Friedrich Lohmann (entrepreneur, 1755)

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Johann Friedrich Lohmann the Elder (born August 29, 1755 in Schwelm ; † June 20, 1824 in Witten ) was a German merchant from Schwelm and founder of the Witten steel industry.

Life

In 1790 Johann Friedrich Lohmann the Elder moved from Schwelm to Witten. He had already leased the Berge house two years earlier with the intention of setting up a steel mill. In 1798 the lease contract was extended and extended to the grain mill at Mühlengraben so that the company could use the associated water rights. In 1815 Lohmann acquired the Berge house, including all of the land and rights.

In his steel works , Johann Friedrich Lohmann the Elder wanted to Ä. Siegerländer process iron into cement steel and use it to make files.

In 1800 he considered participating in a blast furnace plant in order to make his steelworks independent of the supply of foreign pig iron. He offered the trades of the "privileged ironworks company", which had been founded in Letmathe in the same year, the mill square with the associated battle as a factory site and joined the company as a shareholder. The location on the banks of the Ruhr was particularly advantageous for the project, as the river's water power could have been used to drive the blast furnace's fan. The driving force behind the “privileged ironworks society” was the French baron Chevalier de Wendel, who had managed the blast furnace works le Creusot as an agent of the French government, but had fled to Westphalia before the French Revolution. He had recognized the advantages of the coke oven compared to the charcoal blast oven, which was still widespread on the continent at that time, and had set himself and his trades the goal of building the first coke-fired blast furnace on the Ruhr on what was then known as the “Wittenschen Eisenhütte”.

In the following year the company bought some iron stone pits in order to secure the raw material supply for the Wittenschen ironworks. At the end of 1801, however, the Baron de Wendel returned to France due to an amnesty, as a result of which the society lost its leading head. Especially in the technical area, his skills could not be replaced. The trades tried to win over other specialists for the construction, but they all failed. The Wittenschen Eisenhütte project was therefore abandoned around 1815.

From 1809 Friedrich Lohmann d. Ä. Attempts to produce crucible steel by. Although England was a leader in crucible steel production at that time, the supply of English crucible steel came to a standstill during the Franco-British War due to the complete isolation of England from the European market by the continental barrier in 1806. In France and Germany in particular, efforts were made to re-invent English technology and, if possible, to improve it. In 1812 Johann Friedrich Lohmann d. Ä. to the Baron von Romberg as the Prefect of the Ruhr Department that his attempts were successful, and asked him to send a sample of his crucible cast steel to the French "Society for the Promotion of National Industry" ("Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale") to send. In September 1812 the Prefect Johann Friedrich Lohmann the Elder taught Ä. about the fact that a favorable judgment was made about its steel despite minor defects, whereupon Lohmann continued his attempts to further improve his cast steel. The factory production of consistently high quality crucible cast steel was only achieved by the son Johann Friedrich Lohmann the Elder. J. after the death of the father.

Lohmann married Maria Wilhelma Braselmann on November 2, 1780 in Schwelm.

Johann Friedrich Lohmann d. Ä. founded company exists as Friedr. Lohmann GmbH to this day.

literature

  • Barbara Gerstein:  Lohmann, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 125 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Burkhard Beyer: From crucible steel to Krupp steel, technical and corporate history of Friedrich Krupp's cast steel factory in the first half of the 19th century , Essen 2007
  • Fried. Lohmann GmbH (Ed.): 200 years of Fried. Lohmann GmbH, From the history of a family and their company , Witten 1990
  • Hardy Priester: The Lohmann family and their crucible cast steel. In: Märkisches Jahrbuch für Geschichte, ed. v. Heinrich Schoppmeyer and Dietrich Tier, 106th volume, Dortmund 2006, pp. 143–155
  • Hardy priest: Johann Friedrich Lohmann d. Ä .: A busy industrial pioneer. In: Frank Ahland and Matthias Dudde (eds.), Wittener - Biographische Portraits, Vol. 1, Witten 2000, pp. 21–28

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.heidermanns.net/pers/Familie/d0011/g0000026.html#I45629
  2. ↑ Wittener. Biographical portraits ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2005 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 28, 2012  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ruhrstadt-verlag.de
personal data
SURNAME Lohmann, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lohmann, Johann Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman, founder of the Witten steel industry
DATE OF BIRTH August 29, 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwelm
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1824
Place of death Witten