Harkort (entrepreneurial family)

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Johann Caspar Harkort VI. , the "bridge builder", with eldest daughter Anna Marie and 18-year-old grandson as well as later Familienfideikommiss heirs of Harkorten, Carl Ernst Willibald Liebe-Harkort, in front of 600-year-old family tree oak (height 29 m, circumference 7.2 m) in Hofpark Harkorten in 1886. The old oak was struck by a lightning strike a few years later and died by 1927.

The Harkort family is an entrepreneurial family from the Ruhr area with headquarters in Harkorten , a former farm in Hagen-Westerbauer . The oldest mention of the name can be found in document 1108 of the Vatican Archives from November 28, 1373. In this Latinized "Harcuria" is listed in the county of Mark. The "Harkottsche vreye burschop" is mentioned in the treasury of the county of Mark from 1486. This proves that Harkorten, as the family's place of business with duty and taxable trade far beyond the country's borders, was already part of the free goods of the county of Mark, the so-called “chair free on the Höge des Sauerland”, in the late Middle Ages.

Branches of the dynasty have been around since the mid-18th century a. a. at Haus Schede in Herdecke , where, for example, in 1880 the most popular offspring of the family, Friedrich Harkort , found his final resting place in a family crypt of the Harkorts.

The family Harkort entertained 1674-1929 an extensive network of trade and industrial investments, including at the Harkort'sche factory in hasp, the mechanical workshops Harkort & Co. on Castle weather , at the iron foundry and machine factory Carl & Gustav raking place in Leipzig, the Deiler Kupferhammer Friedrich Harkort, the Christian Harkorts tannery, the Hasper Hütte or at the bridge building institute of Johann Caspar Harkort VI.

With the early death of Johann Caspar Harkort VII as a fallen soldier in the Franco-German War , the name Johan Caspar Harkort of the ancestral lineage of the Harkorts, inherited over many generations, was lost to the subsequent Fideikommiss owners of both the Harkorten estate and the company in 1871.

Genealogy, personalities and entails owners

Title page of the family tree of the Harkort family
  • Johann Caspar Harkort I. (1648–1714) married to Ursula Catharina Hobrecker (1652–1724), hardware manufacturer and businessman and founder of the Johan Caspar Harkort company
  • Johann Caspar Harkort II (1677–1742), married to Maria Sybilla Wenigern (? –1737)
    • Johann Caspar Harkort III. (1716–1760), married to Louisa Catharina Harkort b. Märker (1718–1795)
      • Johann Caspar Harkort IV. (1753–1818), hardware manufacturer and businessman, married to Henrietta Katharina Christina Elbers (1761–1837)
        • Johann Caspar Harkort V. (1785–1877), Kgl. Preuss. Commerce councilor, hardware manufacturer and businessman, married to Johanna Frederike Ihne (1791–1860)
          • Richard Harkort (1852–1910), co-founder of the Casseler Waggonfabrik von Wegmann, Harkort & Co. , which is now part of the Krauss-Maffai Wegmann armaments company (KMW).
          • Johann Caspar Harkort VI. (1817-1896), Kgl. Preuss. Kommerzienrat, outstanding German bridge builder (Harkort Bridge Construction), married to Marie Wilhelmine Cäcilie Pottgiesser (1821–1891)
            • Johann Caspar Harkort VII. (1846–1871), † in the military hospital in Dieppe / France
            • Anna Marie Harkort (1847–1920), married to Willibald Gerhard Liebe (1834–1871)
              • Carl Ernst Willibald Liebe-Harkort (1868–1929), married to Margarete Hedwig Söding (1877–1963)
              • Wilibald Liebe-Harkort brother of Carl Ernst Wilibald (1871–1952) married to Eleanor Heidmann (1884–1958)
                • Annemarie Margarete (Margit) Liebe-Harkort (1897–1990), married to Martin Ludwig Elsner v. Gronow (1899-1981)
                  • Eckart Söding-Elsner v. Gronow (* 1935)
        • Friedrich Harkort (1793–1880), railway and industrial pioneer, veteran of the Wars of Liberation , member of parliament and social reformer, married to Auguste Mohl (1819–1899)
        • Gustav Harkort (1795–1865), founder of the Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt , founder of the Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn-Compagnie , honorary citizen of the city of Leipzig
        • Eduard Harkort (1797–1836), mining engineer and officer in Texas (USA)

Johann Caspar Harkort company

Advertisement for the Harkort company from 1897 with the monogram JCHK

The Harkort family took part in the development of industry and transport in Germany from the end of the Thirty Years War until the Great Depression. Founded in 1674, the Johann Caspar Harkort company operated for 250 years until it was shut down in 1930 as a hammer mill and trading office, initially manufacturing iron goods and commission trading , in order to manage various machine factories and iron industries with the emergence of industrialization until the 20th century.

Phase I: 1674 to 1832 - hardware manufacturing and international commission trading

While 85 foreign customers were supplied in 1674, there were already 182 in 1731, including trading houses in Lübeck, Hamburg, Kiel, Wismar, Stralsund, Danzig, Königsberg, Riga, Copenhagen and Stockholm. The commission book of 1726 names u. a. the following hardware:

  • Scythes
  • Axes
  • knife
  • Scissors
  • Pliers
  • Hammers
  • Shovels
  • Planer
  • Pliers
  • Saws
  • Plane iron
  • Forks
  • wire
  • Needles and thimbles
  • Chains
  • Shoe clips
  • Vices and anvils
  • Locks and keys
  • Box and case fittings

In 1756 the company had 214 customers, in 1784 already 529. In 1775 alone 6,300 scythes went to St. Petersburg.

Phase II: 1832 to 1860 - prototype industrialization

Johann Caspar Harkort V. , eldest brother of Friedrich Harkort , Gustav Harkort , Eduard Harkort and Christian Harkort, then successfully led the company into the emerging industrialization. In addition to the commission business, a machine factory was set up on Harkort'schem Grund as early as 1832 in order to deliver thousands of hundredweight production plates, rail nails, screws and rail fastening blocks to the railroad administrations of the new internal market every year with the emerging railways and especially with the entry into force of the German Customs Union in 1834.

The propaganda of the younger brother of Johann Caspar Harkort V, the famous industrial pioneer, economist, politician and writer Friedrich Harkort , who was able to build the first railway in Prussia in 1828 , prompted Johann Caspar Harkort V to set up his machine factory on the Harkorten estate to gradually switch from simple products to the production of fittings, wheels and axles for railroad car construction. After the production of simple machine parts had also started, it was only a small step towards the construction of finished railroad cars. In 1843 the first twelve freight cars were delivered to the Düsseldorf-Elberfelder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft.

Finally, his eldest son, Johann Caspar Harkort VI. , concentrated - starting with the execution of the single-track bridge over the Wupper in Rittershausen in 1846 by the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft - on iron bridge construction and is considered one of the pioneers of large bridge construction.

Phase III: 1860 to 1930 - zenith and downfall

For logistical reasons, Johann Caspar Harkort VI relocated. then most of the "bridge construction" production line of the Harkort'schen machine factory on the Rhine to (Duisburg-) Hochfeld . There, in 1860, he acquired a piece of land on the banks of the Rhine next to the Vulkan hut and founded the Johann Caspar Harkort bridge-building company there . After the death of his only son Johann Caspar Harkort VII and his son-in-law and first engineer Willibald Liebe (both in March 1871), he separated the bridge construction company from private assets and on August 1, 1872 founded the stock corporation for iron industry and bridge construction formerly Johann Caspar Harkort in Duisburg. Until the Great Depression , from which the company no longer recovered, she carried out numerous buildings, for example:

Harkort archive

Certificate for the delivery of an iron bridge for the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn by Johann Caspar Harkort V. in 1847
Certificate from 1849 in plain text

In 1979 the Volkswagenwerk Foundation sponsored the scientific indexing of the Johann Caspar Harkort archive with around 100,000 DM. The Harkort archive, which was managed at Haus Harkorten until the 1970s and is now maintained by the Westphalian Economic Archives in Dortmund, is one of the most important German corporate archives from the pre-industrialization phase. The business book series comprises 123 books. The correspondent files include 53,908 business letters. The Harkort family's leading role among ironworking entrepreneurs and merchants in County Mark since the late 17th century is reflected in the family archives. Thereafter, the heirs of Johann Caspar Harkort I also held honorary posts in politics and business for over six generations.

The correspondence of Johann Caspar Harkort IV (between 1800 and 1818), his sons Johann Caspar V, Carl, Friedrich Wilhelm (Fritz), Gustav, Christian and Eduard as well as their descendants is a focal point of the collection. Selections enrich the correspondence and provide information about the industrial founding of the Harkorts.

literature

  • Stefan Gorißen: From trading house to company. Social history of the Harkort company in the age of proto-industry (1720–1820). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-35686-2 ( online ).
  • Louis Constanz Berger: The old Harkort. A Westphalian image of life and time. Baedeker, Leipzig 1890. ( digitized version )

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Louis Constanz Berger: Baedeker, Leipzig 1890 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ The deletion from the commercial register did not take place until 1976.
  3. ↑ Sandra Krosa: Gut Harkorten in Hagen-Haspe is in a deep slumber . In: wp.de. January 3, 2013, accessed March 22, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Koishikawakyouryou. Retrieved May 30, 2020 .