Rasp: Erhard Ackerman makes the granite shine . In: historischer-club-mak.de, accessed on April 14, 2015