Hans Schulze (engineer)

Hans Schulze (born July 8, 1903 in Sangerhausen , died October 5, 1962 in Putbus ) was a German engineer and locomotive designer. After 1945 he played a decisive role in the development of new steam locomotive series at the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the GDR .

Life

Schulze was born in 1903 as the son of a tax inspector, one of his ancestors was the social reformer Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch . After finishing school he studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Berlin from 1922 to 1927 . The lectures of Felix Meineke , the then professor of railway operations, motivated him to continue his training after successfully passing his diploma as a trainee lawyer at the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft . In 1930 he passed the examination to become a government architect with distinction and received the Prussian State Prize for it . He worked temporarily as an engine designer at MAN , but then went back to the Reichsbahn and took over management of the Trier depot in 1931 . A year later he moved to Halle (Saale) , where he was appointed head of the technical department in the local repair shop . In 1933 he switched to the Reichsbahn-Zentralamt (RZA) in Berlin as an "unskilled worker" .

Schulze married in Berlin in 1934, and in the following years he had three daughters and a son. Professionally, he was involved in the RZA in the department of Johann Culemeyer with the supervision of various designs for road scooters for the transport of freight wagons . In 1936 Schulze moved to the Reich Railway Directorate in Essen , one year later he took over the machine office in Worms , and two years later in 1939 the same function in Kaiserslautern . Short term: he was in 1938 after the Munich Agreement and the German occupation of the Sudetenland worked there as a machine Office Board, analogous to the Western campaign in 1940 in German-occupied Lorraine . In 1942 Schulze was obliged to do military service and was transferred to the Eastern Front . He became head of machinery at the main railway directorate in Kiev , and in 1943 he moved to a field railway command . His military service included Smolensk , Minsk and Vitebsk in the Soviet Union , the Polish Siedlce and, most recently, positions in Slovakia and Hungary . There he was taken prisoner by the Soviets towards the end of the war .

In 1947 Schulze was released from captivity and returned to his home town of Sangerhausen. The Reichsbahn initially did not take him over, so he initially worked as a mechanic and designer at Kyffhäuserhütte Artern . In 1949 he switched to VVB ABUS (“Equipment for Mining and Heavy Industry”), first to Halle and then to Leipzig, most recently as “Head of Technical and Scientific Cooperation” in the central construction and assembly company there.

In 1953 , the Deutsche Reichsbahn set up a central technical office that was supposed to take over and control the development of the vehicle fleet and the railway infrastructure. Hans Schulze, who took up this post on May 1, 1953, was brought in to fill the department for the design of steam and diesel locomotives , which roughly corresponded to the previous department of the "father of standard locomotives ", Richard Paul Wagner , at the pre-war Reichsbahn. His area of ​​responsibility included constructive support and further development of the existing steam locomotive fleet as well as the planning of new locomotives. Schulze held this position, albeit with changing official titles, until 1960, when the Central Technical Office was dissolved. In 1958 he was honored as an Honored Railway Worker of the German Democratic Republic . Until his sudden death from a heart attack - Schulze had withheld a heart defect from the war - during a business trip to Rügen on October 5, 1962, Schulze headed a working group in the mechanical engineering department of the Deutsche Reichsbahn for the engineering of narrow-gauge railways .

New and Recolocomotives

A train drawn by the Reichsbahn in 1956 in the Thuringian Forest with the 65.10 series, the first new construction for which Schulze was responsible

The class 25 as the first post-war construction of the Reichsbahn was largely finished in 1953, so that Schulze, as the first central task, took over responsibility for the new class 65.10 intended for heavy passenger train service in suburban traffic . As with the 25 series, the design was carried out in the central design office of VVB LOWA , but Schulze was responsible for the guidelines and the ultimate responsibility for the design. He presented the new locomotive, which was first shown to the public in 1954 at the Leipzig Trade Fair, in 1955 in a detailed article in the magazine Deutsche Eisenbahntechnik . Schulze also oversaw the draft of the 83.10 series intended for branch lines with low axle loads , based on the 65.10 series as its lighter variant and as the successor to the 86 series . Schulze was in this series does not implement all its principles, which was partly due to the lack of material in the GDR, partly dealing with Max Baumberg , head of the later in the VES-M Halle risen Vehicle Research Institute in Halle (IVU) , the the designs based on the trials and test drives that were under his responsibility as overloaded with too many new components and thus viewed as vulnerable. A year later, in 1956, Schulze presented the last two new steam locomotive designs of the Reichsbahn to Deutsche Bahntechnik , the passenger locomotive of the 23.10 series and the freight locomotive of the 50.40 series . With these designs, too, he was guided by his basic principles, which included weight reduction through welding technology , a favorable ratio between radiation and evaporation heating surface and low procurement and operating costs. Differences to the similar principles of his West German counterpart Friedrich Witte at the Deutsche Bundesbahn became apparent, for example, in the fact that he was partially able to do without a combustion chamber due to the large grate area required for lignite combustion . Schulze also had a direct influence on the external design with the position of the circulating plates and the relatively high smoke deflectors , which deliberately covered the preheater box on the top of the boiler . Schulze was no longer able to implement the plans for a successor series for the heavy freight train series 42 to 45 ; the development of diesel traction in the meantime made these considerations obsolete.

Since, according to Schulze's assessment, the economy of the GDR was not yet sufficiently designed for the construction of large motor locomotives suitable for replacing even heavy steam locomotives, the Central Technical Office under its responsibility initially approached diesel technology with the class V 15 shunting locomotives developed by Karl Marx Babelsberg and V 60 . Like the new steam locomotive series, these drafts were developed by the design office of the manufacturer, but all drawings required the countersignature and approval of Schulze as the responsible department or group leader.

After the development of new steam locomotive series was coming to an end, Schulze also accompanied the extensive program of Reco-Locomotives that began in 1957 , with which older series of the pre-war Reichsbahn and the Prussian State Railways were modernized and retrofitted according to modern building principles. He had a particular influence on the design of the reconstructed 01.5 series , the original equipment with Boxpok wheels going back to him . After 1960, the Reichsbahn increasingly shifted responsibility for the reconstruction to Baumberg as the head of the VES-M in Halle, Schulze's successor in the main administration, Heinz Kirchhoff, took over the supervision of the reconstruction program there.

literature

• Alfred Gottwaldt : Wagner's standard locomotives: The steam locomotives of the Reichsbahn and their creators . EK-Verlag , Freiburg 2012, ISBN 978-3882557381 , here: Chapter 18: New steam locomotives in the GDR. Hans Schulze and the Central Technical Office. , Pp. 167-172.