Georg Stern (engineer)

Family gravesite Kollwitz, Stern, Schmidt

Georg Stern (born June 11, 1867 in Königsberg , † March 25, 1934 in Berlin ) was a German engineer .

Life

Stern was born into the family of a Jewish tea wholesaler. He studied at the universities of Königsberg and Munich and received his doctorate in 1890 in the field of physics at the University of Konigsberg to Dr. phil . He then studied for two years at the Technical University of Charlottenburg .

In 1893, Stern began his professional career as a test field engineer in the electrotechnical department of Ludwig Loewe & Co. (later Union-Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft ). When the UEG merged with the AEG in 1904, he became head of the test fields and laboratories of the AEG machine factory in Brunnenstrasse in Berlin . When a special manufacture for high-voltage material was set up in the company in 1908, Stern took over its management. In 1913, at his suggestion, the world's first system for testing the high-voltage switchgear produced with the so-called short-circuit test was built. He developed an overvoltage test for transformers , which the VDE raised to the standard as a "jump wave test". He became internationally known in the professional world with publications on oil switch tests . In 1921 Stern became director of the AEG transformer factory in Berlin-Oberschöneweide . In 1926 he became a deputy board member of AEG. He was a member and chairman of a large number of VDE committees and the International Electrotechnical Commission ( IEC ).

In 1930 he left the AEG and retired. From then on he devoted himself to music. His compositions were performed in Berlin, Königsberg and Dresden. On January 15, 1933, his Passacaglia and Fugue for large orchestra was premiered in the Berlin Philharmonic . This was probably the last public performance of one of his works.

Georg Stern was buried in the Kollwitz family grave in the artist department of Berlin's central cemetery in Friedrichsfelde .

From 1921 to 1931, Stern lived with his family in Berlin-Karlshorst at Auguste-Viktoria-Strasse 47 (today Ehrlichstrasse 31). A street in the Carlsgarten residential area in Berlin-Karlshorst is named after him.

In 1893 he married Lisbeth Schmidt (1870–1963), the younger sister of Conrad Schmidt and Käthe Kollwitz . Her daughters are the actress Johanna Hofer and the dancer and screenwriter Maria Matray .

literature

• German business leaders . Arranged by G. Wenzel. 1929.
• High voltage research and high voltage practice. Dedicated to Georg Stern on March 31, 1931 by his employees . Berlin 1931.
• Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 2: L-Z. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1931, DNB 453960294 , p. 1844.
• Johann C. Poggendorff: Biographical-literary concise dictionary of the exact natural sciences. Vol. 6 (1921-1931). T. 4. 1939.

Web links

• Georg Stern on the website of the Lichtenberg Museum