Georg Knorr

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Georg Knorr
Entrance to the former administration building on Hirschberger Straße
The Knorr family grave in the Karlshorst cemetery
Gravestone for Georg Knorr in the family grave at the Berlin Evangelical Cemetery in Karlshorst / Friedrichsfelde

Ernst Theodor Georg Knorr (born October 19, 1859 in Ruda near Neumark , Löbau district , West Prussia ; † April 15, 1911 in Davos , Switzerland ) was an engineer and entrepreneur in the field of railway technology and founder of the Knorr-Bremse company named after him .

life and work

Georg Knorr attended grammar school until 1876 and then received practical training in a railway workshop. Then he first attended the technical center in Einbeck and then the polytechnic in Braunschweig . During his studies in Einbeck and Braunschweig he became a member of the Thuringia fraternity in Braunschweig. Later he became a member of the Berlin fraternity Gothia . After graduation, he worked in the Krefeld railway workshop , from where he was taken over in 1884 in the Berlin office of the American engineer Jesse Fairfield Carpenter (based at Schöneberger Ufer 17 in Berlin-Tiergarten ), who took care of the introduction of the two-chamber manufactured by him - Compressed air brake on the German market tried. After Carpenter's brake failed to establish itself on the European market, the latter withdrew to the USA. Georg Knorr took over the Carpenter & Schulze company in 1893 , keeping the company name.

Georg Knorr relocated production to Berlin-Britz and developed a new brake himself there in 1900, the Knorr single-chamber quick brake . The Knorr-Bremse was introduced to the German railways for freight trains since 1905 and was soon introduced as a standard brake for all European railways. With the mass production of its brakes, it became necessary to expand production, for which Knorr moved to Boxhagen-Rummelsburg in the autumn of 1904 into an existing factory building at Neue Bahnhofstrasse 11/12 (later called Alte Fabrik ).

In 1905 Georg Knorr finally founded the company Knorr-Bremse GmbH and also bought the neighboring property no. 13/14. In order to be able to expand production, he had the new factory built here by the architect Alfred Grenander . Since this was soon no longer sufficient for the increasing demand, extensions were built in Hirschberger Strasse, beyond the railway line .

Together with the engineers Kunze and Hildebrand, Knorr drove the development of the railway compressed air brake systems, the Kunze-Knorr-Bremse (a multi-release composite brake that can be applied and released as often as required) and later the Hildebrand-Knorr-Bremse were created (a multi-release brake that works according to the three-pressure set and acts on all wagons of a train simultaneously). In 1911, the success was so great that the necessary expansion of production required large amounts of outside capital: the company was converted into a stock corporation with four million marks in share capital under the name Knorr-Bremse Aktiengesellschaft (Knorr-Bremse AG) . Knorr itself still held 17.6 percent of the shares.

In 1910 Georg Knorr had to resign from the company management for health reasons. He suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis . He died in 1911 while taking a spa stay in Davos. As the family lived in Lichtenberg, Georg Knorr was buried in the family graveyard on the Karlshorster and Neue Friedrichsfelder Friedhof in today's Robert-Siewert-Straße in the Berlin district of Karlshorst . The grave site is in field W-1. His grave is dedicated to the city of Berlin as an honorary grave .

The two Berlin sites of the former Knorr-Bremse AG are under monument protection, and a "Knorr Museum" has been set up in one.

→ For the history of the Knorr-Bremse plant, see Knorr-Bremse

Honors

Georg Knorr was

  • Honorary Senator of the Technical University of Braunschweig
  • Holder of the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle, 4th class

Numerous facilities and streets are named after Georg Knorr , such as

Literature and Sources

Web links

Commons : Georg Knorr  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New German Biography, Vol .: 12, Kleinhans - Kreling, Berlin, 1980, p. 236 ; accessed March 14, 2014
  2. biography at kulturportal-west-ost.eu ; Retrieved April 5, 2014
  3. Berlin State Monument List: Knorr-Bremse in Neue Bahnhofstrasse 9–17
  4. Berlin State Monument List: Knorr-Bremse / Berliner Bremsenwerk in Hirschberger Strasse
  5. Homepage SV GK ( Memento of the original from June 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sv.georgknorr.de