Friedrich Albert Spiecker

Friedrich Albert Spiecker (born February 19, 1854 in Boppard ; † July 10, 1936 in Berlin ) was a German entrepreneur and Protestant association functionary.

Life

origin

As the son of the businessman Fritz Spiecker (1817–1869) and his wife Luise geb. Wirtz Spiecker grew up in a church parental home. The father, influenced by the Awakening Diakonie Adalbert von der Recke-Volmersteins , was also a church master in the Evangelical Reformed community in Boppard. His younger brother Johannes Spiecker became a pastor and later a mission director.

Career

While the younger brothers graduated from high school and were later allowed to study theology, Friedrich Albert left the grammar school in 1868 after confirmation and began a commercial apprenticeship in Hachenburg . From July 1872 he worked as a foreign correspondent and later as an accountant in Antwerp . In September 1874 Spiecker returned to his widowed mother, who now lives in Mülheim an Rhein (now Cologne-Mülheim), to manage the accounting department at the Deutz gas engine factory founded by Eugen Langen and Nicolaus Otto . Here he was involved in the market launch of the Otto four-stroke engine . In addition, he was involved, together with his brother-in-law Fritz Coerper , for the Rhenish-Westphalian Youth Association , one of the founding organizations of the YMCA in Germany .

In 1877 he was forced to give up his job due to illness. After a short interlude in London, in 1879 Friedrich Fabri employed him as director of the Missions-Handels-Actien-Gesellschaft , which belonged to the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft in Barmen . During a 15-month trip through the mission areas in what was later to be German South West Africa and what is now Namibia in 1880/81, Spiecker and Fabri campaigned for the area to be annexed by the German Empire, which Bismarck still refused at that time.

In 1882 Spiecker gave up his position as director and founded, financed by Eugen Langen and Franz Carl Guilleaume , the company Spiecker and Co. in Cologne , which was supposed to produce electrical lighting systems for cities. When it was bought by the competitor Schuckert & Co. in 1888 , Spiecker changed to the Cologne-Rottweiler Pulverfabriken AG as director and took over the position of general secretary of a newly founded cartel of German and English powder and dynamite factories . On the recommendation of Carl Klönne , he was finally employed in 1902 as a member of the Management Board at Siemens & Halske . He was soon given responsibility for finances, including for the Schuckertwerke affiliated with Siemens in 1903 , and finally, as a member of the finance committee set up by Georg Wilhelm von Siemens , was part of the “inner circle” of the Executive Board. In this position, he contributed a lot to the growth of the large corporation, today's Siemens AG, until he retired in 1917 for health reasons. However, he remained active in his numerous honorary positions.

Honorary positions

In addition to his professional activity, Spiecker held numerous honorary positions in business and in association Protestantism. From 1906 to 1934 he was chairman of the professional association for precision mechanics and electrical engineering, from 1910 at the same time chairman of the association of German professional associations .

His commitment to the Inner Mission was even stronger . In Cologne he was already a co-founder of an Evangelical Workers' Association and the Evangelical Hospital Association 1898 eV in Cologne , which built and operated the Evangelical Hospital in Cologne-Weyertal. Soon after moving to Berlin, he took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board of the Berlin city mission . In 1906 he became president of the Central Committee for Internal Mission . Since at that time diaconia was still entirely in the hands of the associations and independent organizations, this was the most influential position within the diaconal work of German Protestantism. Spiecker led the transformation of the Central Committee into the Central Association of the Inner Mission . In 1923 he handed over the office to Reinhold Seeberg , but remained honorary president.

Since Spiecker has always been associated with missionary work - his father-in-law Theodor Gundert was President from 1883 to 1904, his brother Johannes Spiecker from 1908 to 1920 director of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft - he was also persuaded to work in the Berlin Mission Society . He joined the committee as early as 1903, and in 1908 he became vice-president. From 1913 to 1932 he was president and was able to lead the mission society together with Karl Axenfeld , whom he had employed as a full-time director, through the difficult years after the First World War.

While all of these offices and activities fit into the profile of a more conservative revival Christian, another engagement falls out of the ordinary. Spiecker, who repeatedly sought contact with Christians in other countries due to his good language skills, took over responsibility for a visit by high-ranking churchmen from Great Britain to Germany in 1909, which answered a visit by German church dignitaries in Great Britain from the previous year. The young Berlin pastor Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze worked here as his assistant. To continue, a committee was set up to maintain friendly relations , in which Spiecker took over the chairmanship on the German side. The efforts to make a church contribution to the maintenance of peace gave rise to the foundation of the World Alliance for Friendship Work of Churches , which formed one of the roots of the ecumenical movement . Spiecker was not involved in the founding assembly in August 1914, but was elected chairman of the German department and in 1920 one of the vice-presidents of the international association. Spiecker was not as decidedly pacifist as Secretary General Siegmund-Schultze, who continued to work closely with him, but was able to promote the acceptance of Germans in the ecumenical movement on the one hand through his mediating manner and on the other hand to reduce the mistrust of the ecumenical movement in the German churches. He did not give up these offices until 1932.

family

Spiecker had been married to Helene Gundert, a Barmer factory owner's daughter, since August 2, 1883. In addition to two children who died early, the marriage resulted in a son and daughter Käthe (married Hermann), in whose house in Berlin-Dahlem Spiecker and his wife spent the last years of their lives.

Honors

The theological faculty of the University of Berlin awarded Spiecker an honorary doctorate in 1908 . He also received the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle, 4th class and the Royal Order of the Crown, 3rd class.

literature

• Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze : Obituary of director D. Friedrich Albert Spiecker († July 10, 1936). In: Ecumenical Yearbook 1936/1937. Zurich and Leipzig 1939, pp. 51–57.
• Karl Wülfrath: Friedrich Albert Spiecker 1854–1936. In: Theologische Literaturzeitung 1955, pp. 138–152.
• Jochen-Christoph Kaiser : Friedrich Albert Spiecker (1854–1937) [sic!]. A career between big industry and free Protestantism. In: Francesca Schinzinger (Ed.): Christian entrepreneurs. Büdinger research on social history 1992 and 1993 (= German leadership classes in modern times; 19). Boppard / Rhein, 1994, pp. 161-200.
• Jochen-Christoph Kaiser: Friedrich Albert Spiecker (1854–1936). A career between big industry and free Protestantism. In: Theodor Strohm , Jörg Thierfelder (eds.): Diakonie im Deutschen Kaiserreich (1871-1918). More recent contributions from research on the history of diakonia (= publications by the Diakonie Wissenschaftliches Institut at Heidelberg University, 7). Heidelberger Verlags-Anstalt, Heidelberg 1995, pp. 105–144.
• Sven H. Stieghorst: Big Industry and Association Protestantism: Friedrich Albert Spiecker (1854–1936). In: Norbert Friedrich u. a. (Ed.): Social Protestantism in the Empire. Problem constellations - solution perspectives - action profiles (= Bochum Forum on the History of Social Protestantism, 6). LIT, Münster [a. a.] 2005, ISBN 3-8258- 8559-3, pp. 297-320.
• Jochen-Christoph Kaiser:  Spiecker, Friedrich Albert . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 7, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2004, Sp. 1570-1571.
• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , pp. 153f. ( Online , PDF; 2.2 MB).

Remarks

1. ↑ In the literature, the year of death 1937 is sometimes mentioned, probably caused by a typing error in Jochen-Christoph Kaiser’s first essay on Spiecker (see literature).
2. ↑ More details from Klaus J. Bade : Friedrich Fabri and imperialism in the Bismarckian era. Revolution - Depression - Expansion. Freiburg i. Br. 1975 [1] (PDF; 3.0 MB) Internet edition with a new foreword Osnabrück 2005, especially p. 226f.
3. ^ Sven H. Stieghorst: Large-scale industry and association Protestantism: Friedrich Albert Spiecker (1854-1936). In: Norbert Friedrich u. a. (Ed.): Social Protestantism in the Empire. Problem constellations - solution perspectives - action profiles (= Bochum Forum on the History of Social Protestantism, 6). LIT, Münster [a. a.] 2005, ISBN 3-8258- 8559-3, p. 304.