Eugen Dyckerhoff

Eugen Julius Richard Dyckerhoff (born May 8, 1844 in Mannheim , † August 4, 1924 in Biebrich ) was a German building contractor and concrete pioneer.

Life

Dyckerhoff was the son of cement manufacturer Wilhelm Gustav Dyckerhoff . He first founded a cement plant near Wiesbaden (from which Dyckerhoff AG emerged ) and then took part in the establishment of the company for the production of concrete products Lang & Cie, later Dyckerhoff & Widmann KG, in Karlsruhe in 1865 . A year later, the businessman Eugen Dyckerhoff joined the company. He had gained experience in his father's cement works, where he worked in the company's laboratory under his brother Rudolf, a chemist. Inspired by visits to concrete manufacturers abroad (Netherlands, Austria, France) he developed the stamped concrete in his own experiments in collaboration with his brother Rudolf .

Since the company owners did not want to provide the capital necessary for further development, Dyckerhoff brought the Karlsruhe businessman Gottlieb Widmann (1817-1894) into the company in 1869 , whose daughter Adele Widmann (1848-1915) he married in the same year. Initially, the company produced sculptures as well as pipes, containers and paving. It was particularly successful with its pipes, as Dyckerhoff set high quality standards. Factories in Biebrich, Nuremberg, Chemnitz (later relocated to Dresden) were established. In 1880 Dyckerhoff undertook extensive experiments with vaults made of concrete in order to make the material more popular in structural engineering as well, and presented a concrete pedestrian bridge at the 1880 trade exhibition in Düsseldorf , which attracted great attention. The first larger order was a large elevated tank for the Wiesbaden waterworks in 1882 and bridges followed, including a small bridge with a span of 10 m in Seifersdorf in 1882, which is still standing today and in 1898/99 a railway viaduct in the Chemnitz Valley . Also in the construction Dywidag concrete was used successfully, from 1908 to 1910 was the Garrison Church in Ulm by Theodor Fischer of concrete and 1911/12, the Centennial Hall in Wroclaw . In 1907 Dyckerhoff and Widmann was converted into a stock corporation with Dyckerhoff as chairman of the supervisory board .

From 1899 to 1911 Dyckerhoff was chairman of the German Concrete and Structural Engineering Association founded in 1898 .

Honors

• 1902: Award of the title of Kommerzienrat by Wilhelm II.
• 1911: Honorary doctorate (Dr.-Ing.hc) from the Technical University of Charlottenburg
• 1911: Honorary Chairman of the German Concrete and Construction Technology Association
• 1913: Appointed privy councilor
• 1921: Honorary citizen of the TH Karlsruhe
• 1924: Honorary Senator of the TH Darmstadt

literature

• Knut Stegmann: On the German beginnings of building with concrete. The stamped concrete pioneer Eugen Dyckerhoff (1844–1924). In: Beton- und Stahlbetonbau 106 (2011), Issue 6, pp. 415–424. doi: 10.1002 / best.201100021
• Knut Stegmann: Early Concrete Constructions in Germany - A Review with Special Regard to the Building Company Dyckerhoff & Widmann. In: Karl-Eugen Kurrer , Werner Lorenz and Volker Wetzk (eds.): Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History. Volume 3. Berlin, 2009, pp. 1371-1378. ISBN 978-3-936033-31-1 article as PDF
• German Committee for Reinforced Concrete (ed.): Fifty Years of the German Committee for Reinforced Concrete 1907–1957. Berlin, 1957, p. 35f.

Web links

• Barahona, José: Eugen Julius Richard Dyckerhoff (1844-1924). In: Great Engineers, 2010/2012.
• Dyckerhoff, Eugen Julius Richard. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stegmann, 2011, pp. 416-418.
2. ↑ Stegmann, 2009, pp. 1375-1376.
3. ↑ Dyckerhoff's awards ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2015 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. at the Brandenburg Technical University.