Gerhard Rehm

Gerhard Rehm (born October 15, 1816 in Weisweiler , † August 1, 1892 in Astenet ) was a German entrepreneur , speculator and founder .

Live and act

The son of a farmer from Weisweiler came to Aachen as a young person , where he initially worked as a white tanner . There are no clear details of Rehm's other activities; the official sources describe him around 1857 in association with a Wilhelm Lausberg as a steam boiler manufacturer and a year later as a railway car manufacturer. From 1863, Rehm is listed in Aachen's historical address books as a cloth and scratching manufacturer. A few years later, Rehm is referred to as the mine owner, although it is not defined which mine it is.

Rehmviertel in Aachen (1925)

Marian column on the Rehmplatz

With all these uses Rehm was active as a successful speculator and knew how to make profitable profits for his clients as well as for himself. In the mid-1860s, he used a large part of these profits to buy a larger area in front of Kaiserplatz between Adalbertsteinweg and Jülicher Straße. This area was considered a swamp area and was shaped by the waters of the Pau and Wurm flowing out of the city as well as by some mills. Rehm initially offered this area to compete for a location for the planned new polytechnic, later RWTH Aachen University , but after the Aachen district government had decided on the area around the Templergraben, after appropriate preparation, he left numerous high-quality houses in the style there of historicism as well as a workers' bloc for industrial workers from the surrounding large companies in Aachen's northern district . One of the streets established there, in which he had built his own domicile, bore his name at the time, but today only a large central square reminds of the founder of this quarter. Rehm had the Marian Column erected on this square around the end of his local building projects in 1887, which was made in Wilhelm Pohl's sculptor workshop according to plans by Aachen's city architect Joseph Laurent and was the first public religious monument in Aachen. Both the majority of the houses from that time still preserved today and the Marian column were placed under monument protection. After the Rehmviertel had gradually developed into a social hotspot in the late 20th century , work has now begun to restore and upgrade it as part of the Social City funding program .

In view of this Rehmviertel, Gerhard Rehm had a cast iron fountain set up on Kaiserplatz in 1879 on the occasion of the golden wedding of the imperial couple, which he had admired a year earlier at the Paris World Exhibition . This well was melted down in 1939 for armament purposes. In addition, he donated a stone pulpit to the Church of St. Adalbert on Kaiserplatz.

Katharinenstift, Astenet, chapel extension from 1910

Gerhard Rehm was married to Katharina geb. Ervens (1818–1887), daughter of the customs controller and later cloth manufacturer Joseph Ervens. After the outbreak of a serious illness, the Sisters of Mercy, according to the rules of St. Augustine in Neuss had been cultivated that a considerable part of their property should be made available to the Augustinians for charitable purposes. After her death, Gerhard Rehm made the decision to let this money flow with his own funds into a foundation that was intended to build the "Katharinenstift" named after his wife on the grounds of Gut Weide in Astenet, which he owned set up. The original purpose of this monastery was to organize outpatient nursing in the surrounding villages, to run a household school for girls, to accept women of both denominations as pensioners for the purpose of nursing and to accept Catholic orphans. The Sisters of Mercy were responsible according to the rules of St. Augustine , who in 1888 took over the Katharinenstift as the 13th branch. Twenty years later a chapel was added and consecrated in 1910 by Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Müller from Cologne . In the meantime, the monastery has been converted into an old people's and nursing home.

In addition, in 1890 Rehm acquired the cloister courtyard of the former Cistercian convent of St. Jöris , which after his death was transferred to the Ervens family, who owned the monastery courtyard until 1924.

Gerhard Rehm died on August 1st, 1892 in Astenet, but at his own request he found his final resting place in Aachen's Ostfriedhof , which is in the immediate vicinity of "his" Rehmviertel.

literature

• Ingeborg Schild , Elisabeth Janssen: The Aachen East Cemetery. Mayersche Buchhandlung , Aachen 1991, ISBN 3-87519-116-1 , p. 506 f.

Web links

Commons : Rehmplatz (Aachen)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mariensäule Rehmplatz on denkmalplatz.de
2. ↑ Georg Dünnwald, Miriam Wolter: The Rehmviertel is being turned inside out. In: Aachener Nachrichten of July 4, 2013
3. ↑ Cast iron fountain for Kaiserplatz in Aachen on stadtgeschichte.de
4. ^ History of the Astenet Monastery
5. ^ History of the former Cistercian monastery in Eschweiler-St. Jöris