Gustav Pielstick

Gustav Pielstick (born January 25, 1890 in Sillenstede , † March 11, 1961 in Zurich ) was a German ship engine designer. Pielstick developed a series of particularly powerful diesel engines.

history

Pielstick was born in 1890 on the Warreihe estate near Sillenstede. After attending the secondary school in Wilhelmshaven, he began an internship at the Imperial Shipyard in Wilhelmshaven. Then he attended the higher shipbuilding and mechanical engineering school in Kiel. In October 1911 Pielstick took up a position as a designer at MAN in Augsburg, where he worked on the development of submarine motors. During the First World War he was promoted to chief engineer and after the end of the war he dealt with the development of the first MAN four-stroke crosshead engines for merchant shipping. At the end of the 1920s, the Reichsmarineleitung demanded high-performance diesel engines with a power-to-weight ratio of six kilograms per horsepower, which was not achieved anywhere else in the world at the time, and MAN developed with Pielstick up to 1931 corresponding engine types, which were first tested in the artillery training ship Bremse and later also in the construction of the armored ships Deutschland , Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee were used. In 1934, Pielstick was appointed director of MAN's diesel engine division. Diesel engines for ships, locomotives and stationary operations were developed under his leadership. Pielstick paid special attention to the development of engines with ever higher power density, whereby he essentially designed the supercharged submarine engines himself. The head of the design office of the Navy High Command , Heinrich Waas, later judged this period: Never before has the German Navy relied on a company and its chief designer as it did on MAN and Pielstick . After the end of the war, at the instigation of the victorious powers, Pielstick had to leave his post at MAN and worked together with some former employees in the Société d'étude des machines thermiques (SEMT) design office for diesel engines founded in La Corneuve in 1946 . Pielstick's work as head of the office was so successful that his designs were built under license in numerous countries, including Germany, and the company traded as SEMT Pielstick. At the end of the 1950s, Pielstick retired from professional life and spent his old age in Lugano. Gustav Pielstick died in Zurich in 1961.

literature

• Shipbuilding Society: 100 Years Shipbuilding Society - Biographies on the History of Shipbuilding , Springer, Berlin, 1999, ISBN 3-540-64150-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Johannes Bähr, Ralf Banken, Thomas Flemming: The MAN: a German industrial history , CH Beck, 2008, ISBN 3406577628 , p. 319.