Hans Heinrich Falck

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Hans Heinrich Falck (born April 4 . Jul / 15. April  1791 greg. In Järvajõe , then parish Ambla , † November 7 jul. / 19th November  1874 greg. In Tallinn , Governorate of Estonia ) was an Estonian entrepreneur.

Life and Entrepreneurship

Hans Heinrich Falck was born as the son of the craftsman and miller Niklas Falck and his wife Gertrude Koppelsohn. The family members are said to have been extensive descendants of the evangelical bishop of Linköping Erik Falck (bishop 1558–1569).

From the age of 12, Hans Heinrich Falck started his apprenticeship with a carpenter. In 1812 he moved to the Estonian capital Tallinn. For two years he attended school at the Tallinn Church of the Holy Spirit . He then hired himself out with various craft activities and founded his own carpentry shop. His company flourished. He made a name for himself especially as a piano tuner .

In April 1818, Falck opened a piano workshop in Tallinn and also built other musical instruments. He quickly became a successful entrepreneur as he repaired pianos on site at their owners across Estonia. He later expanded his company, hired more and more employees and built pianos and grand pianos himself.

In 1828 the now prosperous Falck acquired some properties in the Tallinn district of Luisenthal , which belonged to Toompea . As a result, he became a citizen of the self-governing Toompea, which at that time, separated from the lower town of Tallinn ( Reval ), formed its own administrative unit. This made Falck free of the old-fashioned guild regulations that still applied in the lower town and slowed the social and economic advancement of the newcomers.

In 1830, Falck was elected assessor in the powerful cathedral-castle-bailiwick court of Tallinn. Through his flourishing instrument workshop and later factory, Falck was able to acquire more and more land in Tallinn, including in the districts of Kristinenthal and Tondi as well as in the Tallinn Lower Town .

From 1848 until his death in 1874, Falck Oldermann was part of the influential Tallinn Cathedral Guild , which formed an Estonian counterweight to the guilds and guilds of the mainly German-speaking traders and craftsmen in Tallinn.

In 1850 Falck sold his piano factory and from then on devoted himself exclusively to local politics. In place of the demolished bastions that had lost their military value, Falck had numerous streets and avenues built on Toompea and in its surroundings , which still characterize the Tallinn cityscape today. Falck increasingly connected the Tallinn suburbs with the center.

In 1857 he gave 10,000 rubles to found a city park named after him ( Falgi park ). In 1868 Falck gave the park to the cathedral guild on the condition that it remained open to the public and that it be maintained.

On the Antonius-Berg ( Tõnismägi ) directly behind the Tallinn Cathedral Hill, Falck pursued ambitious plans for the construction of a large church for the Estonian-speaking parish of Tallinn, as the medieval Church of the Holy Spirit had become too small in the meantime. Falck initially had a provisional wooden church built. The actual Karlskirche, made of stone, was then built from 1862 to 1870 according to plans by the architect Otto Pius Hippius .

Falck also financed study grants for gifted Estonians. The best known among them was the later personal physician of the Tsar, Philipp Karell (1806–1886).

Hans Heinrich Falck shaped like no other Estonian in the 19th century the image of the still largely Baltic-German dominated city of Tallinn. He died in 1874 at the age of 83. In 1912 Falck's son, the philologist and historian Paul Theodor Falck (1845-around 1920), published his father's memoirs in print.

literature

  • Eesti entsüklopeedia. Volume 14: Eesti elulood. Eesti entsüklopeediakirjastus, Tallinn 2000, ISBN 9985-70-064-3 , p. 63f.
  • A Baltic citizen of old shot and grain. According to notes left by Hans Heinrich Falck, communicated by Paul Th. Falck. Jonck & Poliewsky, Riga 1914, DNB 365668400 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Madis Kokla, Anatoli Stulov: Grand piano manufacturing in Estonia: Historical review. (PDF) 1995, accessed October 15, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Falckscher Park (Falgi park). Tallinn Tourist Information Center, accessed October 15, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Catalog search at the Estonian National Library (Estonian)
personal data
SURNAME Falck, Hans Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH Järvajõe , then Ambla parish
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1874
Place of death Tallinn , Estonia Governorate