Gustav Kromrey

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Gustav Adolph Kromrey (born May 11, 1847 in Berlin , † November 24, 1909 in Charlottenburg near Berlin ) was a German entrepreneur who operated dining cars on the Prussian state railways before the First World War .

Life

Gustav Kromrey was a Prussian middle-class railway clerk before he took over the management of dining cars for the Prussian state railways as a tenant and founded his own company in 1895. He was the first private German citizen to build dining cars on his own account: three in 1895 and three more in 1898; He ran his business as an open trading company (OHG) under the name of Deutscher Eisenbahn-Speisewagen-Betrieb G. Kromrey based in Charlottenburg ; after the turn of the century, the company name was expanded to include the addition of & sons . In 1909, according to the Berlin address book , these were three of the four sons, namely Max , Hans and Gustav Kromrey junior.

When Kromrey died in Charlottenburg in November 1909, he was a highly respected citizen of that city; he left a fortune of about three million marks. He was buried in the evangelical Luisenfriedhof II (Westend), where he received an art-historically remarkable (secessionist) tomb of Gustav Goerke ; he is still one of the famous people who are buried in this cemetery. His tomb is considered to be worth seeing.

Kromrey's company and its further development

Express trains with the Kromrey dining car were generally used from Charlottenburg ( Berlin Stadtbahn ); Home / train training station was the Grunewald station ; individual wagons were located in Breslau Hbf . ( Contemporary German place names are used here .) The first course was Berlin - Breslau - Oderberg (Austrian Silesia) . The destinations of later courses were Insterburg , Eydtkuhnen , Koenigsberg (Prussia) , Dirschau , Myslowitz and generally border stations to the eastern and south-eastern neighbors of what was then Germany.

The company flourished and expanded beyond the death of its founder. However, concessions to allow private dining cars to ride on state railroad trains and to operate them in catering were not granted by the German railway administrations beyond the financial year 1916/17, contracts concluded for an indefinite period were terminated. The Central European Sleeping and Dining Car Corporation ( Mitropa ), founded at the end of 1916, received a legal monopoly to operate dining and sleeping cars in Germany and Austria-Hungary . The company G. Kromrey & Sons - like four other private German dining car companies founded later - was effectively absorbed by Mitropa; On March 1, 1917, at a price that was favorable for them, the company acquired the Kromrey cars and their equipment, and also took over employees. Between Gustav Kromrey's death and the takeover of the company by Mitropa, the number of OHG wagons had grown from 14 to 27. The company was then dissolved. The starting point for the founding of Mitropa was a political will of the time of the Reich government to provide a new national company for certain services for the railroad  and to displace the International Sleeping Car Company - with headquarters in Brussels - from Germany and Austria-Hungary. In 1919 the Weimar Constitution (Article 89 ff.) Stipulated that railways should in principle be transferred to the property of the German Reich; this increased the further state influence on the Mitropa.

meaning

Gustav Kromrey was a pioneer in the dining car industry in Germany. His dining car business ran the dining car in the court train of the German Emperor , King of Prussia . He or his company carried the designation " purveyor to the court ".

In addition, the carriage runs of the Kromrey company largely served the eastern parts of Prussia and Saxony. The company existed for a good 20 years. Gustav Kromrey's initiative is noteworthy in the cooperation with state railway administrations, for which a welcome “ outsourcing ” resulted: not only in the operation , but also in the construction of dining cars; Keyword: Entry of the market economy into the dining car business. Albert Mühl about the three cars commissioned and delivered by Kromrey in 1895: “These were the first German privately owned dining cars and they were at the beginning of the development of a new era of dining car operation, as it will finally take shape years later: management of passenger trains by private entrepreneurs and companies with their own dining car. ” Kromrey carriages contributed a good 10 percent to the initial inventory of Mitropa dining cars.

literature

  • Walther Brandt: Sleeping and dining car for the railway. Your development and history . Franckh, Stuttgart 1968.
  • Albert Mühl: Dining car in Germany . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 1994, ISBN 3-88255-675-7 .
  • Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin tombs . Haude & Spener, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-7759-0476-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Baptismal register of the Domgemeinde Berlin, No. 304/1847
  2. ↑ Register Office Charlottenburg II, death register No. 846/1909. State Archives Berlin.
  3. ↑ a b c Albert Mühl: Speisewagen in Deutschland , 1994, p. 50.
  4. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexikon Berliner Grabstätten , 2006, p. 220.
  5. ^ Albert Mühl: Speisewagen in Deutschland , 1994, p. 121.
  6. ↑ Walther Brandt: Sleeping and dining car of the railway , 1968, p. 34.
  7. ^ Albert Mühl: Speisewagen in Deutschland , 1994, pp. 129 and 120.
  8. ^ Albert Mühl: Speisewagen in Deutschland , 1994, pp. 54 and 55.
  9. ^ Albert Mühl: Speisewagen in Deutschland , 1994, p. 30.
  10. ^ Albert Mühl: Speisewagen in Deutschland , 1994, p. 120.
personal data
SURNAME Kromrey, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kromrey, Gustav Adolph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1909
Place of death Charlottenburg near Berlin