Gottfried Kleinschmidt

Gottfried Kleinschmidt (born August 17, 1860 in Bochum ; † December 19, 1931 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German entrepreneur and a versatile and socially committed citizen of the city of Frankfurt am Main.

life and work

Kleinschmidt was the son of Engelbert Kleinschmidt (* 1824; † 1892) and Mina Kleinschmidt, b. Poplar tree (* 1836; † 1889). He was married to Elly Kleinschmidt, born in 1893. Müllensiefen (born April 13, 1873 in Dortmund-Marten; † June 23, 1943 in Frankfurt) and had four children, Gottfried (Eduard Engelbert Emil, called 'Friedel', * 1893; † 1960), Franz (called 'Hans ', * 1895; † 1962), Margarethe (' Marga ', * 1899; † 1986) and Elly Sophie Berta (* 1902; † 1945).

education

Gottfried Kleinschmidt came from a small family. After graduating from secondary school, he completed a commercial apprenticeship in the shop of his father-in-law Eduard Müllensiefen (* 1840; † 1917). He was director of the Germania colliery in Dortmund-Marten and one of the sons of Gustav Müllensiefen (* 1799, † 1874). Gustav and his brother Theodor Müllensiefen (* 1802; † 1879) founded the company 'Gebr. Müllensiefen ', a glass factory in Witten in the Crengeldanz district . In order to improve the production of sheet glass in particular, they had acquired extensive mine holdings from 1842 onwards .

Company in Frankfurt am Main

Gottfried Kleinschmidt founded his own company in 1884, the 'Gottfried Kleinschmidt' company, a coal wholesaler. He also co-founded a shipping company, the 'United Frankfurt Shipping Companies '. This company had steamers and barges with which coal and coke were transported from the Ruhr area over the Rhine to the Rhine-Main area.

In 1889 Gottfried Kleinschmidt came to Frankfurt from Dortmund. At that time, the Main had already been canalised from Frankfurt to its mouth (1883–1886) and made navigable for larger ships. A special port for the handling of coal and petroleum had been set up across from Frankfurt's Westhafen . That is where the company settled. Since Franz Adickes took office as Lord Mayor of Frankfurt in 1890, industrialization has intensified in the city. The incorporation of the already more industrialized neighboring community of Bockenheim in 1895 also contributed to this. Accordingly, the population in the Frankfurt area grew particularly rapidly in the first years after 1890. With the support of his son Friedel, Gottfried Kleinschmidt developed his company into one of the leading companies in the branch in southern Germany. The company existed until 1935. Outside of Frankfurt, Gottfried Kleinschmidt was involved in companies in the stone industry and agriculture.

Residence and work in Eschersheim

Gottfried Kleinschmidt had been based in Frankfurt since 1893. In 1899 he came to the Frankfurt suburb of Eschersheim , where he bought the area on Kurhessenstrasse / Höllbergstrasse, which later became known as 'Kleinschmidtpark'. Kleinschmidt's property neighbor at that time was another prominent Eschersheim citizen, the lawyer and coin collector Ernst Justus Haeberlin . In 1912 Gottfried Kleinschmidt had an Art Nouveau country house built on his site. In 1972, to the regret of neighboring residents, this villa had to make way for three new high-rise buildings.

Kommerzienrat Gottfried Kleinschmidt was a versatile and socially committed person. From the beginning of 1911 to the end of February 1919, he held the honorary post of city councilor under the Frankfurt mayors Franz Adickes and Georg Voigt . He was a member of the National Liberal Party . As an expert for the coal trade, he prepared reports for the Chamber of Commerce and advised the commission on the construction of the Frankfurt East Harbor . His trading company also moved there in 1912. As a city ​​councilor , he particularly represented the interests of the residents of the suburbs of Eschersheim and Ginnheim after they were incorporated into the city of Frankfurt in 1910. He was a member of several social and municipal committees. He was on the board of the municipal foundation ' General Alms Box '.

War memorial Brunnen am Weißen Stein

Together with his wife Elly Kleinschmidt, he founded the 'Gottfried-und-Elly-Kleinschmidt-Stiftung' in 1911 with M 50,000, whose income supported needy residents in the districts of Eschersheim and Ginnheim until 1950. Before the First World War, Ms. Kleinschmidt had set up the infant care facility in Eschersheim, where mothers could have their babies examined free of charge every week. During the First World War (1914–1918), Gottfried Kleinschmidt had a total of 17 care places for war wounded in his house, allegedly one place for every million of his fortune. Gottfried Kleinschmidt was a member of several Eschersheim associations, e. B. in the choral society 'Sängerlust'. He had a generous open hand for the clubs and for Eschersheim. The best known is the donation of 10,000 Marks to the community of Eschersheim in 1909 for the erection of a war memorial on the 'Am Weißen Stein' square in memory of the people of Eschersheim who died in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. From the fountain erected in 1910 (also known as the 'Hercules Fountain' before the Second World War, more recently 'Weissenstein Fountain'), the statue of Hercules originally placed on it was lost in late 1945. In 2009 the local council 9 had the statue reconstructed and the replica placed on the fountain. The fountain was moved to the 'Am Weißen Stein' square when the subway was built. Gottfried Kleinschmidt donated the big bell for the Catholic Church of St. Josef, built in the vicinity of the fountain in 1910.

A letter from Reger to the Kleinschmidt couple on January 6, 1906, in which the composer thanked the Kleinschmidt family for their hospitable reception, testifies to his friendship with the composer Max Reger (1873–1916). The wives Elly Kleinschmidt and Elsa Reger had known each other since they were together in the boarding school.

Gottfried Kleinschmidt is buried in the family funeral in Frankfurt's main cemetery.

The 'Kleinschmidtstraße' in the Frankfurt district of Eschersheim, which connects the Eschersheimer Landstraße with the Kurhessenstraße and runs towards the former 'Kleinschmidtpark', commemorates the dignitaries and prominent residents of the district.

Others

In the Frankfurt area the saying was common: 'Do it like Kleinschmidts Jung'. This was intended to express that the amount of financial expense is unimportant when making a decision.

literature

• Siegbert Wolf: Liberalism in Frankfurt am Main. From the end of the Free City to the First World War (1866-1914) . Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-7829-0341-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ German gender book, Müllensiefen family . CD-ROM 15, Vol. 109. Starke, Limburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-7980-0415-3 , p. 417ff.
2. ^ Manfred Beinhauer, Dietmar Blech, Walter Gahn: Hafenstadt Frankfurt . Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-7829-0330-7 , p. 36.
3. ^ Dieter Rebentisch: Industrialization, population growth and incorporations. The example of Frankfurt am Main 1870-1914 . In: Jürgen Reulecke (Hrsg.): The German city in the industrial age. Contributions to modern German urban history . 2nd edition Hammer, Wuppertal 1978, ISBN 3-87294-124-0 , pp. 90-113.
4. ↑ Commercial register of the municipal tax administration Frankfurt a. M., at the Institute for Urban History Frankfurt am Main.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Anniversary boy of the Frankfurt economy, Kommerzienrat Kleinschmidt 70 years old . In: Frankfurter Nachrichten . Vol. 209, No. 226 from August 16, 1930.
6. ↑ Franz Lerner: Eschersheim through the ages . Edited by Frankfurter Sparkasse from 1822 (Polytechnische Gesellschaft) 1980, p. 94.
7. ↑ Werner Jünger: The Eschersheim celebrities . In: 7th Eschersheim weekend: 28th to 30th August 1992; District festival in old Eschersheim, organize from Eschersheim associations, p. 25.
8. ^ Streets in Eschersheim with names from the citizens' association (3) Kleinschmidtstrasse . In: The Frankfurt Citizen . Vol. 20, No. 10 (October 1975), p. 9.
9. ^ Patricia Tratnik: Members of the Frankfurt City Council 1867 to 1933. Commissioned by the Frankfurt City Council. Frankfurt am Main 1984.
10. ^ Karl Maly: The Regiment of Parties, History of the Frankfurt City Council, Volume II 1901-1933 . Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-7829-0455-9 , p. 633.
11. ↑ z. B. Letter of December 18, 1913 on the question of security of supply in the event of mobilization, from Gottfried Kleinschmidt to the Syndic of the Chamber of Commerce Dr. Trumpeter. In: File archive of the Frankfurt am Main Chamber of Commerce at the Institute for City History Frankfurt am Main, No. 539: Trade in coal.
12. ^ Manfred Schramm: The Frankfurt am Main-Ost industrial area, development and structural analysis . Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1971, pp. 231, 238.
13. ^ Gottfried and Elly Kleinschmidt Foundation . In: Municipal files of the city of Frankfurt in the Institute for City History Frankfurt am Main.
14. ↑ cf. Copy dated May 21, 1940 of the letter from the Reich Minister of the Interior to the District President in Wiesbaden regarding the delivery of monuments to the communities and the General Assembly for the metal donation of the German people and the subsequent correspondence. In: Magistrate files 3,869 in the Frankfurt am Main city archive, in the Frankfurt am Main Institute for City History.
15. ↑ "The guy" was around until '45 . In: Frankfurter Nachrichten of September 8, 1988, part of Northwest - Eschersheim - Eckenheim, p. 3, Institute for City History Frankfurt am Main.
16. ↑ http://www.stvv.frankfurt.de/parlis/parlis.htm
17. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
18. ↑ Max Reger: Letter to Mr. and Mrs. Gottfried Kleinschmidt in Eschersheim near Frankfurt am Main , from January 6, 1906, table of contents of the letter, the original of which z. Is currently available for purchase at www.abebooks.de.