Friedrich Jungheinrich

Hermann Friedrich Karl Jungheinrich (born October 20, 1899 in East London , South Africa ; † January 28, 1968 in Hamburg ) was a German entrepreneur and founder of the Jungheinrich company .

Training and first professional positions

His parents, Hermann Richard Jungheinrich (1864–1947) and Frieda, née Großkopf (1873–1948), were both born in Thuringia . Grandfather Johann Georg Jungheinrich had already managed a factory for agricultural machinery there . Meanwhile, Hermann Richard went to the USA in the hope of better career opportunities and worked there for the company Malcomess & Co. The company sent him to South Africa as commercial director in the mid-1890s, where Friedrich Jungheinrich was born.

In January 1909 the Jungheinrich family moved to Hamburg. Here Friedrich Jungheinrich first attended the Bieber'sche Realschule am Holzdamm. Due to his outstanding mathematical skills, he moved to the Oberrealschule Eppendorf in 1914 , which he left in 1917 with a secondary school diploma. After that he had to do military service as a foot and field artilleryman on the western front . In the autumn of 1918, his health was damaged by gas poisoning, and he returned to Hamburg, where he recovered. Then he was briefly deployed in the "Hamburg" infantry regiment . After the end of the First World War , he joined the Bahrenfeld Freikorps .

Jungheinrich began studying engineering at the Technical University of Hanover in February 1919 and completed an internship at Nagel & Kaemp AG in Hamburg in the same year . In January 1921 he moved to the TH Munich . A year later he continued his studies at the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg and completed an internship at the Deutz gas engine factory . In Berlin he also passed the main diploma examination and was awarded a Dr.-Ing. In 1925 with a thesis on logistical problems in the German oil industry . PhD.

Jungheinrich then worked as a permanent employee for Bergmann Elektrizitätswerke , which sold large parts of the company in 1929 due to the global economic crisis . Probably for this reason, Jungheinrich took on a position at a manufacturer of lightweight panels in South Africa in 1929. He then came back to Hamburg, where he worked from 1932 to 1937 as a graduate engineer in his father's company, for whose company H. Jungheinrich & Co. he sold agricultural machinery in South Africa under the name Tower Industries . In August 1939 he returned again to Hamburg, where he remained until the end of June 1945, today's Still GmbH by Hans Still worked, produced important war equipment. Jungheinrich therefore did not have to do military service. He then worked again for his father, in whose company he optimized internal material flows.

Building your own company

On October 9, 1947, the father Hermann Richard Jungheinrich died. Together with his brother Otto (1900–1980), Friedrich Jungheinrich took over their father's company. As the new owners, they no longer did a wholesale business, but instead concentrated on the production and export of equipment for internal transport. In 1948 they presented the first battery-operated pallet truck produced in Germany , which they had developed based on the American model. At the German Industry Fair in Hanover in 1950 , they presented a new type of electronic forklift truck . In the period that followed, they quickly developed new equipment for warehouse management. In 1953, the brothers separated the manufacturing and export divisions. Friedrich Jungheinrich took over the production division as the sole owner of H. Jungheinrich & Co. Maschinenfabrik . In the same year he introduced a new type of electrically operated forklift with a driver's seat. In 1956 the "Retrak reach truck" was added, which was much more stable than forklifts available until then and could also drive through narrow rows of shelves.

As the company grew, Friedrich Jungheinrich had to expand the production facilities. The original company headquarters was in a small workshop at Bachstrasse 48 in Barmbek until the move in 1950 . Production then moved into a hall rented by Jungheinrich's wife's family at Billbrookdeich 54. In 1956, the entrepreneur took over a 28,000 square meter plot of land in Wandsbek as a leaseholder and for which he raised ten million marks by the end of the 1960s. Until 1956, Jungheinrich only sold within Germany. Then he opened a sales company in Austria and in 1958 two more in Sweden and Italy . In 1966 the entrepreneur acquired a plot of 120,000 square meters in Norderstedt . In 1967 Jungheinrich founded the Jungheinrich Unternehmensverwaltungs KG holding company .

Friedrich Jungheinrich died before the high-bay forklift he developed himself was launched. The Jungheinrich company he left behind had 1239 employees a year after his death and sales of 75 million marks.

family

Friedrich Jungheinrich had been married to Ilse Schwarz, née Krönke (1905–1976), since 1941. His wife had two daughters from his first marriage to Ludwig Schwarz (1900–1938), whom Friedrich Jungheinrich adopted. Ilse Jungheinrich held shares in the Hamburg metal rolling mills, which enabled her husband to set up his own company.

Jungheinrich had been a member of the Corps Bavaria Munich since 1920 .

literature

• Claus Gossler: Jungheinrich, Friedrich . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 204-205 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corps lists from 1960, 104, 1454