Franz Kohn

Franz Kohn (born December 15, 1857 in Geestemünde ; † March 24, 1909 in Geestemünde) was a German entrepreneur , timber wholesaler , Senator of Geestemünde, and patron .

biography

family

Franz Kohn, son of the captain, ship owner and timber merchant Franz Johann Syabbe Kohn (born May 16, 1828 in Klippkanne, in Brake (Unterweser) , † August 13, 1879 in Geestemünde ) and his wife Maria Rebecca, née. Riedemann (1827–1870) was a timber wholesaler and entrepreneur and owned one of the largest timber import dealers in northern Germany. He was married to Johanna, geb. Gehrels (1862-1925). The Kohn couple had two sons, Gerhard Gerhard Kohnert and Hans Hans Kohnert .

The ancestors were captains and owners of emigrant sailors who brought emigrants from Brake (Unterweser) and Bremerhaven to America in the 19th century and carried out overseas trade on their way back via the Caribbean . With the advent of steam shipping in the mid-1850s, the business became unprofitable. Franz Kohn's father settled down and bought himself into a timber importing company Pundt & Kohn (P&K) in 1863 . Business flourished thanks to the construction of new port facilities on the Geeste and the rapidly growing demand for pit timber , railway sleepers and construction timber for residential and factory buildings in the wake of population growth and the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Since the domestic supply of wood could no longer meet this great demand, the company shifted to importing wood mainly from Scandinavia , Russia and partly also from America , from where mainly precious woods were obtained . In view of the weight of the transported goods, the waterway was by far the most cost-effective until well into the 19th century . It was no coincidence that wood importing companies concentrated on the lower reaches of rivers such as the Weser , from where the imported and processed wood was distributed to the centers of industrialization by barges , and later increasingly also by rail . This also applied to the P&K company, whose first wood storage areas were on Deichstraße (later called Bussestraße) directly on the Geestedeich shortly before the confluence of the Geeste with the Weser. After only five years of collaboration, co-owner Diedrich Pundt left the company in 1868 due to illness. From then on, Franz Johann Syabbe Kohn ran the well-developing timber import business, connected with his shipping company with its own ships or ship shares ( Guayana and the Briggs Marianne , Auguste and Salia ), until he died on August 13, 1879. Then his son Franz Kohn took over the family business.

Franz Kohn was one of the four senators from Geestemünde at the end of the 19th century. He was also considered one of the forefathers of social housing in the region. At the beginning of the 1890s he applied for eight of his workers to be allowed to build a housing estate near his company, on the Geestrücken in Hülsen, on the outskirts of Geestemünde, where there was neither sewer nor electricity. In 1893 he received the building permit. Kohn transferred ownership of the "workers' colony in Hülsen", after its completion to the "Gemeinnützige Kreisbauverein Geestemünde GmbH". The company left the houses to the residents for purchase. Mostly workers from East Friesland, Westphalia and the neighboring country of Wursten moved in. The expansion of the workers' settlement was largely complete by 1905. There were already around 90 large families with a total of 500 members living there. The social ties of the residents were shown, among other things, in community life, e.g. B. the establishment of a drummers and whistle choir.

literature

• Bickelmann, Hartmut (Ed.) (2003): Bremerhaven personalities from four centuries. A biographical lexicon. Second, enlarged and corrected edition. Bremerhaven: 2003: 172-174.

• Bickelmann, Hartmut (1996): From Geestendorf to Geestemünde - Spatial, commercial and social structural change in the vicinity of the Holzhafen Geestemünde . In: Men from Morgenstern, Yearbook 75. Bremerhaven: 1996: 149–235.

• Hirschfeld, Paul (1891): Hanover's large-scale industry and wholesale trade. Ed .: Deutsche Export-Bank, Berlin / Duncker u. Humblot, Leipzig, XVI, 1891, 412 pp.

• Kobus, Klaus (1994): 'Grünhöfe' - traces of bygone times. Ed .: History workshop 'Grünhöfe', Bremerhaven

• Marchet, Julius (1908): The timber trade in Northern Germany . Publishing house F. Deuticke, Leipzig, Vienna, 1908.

• Zimmermann, Richard (1894): Germany's wood supplies. Journal of Political Science / Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics . Vol. 50, H. 4., 1894, pp. 573-582.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Treue: On the history of the German timber trade. A quarter of a century . In: Journal of Company History . 25th year, H. 1. 1980, p. 12–27 ( .uni-duisburg-essen.de [PDF]).
2. ↑ Christian Lotz: Delimitation of the timber trade and memories. 2013, accessed February 2, 2016 . 
3. ↑ Klaus Kobus: 'Grünhöfe' - traces of past times . In: History workshop 'Grünhöfe', Geestemünde . 1994.

Web links

• Family grave of the Kohn family in Bremerhaven-Lehe II Image source: Men from Morgenstern, 2011.