Georg Giulini

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Georg Otto Conte Giulini di Giulino (born December 31, 1858 in Mannheim , † February 24, 1954 in Como ) was a German chemist and entrepreneur.

Life

Conte Giorgio Giulini di Giulini, who simply called himself Georg (Giorgio) Giulini in Germany, studied chemistry from 1877 at the Technical University of Karlsruhe and at the University of Heidelberg under Professor Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811–1899). Two decades earlier, almost at the same time as the French Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville , he had succeeded for the first time in presenting aluminum by means of fused- salt electrolysis . Giulini graduated with a doctorate in 1881. After completing his studies, he worked for the Giulini brothers GmbH in Ludwigshafen, founded in 1823 by his grandfather Paul Franz (Paolo Francesco) Giulini and his brother Johann-Babtist (Giovanni-Battista) Giulini, and optimized the pyrogen process for the production of aluminum oxide (alumina , Alumina). Later he ran the company together with his brothers Paul and Wilhelm. He was married to Emma Diffené, b. 16 Aug 1865 in Bruchsal, daughter of the then President of the Chamber of Commerce of Mannheim Philipp Diffené and granddaughter of the former Lord Mayor of Mannheim Heinrich Christian Diffené .

Le roi d'alumine

In 1903, at the age of 45, Georg Giulini took over the sole management of the Giulini brothers GmbH. Right from the start, he consistently oriented the future of the company specializing in chemical products towards aluminum. After a short time he became a world leader thanks to his many years of experience in the production of aluminum oxide and was respectfully called le roi d'alumine , not least because of his worldwide alumina monopoly .

Pioneer and trailblazer

Georg Giulini did pioneering work in the field of clay production. At first he used Greenlandic cryolite as a base for clay salts . From 1865, 23 years before AIAG / Alusuisse, the world's first aluminum manufacturer, started using French bauxite . To keep the process steps of the production secret, Giulini made his innovation not as a patent log, but gave their description a notary . When Carl Josef Bayer applied for a patent for the complete wet process ( Bayer process ) in 1892 , Georg Giulini had already laid down the essential steps for this. Due to Giulini's pioneering position, aluminum manufacturers around the world were dependent on his alumina supplies. It was not until the turn of the century that aluminum manufacturers were able to produce alumina themselves. The quality of Giulini clay, however, remained unmatched.

Europe-wide expansions - the rise of Gebrüder Giulini GmbH

Giulini was aiming for an aluminum group that covered all areas of the value chain. To achieve this goal, he founded his own factories in southern France in 1897 to secure the supply of raw materials. In the field of aluminum production, Georg Giulini initially relied on collaborations with other companies in order to acquire the necessary know-how. In 1908 he built his own aluminum smelter in Martigny (Switzerland) as part of his expansion concept . He used this as a test facility, where he tests electrolysis furnaces that were developed in his works in Ludwigshafen. Gradually, Giulini incorporated other mining companies into the group to secure the supply of raw materials and rolling mills for further processing of the aluminum. The best known are the rolling mill in Wutöschingen, the aluminum works in Wutöschingen (Germany) and Münchenstein (Switzerland). For Georg Giulini, innovation and expansion were the guiding concepts at all corporate levels. During the first decades of the 20th century, he immensely expanded the company network of the Giulini Brothers GmbH. It extended from Germany through Croatia, Slovenia, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Norway.

Patents and innovations - the war as a brake on success

The geographic expansion was followed by many other innovations. The patented alloys Aludur 513 and Korrofestal were of great importance for overhead line construction and light metal constructions . The know-how developed in Martigny was also used in the construction of the Erft and Inn works in Germany. These two plants were further steps towards Giulini's goal, a large electrolysis plant in Germany. However, the shares in the works were expropriated from him by the state after a short time. Georg Giulini was permanently weakened by further expropriations in the First World War. In 1935 Georg Giulini passed responsibility for his company on to the next generation. The Second World War also had considerable consequences for Giulini's company. Before the war, in 1936, the aluminum smelter in Ludwigshafen was sealed after the Reich Minister of Economics rejected the construction of the smelter on the grounds that “Giulini [...] was the only company to build its business vertically from bauxite by setting up an aluminum production plant up to the semi-finished product and thus [would] gain a huge lead over the other German aluminum manufacturers and processors. ”(Ruch) In 1943 the factory site in Ludwigshafen was bombed for the first time. In a total of 22 air strikes on the plant, 43 workers were killed and 285 injured.

Georg Giulini died on February 24, 1954. He was the first in his industry, but had also remained an uncompromising outsider. He was spared the failure or the sale of large parts of his company in 1978 as a result of a failed expansion policy. Today only the aluminum works Wutöschingen AG & Co. is owned by his descendants, the family of his only granddaughter Alwine Freifrau von Salmuth. One of the descendants was Wigand von Salmuth .

Web links

literature

  • Dominic Ruch: The difficult path to light metal - 100 years of Aluminum Martigny SA Orell Füssli Verlag AG, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-280-05340-9
  • Ernst Rauch: History of the primary aluminum industry in the western world Aluminum Verlag, Düsseldorf 1962
  • Helmuth Bachelin:  Giulini, Georg Otto. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 418 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Published by the Wutöschingen community: Wutöschingen once and now, a reader , 2006

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hrsg. Gemeinde Wutöschingen: Wutöschingen once and now, a reading book. 2006; p. 227-230
personal data
SURNAME Giulini, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Giulini di Giulino, Georg Otto Conte (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1954
Place of death Como