Heinrich Rieter (industrialist, 1814)

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Portrait of Heinrich Rieter

Heinrich Rieter (born May 19, 1814 in Winterthur ; died December 19, 1889 in Bern ), also known as Heinrich Peter Rieter-Ziegler , was a Swiss industrialist and politician . He headed the Rieter machine factory and was a member of the Canton of Zurich's Council of States from 1878 to 1889 .

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Heinrich Rieter was born on May 19, 1814, the son of Heinrich Rieter , city councilor and founder of the Rieter fine spinning mill . His brother, three years older than him, was Jakob Melchior Rieter-Biedermann .

Rieter spent his school days in Winterthur and completed a commercial apprenticeship with Christian Wilhelm Bourry in St. Gallen from 1831 to 1834 . After completing his training, he initially worked in Le Havre and Manchester . In the military he had the rank of colonel and was chief of weapons in the cavalry; he was therefore also called Colonel Heinrich Ziegler. In 1836 he joined his father's factory. After his death in 1851 he took over the management of the machine factory. A year later, Rieter built Switzerland's first workers' settlement in Töss, and other settlements in the following years. In 1860 he wrote a letter to the Winterthur city council in which he took a stand against the construction of barracks-like superstructures. His view was to prevail in Winterthur, mainly workers' settlements consisting of terraced houses with their own gardens for self-sufficiency emerged in the city. A fact that is partly responsible for the current designation of Winterthur as a “garden city”.

Under his aegis, the Rieter spinning mill experienced a surge in growth. In 1854 the mechanical workshop was built on the site of the former Töss monastery . Rieter developed into one of the world's leading companies for fine yarns and shifted the company's focus to the manufacture of cotton spinning machines. In 1870 the machine factory employed 1,000 people. In 1872 Heinrich Rieter transferred the company to his sons.

Rieter's expertise was also in demand outside of his own company. He was a co-founder of the bank in Winterthur , on whose board of directors he sat from 1862 to 1884. From 1871 he worked for Schweizerischer Lloyd , from 1874 also for Mobiliar and worked for the Winterthur gas station. From 1871 he was an ally of Alfred Escher on the boards of directors of the Swiss Northeast Railway and the Gotthard Railway . When it was founded in 1875, he was the first Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Winterthur accident insurance company . After Escher's death in 1886 he took over the office of Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Gotthard Railway.

He took part in the general trade exhibition in Paris in 1855 and was at the world exhibitions in Vienna in 1873 , in Philadelphia in 1876 and in Paris in 1878 , where he was Commissioner General of Switzerland.

politics

Shortly after taking over the management of the company, Rieter was elected to the Grand Council, as the Cantonal Council was called at the time, for the Liberals in 1852 . He was a member of the council - with an interruption between 1869 and 1872 - until 1875. In 1868 and 1869 he also served as the Constitutional Council of the Canton of Zurich. As a representative of the Federal Council, he was allowed to attend the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 , and in 1876 he represented the federal government in Rome in negotiations on a new trade agreement.

Three years after his resignation from the Cantonal Council, he was elected to the Council of States in 1878 . There he worked as President of the Customs Tariff Commission. In his capacity as a Councilor of States, Rieter died on December 19, 1889 during the Federal Assembly in Bern.

Private

In 1835 he married Henriette Ziegler. From 1838 to 1848 Rieter had four sons: Heinrich (1838–1901), Bruno (1840–1889), Oskar (1844–1913) and Max (1848–1907).

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bettina Dyttrich: The time after the factories. In: WOZ The weekly newspaper . May 13, 2004, accessed March 26, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Company history. Rieter , accessed on March 26, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Werner Ganz: History of the city of Winterthur from the breakthrough of the Helvetic Republic in 1798 to the city union in 1922. Verlag W. Vogel, Winterthur 1979, p. 175 .
personal data
SURNAME Rieter, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rieter, Heinrich Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss industrialists and politicians
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Winterthur
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1889
Place of death Bern