Georg Krauss (industrialist)

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Georg Krauss
The Landwührden , the first locomotive made by Krauss
The 1000th from Krauss & Cie. built locomotive owned by the Gotthard Railway
Locomotive Krauss Bn2t No. 3625 from 1897 in Litoměřice

George Krauss , since 1905 Knight of Krauss , (* 25. December 1826 in Augsburg ; † 5. November 1906 in Munich ) was a German mechanical engineering - entrepreneur and founder of the locomotive works Krauss & Comp. in Munich and Linz ( Upper Austria ).

The spelling Krauss for the locomotive factory was only used later because of the use of capital letters on the nameplates.

The beginnings

Georg Krauss was the eldest of four children of the master weaver Johann Georg Friedrich Krauss and his wife Anna Margarethe Krauss born. Steel. After attending primary school, he came to the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic School Augsburg, founded in 1833 (a predecessor of today's Augsburg University of Applied Sciences ). After completing school he worked from 1847 to 1849 as a fitter in the locomotive factory of Joseph Anton von Maffei in Munich, then as a locomotive driver and chief engineer for the Royal Bavarian State Railways in Hof , Kempten and Lindau . A decisive step in his development from 1857 onwards was his position as chief machine foreman at the Swiss Northeast Railway in Zurich , where he built his first four locomotives with the support of professors from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic . From there he was already preparing to found his company in Munich. Despite the fierce resistance of the already established Maffei, he succeeded in raising capital and on June 17, 1866, the establishment and construction of the factory on Marsfeld in Munich-Neuhausen , in 1872 a branch factory at the Südbahnhof in Munich and a further factory in 1880 in Linz, Austria to bypass the high import duties of the Danube Monarchy. In 1867 the first locomotive was delivered, the Landwuehrden , which won a gold medal at the world exhibition in Paris that same year . The 1000th locomotive followed in 1882 and the 5000th in 1904.

More Achievements

Krauss was not only a successful locomotive manufacturer, but also supported other technical developments, such as the first cooling machines from Carl Linde , participated in the expansion of railway lines in Saxony and Thuringia and in Alsace , in the conversion of the horse-drawn tram to steam drive in Munich and Vienna, the Chiemseebahn and Localbahn AG . Furthermore, in 1876 he was one of the co-founders of today's Association of German Engineers (VDI) and in 1903 generously supported the establishment of the German Museum with 100,000 marks and the repurchase of his first Landwuehrden locomotive .

Blows of fate

His first wife Lydia died in 1876, his only son Conrad (* 1857) after an accident in Antwerp in 1885. Thereupon Krauss converted his company into a stock corporation in 1887 and withdrew from active management. However, he remained chairman of the board until his death .

Georg "Krauss" and his son "Konrad" are already listed in this spelling on the tombstone of the Krauss family grave on the cemetery wall of the Munich North Cemetery (today's Alter Nordfriedhof ).

Honors

In 1880 he received the Knight's Cross First Class of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar , as well as the honorary title of Kommerzienrat from King Ludwig II (Bavaria) for his services. In 1903 the Order of Merit of St. Michael III followed. Class and with the award of the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown , he rose to the nobility on March 6, 1905. The Technical University of Munich awarded him an honorary doctorate (as Dr.-Ing. E. h. ), And the Association of German Engineers awarded him the Grashof Memorial Medal in 1896 .

A life with a vision

In 1905 Krauss decided to relocate the factory from the narrow city center to Allach, where the successor companies are still active today. He did not live to see the completion of the Deutsches Museum and the move to Allach. The prominent entrepreneur died on November 5, 1906, shortly before his 80th birthday in Munich. His friend and one of his first employees, Carl von Linde , took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board. From 1866 until the merger in 1931 to form Krauss-Maffei, his plants produced a total of 7186 locomotives.

literature

  • Dr.-Ing. Georg R. v. Krauss †. In: The Locomotive . (Vienna), year 1906, p. 213.
  • Friedrich Möhl: One hundred years of Krauss-Maffei Munich 1837-1937. Munich 1937; ed. by Lokomotivfabrik Krauss & Comp. - JA Maffei Aktiengeselschaft Munich.
  • Johannes Pfeifer:  Krauss, Georg Ritter von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 715 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Alois Auer (Ed.): Krauss-Maffei. CV of a Munich factory and its workforce. 3K-Verlag, Kösching 1988.
  • Siegfried Baum: The Augsburg Local Railway. (= EK series Regional Transport History. Volume 30,) Eisenbahn Kurier Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgaus 2000, ISBN 3-88255-444-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Krauss & Comp., The locomotive factory of Georg Krauss. In: historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de. Retrieved March 13, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Pictures of the Krauss family grave on frederiks.de (accessed on April 27, 2019).
personal data
SURNAME Krauss, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krauss, Georg Ritter von; Krauss, Georg von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mechanical engineering entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 1906
Place of death Munich