Heinrich Müller-Breslau (civil engineer, 1851)

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Heinrich-Müller Breslau

Heinrich Müller-Breslau (born May 13, 1851 in Breslau ; † April 24, 1925 in Berlin-Grunewald ; full name: Heinrich Franz Bernhard Müller , to distinguish it from other namesake from around 1875 Müller-Breslau ) was a German civil engineer and university professor . He provided significant contributions to the theory of frame structures in the structural analysis .

Müller-Breslau was both a practical civil engineer and a theoretical scientist throughout his life. He traced the elements of classical structural engineering that had previously existed side by side to a unified theory and combined them into a theory of bar structures. With this he systematized the computational methods, in particular the principle of virtual displacements, and applied the energy theorems systematically. He also calculated the structures of airships .

family

Since 1872 he was married to Auguste Schläfke (died 1906), the daughter of a Berlin architect, and the father of Heinrich KG Müller-Breslau (1872–1962), who was a professor of architecture at the Technical University of Wroclaw. The brother Georg (1856–1911) von Müller-Breslau was a painter and lithographer (he had a total of ten siblings). Müller-Breslau's father was a businessman.

resume

No longer existing grave slab in the columbarium at the Wilmersdorf cemetery.

After graduating from high school in 1869, he took part in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 and then began studying at the Berlin Trade Academy in 1871. He also attended lectures in mathematics with Elwin Bruno Christoffel and Karl Weierstraß at Berlin University . As a student, he helped fellow students at the Bauakademie in static repetitions and prepared them for the second state examination. From this teaching activity, he summarized his first textbook, Elementary Handbook of Strength , in 1875 , which was followed two years later by articles on elasticity and strength as well as structural mechanics in Hütte - Des Engineer's pocket book .

Professional background

In 1875 he opened an office in Berlin as a civil engineer and worked with Richard. J. Otto at Flottwellstrasse 1 in Berlin, the engineering office for civil engineering. Owner: Heinrich FB Müller-Breslau & Richard J. Otto .

In 1883 Müller-Breslau became a lecturer and shortly afterwards (1885) professor for building construction and building materials at the Technical University of Hanover . He dealt with the static calculation of iron bridges, trusses and statically indeterminate structures. He wrote his two-volume work "The graphic statics of building construction" on the results of his research. The first volume appeared in 1887 and the second in 1891.

In 1888 Müller-Breslau was appointed to the structural engineering department and bridge construction at the Technical University (Berlin-) Charlottenburg . In this chair he was Emil Winkler's successor. In the academic years 1895/1896 and 1910/1911 he was rector of the technical university. From 1901 he carried out extensive investigations into earth pressure in the research institute for structural engineering at the Technical University .

He founded the so-called "Berlin School of Structural Analysis", in which Karl Bernhard (1859–1937), Ludwig Mann (1871–1959), August Hertwig (1872–1955), Hans Reissner (1874–1967) and Karl Pohl (1881–1959) 1947) were important students. Hans-Detlef Krey was his assistant at times. On December 20, 1900 (confirmed January 14, 1901) he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . This was exceptional as the academy did not accept technicians otherwise. In 1901 Müller-Breslau was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Müller-Breslau was also from January 18, 1912 to November 11, 1921 Chairman of the Board of the Academic Association "Hut" in Berlin.

The Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm made him a foreign member in 1908. 1902 awarded him the Technical University of Darmstadt , the honorary doctorate in 1921, and the Technical University in Berlin-Charlottenburg. In the same year he became an honorary citizen of the Technical University of Karlsruhe. In 1913 he was appointed a member of the Prussian mansion for life. In 1921 Müller-Breslau retired and received honorary membership of the Technical University of Wroclaw.

The grave of Müller-Breslau was in the Wilmersdorf cemetery in Berlin. In 2009 the grave was abandoned after its useful life and re-occupied. The Müller-Breslau-Strasse in Berlin-Charlottenburg was named after him.

Buildings

In Hanover he designed a road bridge over the Ihme , a market hall and the belfry of the Marienkirche. He also developed a new design for building large gas containers and received a patent for it. In 1897/1898 he received the order for the structural processing and structural analysis of the Berlin Cathedral from the foundation to the dome, and in 1898 he designed the Kaisersteg over the Spree near Oberschöneweide . Other buildings are the Great Tropical House (1907) and the Mediterranean House (1908).

Aircraft

Müller-Breslau also dealt with airships since 1894, because in 1894 he was appointed to a commission set up by Emperor Wilhelm II to assess an airship design by Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin . According to the calculations by Müller-Breslau, the construction of Zeppelin was statically too weak, so that Zeppelin revised it accordingly. From the new draft, Müller-Breslau calculated the air resistance and came to the conclusion that the aircraft would only reach a speed of five meters per second and so the War Ministry informed Zeppelin on September 29, 1895 that it would not contribute any money for the construction of an airship will. It then turned out that Müller-Breslau had assumed wrong assumptions in his calculation, as the best expert for air resistance measurements in Germany, Director Groß of the Krupp works with his experience in measuring the speed of artillery shells, in an expert opinion also on that of Zeppelin stated 14 meters per second, but the commission stuck to its negative attitude.

During the First World War he was chairman of the expert committee for aviation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Foundation for war engineering and advisor to the aviation department of the war ministry. During this time he worked on the calculation of the wing spars of the zeppelins .

Publications

  • Elementary manual of strength theory, 1875
  • Elasticity and strength and structural mechanics in Hütte - Des Ingenieurs Taschenbuch , 1877
  • The graphic statics of the building construction, Volume 1: 1887 and Volume 2: 1891
  • Inaugural address, Berlin, 1901, in: Session reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin
  • On the theory of the wind bracing of iron bridges, Berlin 1903, in: Session reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. Phys.-math. Class
  • The newer methods of strength theory and statics of building structures, based on the law of virtual displacements and the tenets of deformation work. 3rd edition Leipzig 1904
  • Earth pressure on retaining walls, Stuttgart 1906
  • About eccentrically pressed structured rods, Berlin 1910, in: Session reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, Phys.-math. Class
  • About eccentrically pressed bars and about buckling strength, Leipzig 1911 (from: Der Eisenbau)
  • The more recent methods of strength theory and the statics of building structures, based on the law of virtual displacements and the tenets of deformation work, 4th edition Leipzig 1913
  • On the history of the Zeppelin airship, Berlin 1914 (from: Negotiations of the Association for the Promotion of Industry, 1914)
  • Experiments with aircraft spars subject to bending and kinking, Berlin 1924, in: Session reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Phys.-math. Classe, 1924
  • Address to Zimmermann on the fiftieth anniversary of his doctorate on July 29, 1924, Berlin 1924, in: Meeting reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Phys.-math. Class

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ingenier office for civil engineering , Anzeiger zum Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung , Volume 2, No. 5 (February 4, 1882), p. 3.
  2. ^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer: The Berlin School of Structural Analysis . In: Karl Schwarz i. A. of the President of the TU Berlin (Ed.): 1799-1999. From the building academy to the Technical University of Berlin. History and future . Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 2000, p. 152-163 .
  3. ^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer: The Berlin School of Structural Analysis . In: History of structural engineering. In search of balance . 2nd, greatly expanded edition. Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-433-03134-6 , pp. 524-538 .
  4. ^ Hans Rosenkranz: Ferdinand Graf Zeppelin - The story of an adventurous life , Ullstein, Berlin 1931, pages 109-112
personal data
SURNAME Müller-Breslau, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heinrich Franz Bernhard Müller
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil engineer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1925
Place of death Berlin