Friedrich Miller
Friedrich Miller (born July 23, 1832 in Pirmasens , † June 12, 1892 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German machine manufacturer.
genealogy
His father was Johann Michael Miller (1794-NN), taxman in Pirmasens, whose parents were Johann Michael Miller (NN-1826) and Margarethe Bieber (NN-1813). His mother Maria Magdalene (1811–1839), who died young, was the daughter of the lottery taker Johann Hirsch (1773-NN) zu Grünstadt and Barbara Braun (1784-NN). Friedrich Miller grew up in the post-Napoleonic era at the beginning of the industrial age under the care of his stepmother, whom his father Johann Michael Miller married in 1840 as a second marriage. His stepmother was Regina Weissert (1810-NN), herself the daughter of the district forester Johann Adam Weissert (1775-NN) and Katharina Elisabeth Göller (1790-NN) Friedrich Miller married Rosa Müller (1844-NN), who was 12 years his junior. Their daughter Rose Miller (1863–1918) was married to the Swiss artist, glass painter and architect Johann Albert Lüthi (1858–1903).
Life
Friedrich Miller's birthplace Pirmasens belonged to France from 1793 to 1815. After Napoleon's defeat, the city and the rest of the Palatinate became part of Bavaria. At the age of 30, Friedrich Miller appeared as an engineer in the Hessian village of Bockenheim , located just outside the free imperial city of Frankfurt am Main, and founded an iron foundry and locksmith's shop here with the businessman Ludwig Weber. The Weber & Miller company initially employed 20 workers and manufactured cast iron goods for the household such as bed frames, garden furniture, spiral stairs, etc. Thanks to the positive economic effects of the successful annexation of Kurhessen and the city of Frankfurt in 1966 by the Kingdom of Prussia, the Weber & Miller company developed very well and already had 130 employees after a few years. Due to Miller's ongoing connections to his birthday town Pirmasens, he participated in its special economic developments, especially in shoe manufacturing. In 1838 Peter Kaiser founded Germany's oldest shoe factory in Pirmasens. The city developed more and more into the center of the German shoe industry. That is why Friedrich Miller and his company Weber & Miller started manufacturing post sewing machines for shoemakers in 1870. Since several companies were building sewing machines in Bockenheim at that time, Weber & Miller initially worked as an iron caster for their frames.
Friedrich Miller from Pirmasens certainly already knew the development of sewing machines for craft shoemaking. No doubt he was also familiar with the pioneering work of American inventors in the field of shoe machines. In 1874 Weber & Miller manufactured the first sole sewing machines based on the "McKay System" and also began building tannery machines. Since then, the company has specialized in both areas and has brought out new developments year after year. As early as 1875 an eccentric press with punching knives was built for punching out leather soles. By 1880 the tannery was largely mechanized by a whole series of machines. At the same time, there was constant work to improve the shoe machines. The wooden nail machine "Velocitas 397" and the sole smoothing machine "Acme" (both 1883) were significant successes on this route. In 1885 the sole sewing machine "Eclipse" followed. With the “Allianz” sewing machine for lockstitch presented in 1885, a groundbreaking development was achieved that dominated the market for decades. It completed the company's offer for equipping a mechanized shoe factory. The company does not seem to have been interested in the imperial patents, which were only introduced in 1877, due to the lack of competition.
Business expansion
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After the death of co-founder Ludwig Weber, Friedrich Miller had to increase the capital base of the expanding company. Friedrich Miller took on the young Alhard Ludwig Ferdinand Andreae (1861-1916) as a partner. He was the son of the very wealthy Frankfurt banker Achilles Andreae (1820-88), an influential Frankfurt citizen and descendant of a well-known Frankfurt Huguenot family . This family belonged to the absolute upper class of what was then Frankfurt society (see also Johannes Andreae (businessman) ). The Andreae family moved Friedrich Miller to convert the newly created Miller & Andreae company into an AG in 1889. At the same time, the expansion of the AG began with the takeover of the shoe machine factory CS Larrabee & Co., which led to a considerable expansion of the production program. The company expanded again in 1890 with the incorporation of the Gros & Co. machine factory in Oberursel (Taunus).
The company has now also acquired several patents. In 1891 she brought out a band knife splitting machine for the leather industry, which achieved world fame under the name "Dividora" and was still indispensable in many production facilities after five decades. The first leather measuring machines were built in 1892. To what extent Friedrich Miller himself was involved in the numerous designs developed in his company can no longer be determined. Until his death in 1892 he was the general manager of the company, which had risen from small beginnings to a large company, which initially changed its name to “Deutsch-Amerikanische Maschinengesellschaft AG” and in 1900 to Maschinenfabrik Moenus AG.
After his death, this developed into an important company specializing in special machine construction, which eventually united a group of related companies as a holding company. According to documents from the Institute for Urban History (ISG) of the City of Frankfurt, the company premises were initially located at Kurfürstenstraße 60 in Bockenheim, opposite today's Westbahnhof. Later the move or the expansion in Voltastraße takes place. These former company properties are now completely built over. A residential complex for Moenus AG workers, the so-called workers' settlement in Voltastraße, which survived the Second World War , was demolished in 2008 and replaced by a new building. Moenus AG survived both world wars, but was liquidated in 2000. The bearer of the name was subsequently and until 2007 a Moenus Textilmaschinen GmbH in Gera, which was then taken over by Interspare GmbH.
traces
The traces of the machine factory of Friedrich Miller and the later machine factory Moenus AG have been completely erased. The grave of the Friedrich Miller family has been preserved in Frankfurt's main cemetery.
Friedrich Miller devoted all his energy to the company, leaving hardly any traces in his private life. He was married to Rosa Müller (* 1844 † NN) from Hanau. In 1863 his daughter Rose was born. In 1872 he was one of the founders of a construction and savings association and joined its board. Shortly before his death on June 12, 1892 in the independent town of Bockenheim, which was not incorporated into the city until 1895, the subsequent district of Frankfurt am Main, he moved into a villa in a newly developed residential area in Frankfurt-Bockenheim, in which his daughter Rose Miller (1863– 1918) and his son-in-law, the Swiss glass painter Johann Albert Lüthi (1858–1903) lived and Lüthi maintained his office.
The company name, however, lives on in the Frankfurt stamp collectors' association "Moenus 1911" eV. According to her, the founding of the association can largely be traced back to employees of the Moenus machine factory.
literature
- G. Gall, EA Haberstroh: 1863-1963. 100 years of Maschinenfabrik Moenus AG. Neustadt / Weinstrasse 1963.
- Memorandum for the 75th anniversary of the company Maschinenfabrik Moenus AG in Frankfurt am Main; Maschinenfabrik Moenus AG, 1938, self-published, 54 pages.
- Maschinenfabrik Moenus AG Frankfurt am Main; Founded in 1863; Catalog edition AD VIII: Shoe machines. Complete facilities for shoe factories. Closed sets for the individual manufacturing departments. Individual machines based on the latest technology. Frankfurt a. M. o. J. (around 1932).
- Maschinenfabrik MOENUS AG., Frankfurt / Main, catalog section III. the shoe machine department. Machines and equipment for shoe and shaft factories, tanneries, leather factories, etc. Frankfurt am Main, self-published, (1904), 256 pages.
- ISG Institute for Urban History of the City of Frankfurt am Main; Municipal files and documents on the Moenus machine factory, founded in 1863; Kurfürstenstrasse 60, later Voltastrasse 69; View of the factory premises, documents on company apartments, the Moenus AG factory training school, etc.
- Franz Lerner: Miller, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 520 f. ( Digitized version ).
Web links
- The Nonvaleur share of Maschinenfabrik Moenus
- Former share of the Maschinenfabrik Moenus AG with history
Individual evidence
- ^ Association of Frankfurt stamp collectors "Moenus 1911" eV: MOENUS history: Maschinenfabrik MOENUS AG - The name giver of the association "MOENUS" since its foundation in the mirror of the times, in "Bernemer Blättche" association announcements, May 2014, p. 1 and p. 3 . Accessed July 2, 2020
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Miller, Friedrich |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 23, 1832 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pirmasens |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 12, 1892 |
| Place of death | Frankfurt am Main |