Henry Villard

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Henry Villard

Henry Villard , actually Heinrich Hilgard , (born April 10, 1835 in Speyer , † November 12, 1900 in Dobbs Ferry , New York , USA) was a German emigrant and railroad magnate in the USA . In his home country he made a name for himself as a major donor for charitable institutions.

Life

Heinrich Gustav Hilgard was born in Speyer on April 10, 1835 , as the son of the strict and loyal lawyer Gustav Hilgard (1807–1867) and his wife Lisette, née Lisette. Pfeiffer (1811–1859), daughter of the Speyer salt minister, Franz Joseph Pfeiffer . After his father was transferred to the Appeal Court in Zweibrücken as a public prosecutor in 1839 , Zweibrücken became the home of the family and Heinrich attended elementary school there from 1841. Two years later he switched to the four-class Latin school and in 1847 to the four-class grammar school. During the Palatinate uprising in May / June 1849, he incurred the anger of the religious teacher and city pastor because he left out the intercession for the Bavarian monarch during a prayer . After the uprising he had to leave the Zweibrücker grammar school and attended the college in Pfalzburg until 1850 , where Alexandre Chatrian gave him tutoring in French. From 1850 he attended high school in Speyer, which he successfully completed two years later. Hilgard studied in Munich, first at the polytechnic , then at the university . There he became a member of the Corps Franconia Munich in 1853 . In the summer semester of 1853 he went to the University of Würzburg to study law. This study also did not correspond to his inclinations. His father, however, held the highly respected position of district court president in Zweibrücken.

Anticipating a falling out with his father, he set off with borrowed money for Hamburg , from where he emigrated to America . On October 13, 1853, he landed in New York without any knowledge of English . His great-uncle, the lawyer Theodor Hilgard (1790–1873) in Belleville , Illinois , transferred him 50 dollars and informed the "unwanted son ... who came to America without the knowledge and will of his father" that "his relatives had him did not wish to receive until they were clearly informed of the reasons which would have brought him to America ”. In the following year 1854 he finally came to Belleville via several stations (Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Chicago) through the mediation of his step-uncle Robert Hilgard, where his uncle Theodor Hilgard (1808–1871), who emigrated in 1835, took care of him.

Hilgard improved his English with great zeal, changed his name to Henry Villard and turned to journalism. In 1856 he took over the German-language Volksblatt in Chicago . He experienced the American Civil War 1861–1865 as a war correspondent. After the war he married Fanny Garrison, the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison , who was a well-known opponent of slavery .

Hilgard devoted himself to the expansion of the US railroad. He became president of several railway companies. In 1883 he was instrumental in completing the Northern Pacific Railroad . As a partner of Thomas Alva Edison , he financed the exploitation of his inventions and founded the General Electric Company.

He donated an orphanage to his hometown Zweibrücken, the later Hilgard School; in his native Speyer, Hilgard supported the construction of the memorial church , a grammar school and the deaconess hospital, whose house chaplain Karl Anton Scherer was his school friend. In 1895 he was therefore granted honorary citizenship of Speyer, there is a bust of Hilgard on the premises of the Diakonissenanstalt and the street that leads from the Memorial Church to the hospital was named after him (Hilgardstraße).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kösener corps lists 1910, 172 , 455
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Krämer (Ed.): Theodor Erasmus Hilgard. Letters to his friend Philipp Heinrich von Kraemer 1835 - 1865. A contribution to Hilgard's biography and the history of cultural relations between Saarland-Rheinpfalz and North America Saarbrücker Druck und Verlag, Saarbrücken 1935, p. 180
  3. ^ Memoirs of Heinrich Hilgard-Villard. A citizen of two worlds . Georg Reimer Publishing House, Berlin 1906, p. 165

literature

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Villard, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hilgard, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American railroad tycoon
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1835
PLACE OF BIRTH Speyer
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1900
Place of death Dobbs Ferry , New York , USA