Friedrich Vohwinkel

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Caspar Heinrich Friedrich Vohwinkel (born April 20, 1840 in Kamen ; † September 1900 at Eller Castle in Eller near Düsseldorf ) was a German timber wholesaler, entrepreneur, secret councilor and co-founder of the Düsseldorf Rheinbahn and RWE .

Life

Friedrich Vohwinkel, son of Carl and Friederica Vohwinkel born. Brüggemann, has been running a timber wholesaler in Gelsenkirchen since the 1870s . In Gedern he married the landowner's daughter Friederike Rüping from Gut Obergedern on April 1, 1869 . The marriage had their only daughter, Clara, who was born in 1871. Together with Heinrich Schüchtermann from Dortmund, Albert Lohmann from Witten and other merchants, Vohwinkel founded the Rothenfelder Salinen- und Solbad Aktiengesellschaft on February 1, 1872 , which acquired the salt works and spa facilities in Bad Rothenfelde from the Prussian state. However, he earned most of his fortune in the timber wholesaling business, where his company held market-leading positions in pit timber and railway sleeper trading. Since 1878 he was the main buyer of the wood from Chancellor Otto von Bismarck from the Sachsenwald in Lauenburg . He then sold this oak wood as the main supplier of pit wood and pit punches to the Hibernia colliery of Hibernia AG in Gelsenkirchen, one of the largest coal mines of its time. Bismarck earned higher income from the sale of wood than from his salary as Reich Chancellor. From 1878 to 1886 Friedrich Vohwinkel had already paid more than one million marks for wood deliveries to the Princely Sachsenwald estate. Since Vohwinkel always paid on time and never caused any problems, Bismarck's chief forester Lange repeatedly asked the banker Georg von Bleichröder , who financed Hibernia, to continue buying wood from Fr. Vohwinkel, which Bleichröder always granted in Bismarck's interest. In addition, Vohwinkel was a long-standing member of the supervisory board of Hibernia AG and Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG .

In June 1883, Friedrich Vohwinkel acquired Eller Castle near Düsseldorf, including all of the land, for 400,000 marks from Prince Alexander of Prussia , who had inherited it from his mother Princess Louise of Prussia, who had died at Eller Castle the year before. This purchase documents the wealth of the entrepreneur, who came from a middle-class background and initially only used Eller Castle as a summer residence and as a destination for his numerous hunting parties. In 1887, the technology enthusiast Vohwinkel had a machine house with steam boiler and chimney built for the castle's electrical lighting.

Together with the councilors Heinrich Lueg , Franz Haniel junior and August Bagel , Friedrich Vohwinkel founded a consortium in 1895 which, with starting capital of six million marks, acquired 1,300 acres of land in the villages of Oberkassel , Niederkassel  and Lörick on the left bank of the Rhine as future building land . To develop this building site, Lueg, Haniel, Bagel and Vohwinkel founded the Rheinische Bahngesellschaft , today's Rheinbahn AG, on March 25, 1896 , and together with the later Düsseldorf mayor Wilhelm Marx initiated the construction of the first permanent Düsseldorf Rhine bridge instead of an older ship bridge . The Oberkasseler Bridge was completed in 1898 and, like the establishment of Europe's first electric small train from Düsseldorf to Krefeld, was privately financed by the capital of the four Rheinbahn founders. The land was bought by the mayor's office of Heerdt , to which the villages on the right bank of the Rhine belonged, for 30 pfennigs per m² and, after the construction of the Oberkasseler bridge, sold as building plots for 30 marks per m².

Friedrich Vohwinkel was also a Gelsenkirchen city councilor and was active in other areas. He was a leading member of Louis Baares Bochum Chamber of Commerce , a member of the administrative board of Bergisch-Märkische Bank and since the founding of RWE on April 25, 1898, a member of the local supervisory board. In 1896 he was also a co-founder of the Bochum-Gelsenkirchener Straßenbahnen AG (BoGeStra) and chairman of the supervisory board of the cast and wire works Wilhelm-Heinrichs-Werk, formerly Wilhelm Heinrich Grillo AG in Düsseldorf- Lierenfeld .

In 1898 Friedrich Vohwinkel finally relocated to Eller Castle, where he died in September 1900 at the age of sixty. He bequeathed his large fortune, including Eller Castle, to his daughter Clara (1871–1954) and her husband, the Privy Councilor Hermann von Krüger (1859–1940), who was the chairman of the supervisory board of Hibernia AG. A Friedrich Vohwinkel Foundation existed in Düsseldorf until at least 1928.

Honors

  • Vohwinkelstrasse in Gelsenkirchen, previously Louisenstrasse. Friedrich Vohwinkel lived in Louisenstraße 5, after his death the street was renamed in his honor.
  • Vohwinkelallee in Düsseldorf-Eller

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary in JJ Weber: Illustrirte Zeitung , Volume 115, 1900, p. 501
  2. ^ Heinrich Schüchtermann at www.historische-schaufenster.de, accessed on October 11, 2015
  3. ↑ Dietmar Bleidick: The Hibernia Affair. The dispute over the Prussian state mining in the Ruhr area at the beginning of the 20th century , Bochum 1999, p. 158
  4. ^ Fritz Richard Stern: Gold und Eisen: Bismarck and his banker Bleichröder , Munich 2008, p. 418
  5. ^ Fritz Richard Stern: Gold und Eisen: Bismarck and his banker Bleichröder , Munich 2008, p. 419
  6. ↑ Gerald D. Feldman: Hugo Stinnes, Biography of an Industrialist 1870-1924 , Munich 1998, p. 42
  7. ↑ Address book and housing advertisement of the city of Gelsenkirchen 1888
personal data
SURNAME Vohwinkel, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur, timber wholesaler, councilor of commerce
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Came
DATE OF DEATH September 1900
Place of death Eller Castle , Eller near Düsseldorf