Franz Oppenheim
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Franz Oppenheim , (born July 13, 1852 in Charlottenburg ; † February 13, 1929 in Cairo / Egypt ) was a German chemist and industrialist who mainly worked for the Agfa company . With his wife Margarete he brought together a well-known art collection by French impressionists .
Origin, school and studies
Franz Otto Oppenheim was born the son of the lawyer Otto Georg Oppenheim (1817-1909) and Margarethe, née Mendelssohn (1823-1890), a granddaughter of Joseph Mendelssohn and great-granddaughter of Moses Mendelssohn in Charlottenburg near Berlin. His siblings included Else (1844–1868) and Enole Oppenheim (1855–1939), successively wives of their relative Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy , and the banker Hugo Oppenheim .
Franz Oppenheim received his first school education at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin. He then attended the Marienstiftsgymnasium in Stettin until Easter 1868 , where his father had been transferred. Franz Oppenheim went to the Royal Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin for the last few years up to the high school graduation at Easter 1872 . Franz Oppenheim studied chemistry with Robert Wilhelm Bunsen in Heidelberg . During his studies he became a member of the Allemannia Heidelberg fraternity . He interrupted his studies in order to do his military service in Berlin in 1872/73 with the Guard Dragons, which he finished with the rank of Deputy Guard . He then continued his chemistry studies in Heidelberg and moved to Bonn in the fall of 1874 , where he received his doctorate from Otto Wallach in 1877 with a dissertation entitled Contribution to the knowledge of bases of the constitution C n H 2n-3 Cl N 2 .
Oppenheim married Else Wollheim (1858–1904), sister of Hermine Feist (1855–1933) and daughter of Caesar Wollheim , a leading coal wholesaler in Prussia. This marriage had the children Rose, Martha, Franz Caesar and Kurt Oppenheim , of whom Rose and Franz Caesar died in childhood. Martha Oppenheim (1882–1971) married her relative Ernst von Simson , Kurt Oppenheim (1886–1947) became a chemist like his father.
After the death of his first wife, Franz Oppenheim married Margarete, née Eisner, widowed Reichenheim (1857–1935) in 1907. The couple built a representative villa in the country house style on the Großer Wannsee in the Alsen colony , Friedrich-Karl-Straße No. 17/19, advised by the architect Alfred Messel , which included a gardener's, porter's and greenhouse and the " Great Messel "was called. Margarete Oppenheim, with the help of the art dealer Paul Cassirer, built up an extensive art collection with French impressionists as early as 1904 . Paintings by Paul Cézanne , Vincent van Gogh and Édouard Manet were part of the furnishings of the villa, in which the Oppenheim family gathered an “[…] artistically ambitious group of friends, including natural scientists like Albert Einstein” for soirées . The Cézanne collection was considered the largest in Germany. Other items in the collection were porcelain, majolica, faience, silver work and small sculptures that came from the time of her marriage to Georg Reichenheim. Oppenheim's granddaughter, who later became painter Vita Petersen , also grew up in the villa .
Work for Agfa
After completing his doctorate, Oppenheim worked briefly as Eduard Pflüger's assistant at the Physics Institute at the University of Bonn , then joined the fertilizer factory Vorster & Grüneberg in Calk near Cologne as a volunteer chemist , where he quickly became deputy head of saltpetre production . At the age of 28 he took up a job at the Actien-Gesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation (Agfa) to represent his sick brother-in-law and founder of the Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy factory. With the death of Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Oppenheim joined the company on a permanent basis and headed Agfa's Rummelsburg operation for several years before he was appointed to its management in 1886.
Starting out from the Agfa dye plant in Berlin-Treptow , the foundation for the later Agfa photo department was laid with the photo developers Eikonogen and in 1891 with Rodinal . The department's range was expanded to include X-ray photo plates in 1896. In 1909 the Wolfen film factory was founded , which covered all of Agfa's activities in the photo sector.
Due to the work with cellulose for the backing of the film, Oppenheim pushed research into rayon , the production of which became an important branch of Agfa. The founding of the Wolfen paint factory is attributed to his work. Oppenheim was involved in the first merger negotiations in the German chemical industry very early on. In 1916 he was a member of the joint council of German tar paint factories, and from 1925 he was a member of the administrative and supervisory board of IG Farben AG.
Activity in clubs and associations
In 1886 Franz Oppenheim joined the Society of Friends .
In the "Chemische Reichsanstalt" association founded in 1908 by Emil Fischer and Walter Nernst , Oppenheim was treasurer . Oppenheim also played an important role in the creation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem . In addition, he was involved in the founding of the Emil Fischer Society for the Promotion of Chemical Research, the Adolf Baeyer Society for the Promotion of Chemical Literature and the Justus Liebig Society for the Promotion of Chemistry Education.
Franz Oppenheim was chairman of the trade association for the chemical industry from 1915 until his death in 1929 , and had been its deputy chairman for several years. He was also a member of the board (treasurer) and the main committee of the association for the protection of the interests of the chemical industry in Germany . In addition, he held positions in the working committee of the German Society for Industrial Hygiene, was a board member of the Reich Working Group for Chemistry and a member of the administrative committee of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. In 1927 he was appointed to the board of trustees of the Chemisch-Technische Reichsanstalt . Oppenheim was also a member of the main committee of the Reich Association of German Industry .
Titles and honors
Oppenheim received the title of a secret government councilor . In 1922, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, the Technical University of Berlin awarded him the Dr.-Ing. honorary. In 1927 he received the August Wilhelm von Hofmann Medal from the German Chemical Society.
On July 14, 2016 , a Berlin memorial plaque was unveiled at his former home, Berlin-Wannsee , Zum Heckeshorn 38 .
Web links
- Villa colonies in Wannsee 1875–1945: The Oppenheim family (PDF) , on ghwk.de, special exhibition of the Memorial and Educational Center House of the Wannsee Conference, May 2000 - January 2006, accessed on January 20, 2017
literature
- Fritz Haber : Franz Oppenheim in memory of the anniversary of his death (February 13, 1929). At the same time a contribution to the history of the Aktien-Gesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation . In: Journal of Applied Chemistry . 43, 1930, pp. 141-145, doi: 10.1002 / ange.19300430702 .
- Jens Ulrich Heine: A 28 - Franz Oppenheim . In: Mind and Fate. The men of I. G. Farbenindustrie AG in 161 short biographies . Weinheim u. a. 1990, pp. 226-228
- Bernd Wöbke: Oppenheim, Franz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 563 f. ( Digitized version ).
- biography
Individual evidence
- ^ Directory of the old men of the German fraternity. Überlingen am Bodensee 1920, p. 122.
- ↑ Internet page ( Memento of the original from June 22, 2007 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. of the House of the Wannsee Conference .
- ↑ The Reichenheim-Oppenheim collection was one of the largest and most valuable in Germany , on the website of the Lost Art database
- ↑ Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung, 1922, p. 335 ( Memento of the original from June 27, 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. , accessed December 6, 2012.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Oppenheim, Franz |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Oppenheim, Franz Otto |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German chemist, industrialist and art collector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 13, 1852 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Charlottenburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 13, 1929 |
| Place of death | Cairo |