Gustav August Jung

Gustav August Jung

Gustav August Jung (born December 10, 1824 in Steinbrücken (Dietzhölztal) ; † May 20, 1904 at the Amalienhütte ) was a German entrepreneur in the Nassau ironworks industry.

Life

Gustav August Jung was born on as the son of the smeltery inspector and mining entrepreneur Johann Jakob Jung (1779-1847) and his wife Catharina Amalie (1782-1850). He first attended the secondary school in Siegen, which had emerged from the old Latin school there. The main purpose of the Realschule was to provide the students with adequate training in sciences, languages ​​and the arts and, at the same time, to prepare them for the transfer to the secondary school of a grammar school. Jung then went through practical training at the Stahlberg mine near Müsen . His ancestors, the chief miner Johann Heinrich Jung , his son the mining and smelter commissioner Johann Helmann Jung (1734-1809) and his sons Johann Justus (1763-1799) and Heinrich Wilhelm Jung (1771-1828), had introduced far-reaching technical innovations there . After this practical apprenticeship, Jung attended the Polytechnic founded in Karlsruhe in October 1825 . He then moved to the Berlin Trade Institute , which was established as a technical institute in 1821. This gave him a comprehensive technical education for the time. He then went on a long study trip to Bohemia , Moravia , Styria and Northern Italy to get to know the facilities and manufacturing methods in local mining and metallurgy.

Corporate management

When his father died in January 1847 and his mother in November 1850, he and his older brother Julius (1822-1892) took over the “JJ Jung” company based in Amalienhütte near Niederlaasphe . Together with their brothers, they continued to expand the company in the years that followed. Further pig iron stone pits were acquired , the Eibelshäuser Hütte in 1865 with the Steinbrücker Hämmer, the Ludwigshütte (Biedenkopf) in 1869 and the Neuhütte near Ewersbach in 1876 ​​with its extensive mine fields.

Gustav August Jung kept the management of the Amalienhütte even after the founding of the Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein in March 1883. After Julius Jung left the company, the Jung family appointed him chairman of the supervisory board due to his many years of experience and reputation , making him nominal was in charge of the entire company. Under his leadership, the Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein developed into the second largest company after the Buderus company in the Lahn-Dill area .

Association representative

Gustav August Jung represented the family's economic interests in the "Association for the Sale of Nassau Pig Iron" founded in 1851. The iron and steel industry in the Lahn-Dill area faced a fundamental structural challenge in the 1850s. Three production factors, which were previously easily available, determined the natural location of the Nassau coal and steel industry: ore, charcoal and water. However, the decline in wood resources already led to considerable problems with a sufficient supply of charcoal in the late 18th and first half of the 19th century . The new technology of iron smelting based on coke from England and the introduction of the puddling process shifted iron production to the abundant hard coal deposits on the Rhine and Ruhr. In addition, the cheaper pig iron imports from England and Belgium threatened the Nassau smelting works, which the Zollverein protected from increased competition by introducing moderate import duties.

The Nassau smeltery entrepreneurs, including the Jung family, recognized these dangers as early as the 1840s and founded the "Association for the Sale of Nassau Pig Iron" at the instigation of the Secret Oberbergrats Carl Maximilian Lossen (1793–1861) from the Concordia smelter in Sayn in May 1851 . Its objective was to rule out competition among each other, to protect the production of charcoal-based pig iron from foreign competition, to take over the sale of the Nassau pig iron under its own control and to set up a credit institution that helped the smelter owners over economic fluctuations. The Jung family joined the association with their two plants, Amalienhütte near Laasphe and Eibelshäuser Hütte near Dillenburg. It remained the leading member of this association after Buderus until the beginning of the 1880s and only left the pig iron association when the last charcoal blast furnaces were blown out of their factories.

Gustav August Jung, as chairman of the supervisory board of the Hesse-Nassau Hüttenverein, also campaigned, if only indirectly, to improve the transport infrastructure in the dill area. In addition to his son, Hut Director Gustav Jung (1859–1929) von der Neuhütte, there were other members of the Jung family - the Hut Directors Ferdinand Jung (1848–1906) and Julius Conrad (1839–1894) von der Eibelshäuser Hütte and Dr. Carl Neuschäfer (1850–1927) - member of the board of the Railway Committee to Strassebersbach 1884, which campaigned for the construction of the Dietzhölztalbahn from Dillenburg to Strassebersbach. The required railway line should primarily serve the cost-effective transport of the mined ores to the customers in the Rhenish-Westphalian economic area. The new railway line finally went into operation in April 1892.

social commitment

Gustav August Jung always felt a high level of social responsibility towards his employees and tried not to dismiss even in economically unfavorable times such as the founders' crash from 1873 to 1893. Other mining companies in the Lahn-Dill area, however, had to reduce their workforce in order to get through the difficult economic times.

"Even in times of unfavorable economic conditions, which the factories went through during their existence, a worker was never dismissed for lack of employment and even material damage could not induce a deviation from this principle."

- Obituary in the Dillenburger Nachrichten

Political commitment

Gustav August Jung had the confidence of his fellow citizens and they proposed him publicly in the districts of Berleburg, Siegen and Biedenkopf for election as a member of the first German Reichstag of 1871:

"We can only expect a fruitful work from the Reichstag if we elect such men whose liberal attitude is proven and who can maintain the full independence under all circumstances, which is the first requirement of a representative of the people."

Gustav August Jung was elected to the first Reichstag (German Empire) as a member of the Siegen-Wittgenstein-Biedenkopf district, although he had repeatedly and publicly declared that he was not available for such an office. As a result, he rejected the mandate. The Prussian state awarded him the title of Commerzienrat in 1897 because of his services to the economy, but also for his social commitment .

Marriage and children

Louise Jung born Schmidt

Gustav August Jung married Louise Christiane Sophie Schmidt, a descendant of Rurikids , on November 27, 1847 in Steinbrücken . She was the daughter of the pastor and court preacher Friedrich Philipp Schmidt, who was born in Saarbrücken on December 9, 1797 and died in Laasphe on September 4, 1885, and his wife Karoline Rosina Neuschäfer, who was born in Battenberg on December 9, 1801 and died on December 8, 1869 in Laasphe. The married couple Gustav August Jung had five children together:

1. Amalie Karoline Julie Albertine, who was born in Amalienhütte on December 12, 1850 and died in Biedenkopf on January 20, 1935. She married Emil Hecker on January 2, 1875, who was born on March 30, 1845 in Haiger and died on December 27, 1902 in Biedenkopf on the Ludwigshütte.
2. Thusnelde, who was born in Amalienhütte on April 27, 1852 and died there on May 28, 1866.
3. Marie, who was born at Amalienhütte on June 13, 1854 and died unmarried on December 27, 1925 in Biedenkopf.
4. Luise Wilhelmine Sophie Friederike, who was born in Amalienhütte on May 12, 1857 and died in Biedenkopf on June 17, 1907. On July 17, 1881, she married the master builder Hermann Steinvorth, who died before his wife.
5. Gustav , who was born at Amalienhütte on January 8, 1859 and died at Neuhütte on June 12, 1929. He married Hermine Vogel on August 4, 1885 in Siegen, who was born in Siegen on May 31, 1861 and died on March 31, 1935 in Straßebersbach.

Gustav August Jung died after a successful entrepreneurial life and found his resting place in the old cemetery of Niederlaasphe. In 1975 he was reburied with his wife in the cemetery in Neuhütte (today Dietzhölztal), where his son Gustav is buried.

literature

• The higher education system in Prussia. Historical and statistical representation , on behalf of the Minister of Ecclesiastical, Educational and Medicinal Affairs edited by Dr. L. Wiese, Berlin 1864.
• Michael Fessner : The Young and Green Families, Kiel (2016).
• Michael Fessner: The greens. An entrepreneurial family in Hessen-Nassau, Kiel 2013.
• Georg Schache: The Hessen-Nassauische Hüttenverein, GmbH, Steinbrücken, later Biedenkopf-Ludwigshütte, in: Hans Schubert, Joseph Ferfer, Georg Schache (Ed.): From the origin and development of the Buderus'schen Eisenwerke Wetzlar, vol. 2. Munich 1938 , Pp. 183-338.

Individual evidence

1. ^ The higher school system in Prussia 1864, pp. 331–332.
2. ↑ Fessner 2016, p. 73.
3. ↑ Schache 1938, p. 303.
4. ↑ Fessner 2013, p. 231.
5. ↑ Dietzhölztalbahn (frohnhausen.org)
6. ↑ Fessner 2016, p. 71.
7. ↑ Fessner 2016, p. 73.
8. ↑ Fessner 2016, pp. 74–75.