Heinrich Kirchweger

Johann Gottfried Heinrich Kirchweger (born June 12, 1809 in Stettin , † January 18, 1899 in Hanover ) was a German railway engineer .

Life

Kirchweger, the son of a customs inspector, attended the high school in Kolberg . He then became an apprentice in the workshop of the Kolberger Saline, but from 1827 onwards he was able to attend the Berlin Industrial Institute founded in 1821 with a grant .

From 1831 to 1837 he worked as a technician at Henschel & Sohn in Kassel . In 1838 he became technical operations manager at the Leipzig-Dresden Railway and in 1842 he switched to the Saxon-Bavarian Railway .

In 1843 he took up a job with the newly founded Royal Hanover State Railways . Here he was responsible for machine, factory and workshop services and for vehicle procurement. Through him, an organized workshop system and a uniform driving service was created. He led on locomotives the feedwater by the Kirchweger-Abdampfkondensators and was responsible for the commissioning of the modeled on Thomas Russell Crampton and Johann Friedrich Ludwig Wöhlert built Hanoverian normal locomotives . In addition, he drafted plans for the machines and pumps built by Georg Egestorff for the Hanoverian river water art . After the Kingdom of Hanover was annexed by Prussia and the Hanover State Railway was dissolved, Kirchweger was transferred to Saarbrücken against his will . He then retired from civil service in 1869, worked briefly in a wagon factory and then returned to Hanover in 1870 as a civil engineer.

He received numerous awards for his services in the railway industry, including becoming an honorary citizen of the city of Hanover in 1846 (together with Karl Karmarsch , Moritz Rühlmann and Friedrich Heeren ) and a knight of the Hanoverian Guelph Order , the Saxon Albrecht Order and the Swedish Wasa Order . Kirchweger died in Hanover at the age of 89. His grave is in the arcades of the Engesohde town cemetery .

The Darwinplatz , which was laid out in Hanover-Vahrenwald in 1911 , was renamed Heinrich-Kirchweger-Platz in 1934.

literature

• Erhard Born:  Kirchweger, Johann Gottfried Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 665 ( digitized version ).
• Walther Däbritz, Erich Metzeltin: One hundred years of Hanomag: History of the Hanoverian Maschinenbau-Aktien-Gesellschaft formerly Georg Egestorff in Hanover 1835–1935 . Verlag Stahleisen, Düsseldorf 1935, pp. 25, 38.
• Günther Engel (edit.): The railway in Hanover , ed. on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Hanover Railway Friends. Zimmer, Eppstein im Taunus 1969, pp. 79-100.
• Waldemar R. Röhrbein : KIRCHWEGER, Heinrich . In: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen : Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 199; online through google books
• Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Kirchweger, Heinrich . In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 349.
• Eckhard Wendt: Stettiner Lebensbilder (= publications of the Historical Commission for Pomerania . Series V, Volume 40). Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-412-09404-8 , pp. 279f.
• Helmut Zimmermann : Hanoverian portraits. Life pictures from seven centuries, illustrated by Rainer Ossi Osswald . Harenberg, Hannover 1983, pp. 93f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stadtlexikon Hannover, page 349