Hermann Funke (engineer)

Hermann Funke, 1913

Hermann Georg Funke (born March 10, 1884 in Flensburg , † October 14, 1970 in West Berlin ) was a German engineer , manager and economist .

Life

After passing high school in 1902 at the Real-Gymnasium in Magdeburg , Hermann Funke completed an apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer at the Gruson factory in Magdeburg from 1902 to 1903 . He then studied mechanical engineering at the Royal Technical University of Berlin from 1903 to 1908 . After earning his diploma, he first worked as a designer at Friedrich Krupp AG and from 1909 to 1911 at Weise & Monski in Halle as a designer for centrifugal pumps . From April to December 1911, Funke worked as an assistant to the production engineer in the mine management department of A. Riebeck'schen Montanwerke AG . From December 1911 to August 1914 he last worked as a senior engineer for centrifugal pumps at Weise Söhne in Halle.

With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he was called up for military service as a reserve lieutenant and was deployed on the front in Belgium and France as well as in the context of the Mackensen offensive in the east. After taking part in the Battle of Verdun, Funke received a complaint from A. Borsig in December 1916 and remained there until the end of the war in December 1918 as works manager in the locomotive factory for the war-essential production (locomotives, torpedo fittings).

From the beginning of January 1919 to the end of June 1920, Funke was works manager at Daimler in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim. From 1920 to 1921 he held a leading position at Deutsche Werke AG as technical director of the Erfurt plant . From 1921 to 1925, Funke was a member of the board of the same company in Berlin. From 1925, Hermann Funke was a member of the supervisory board of Deutsche Werke AG in Berlin and a delegate of the supervisory board of Deutsche Spinnereimaschinenbau AG in Ingolstadt and Deutsche Präzisionswerkzeug AG in Amberg. In 1926 he moved to the board of the Mannesmann-MULAG in Aachen, of which he was a member until 1928. He held the position of general director there. In 1929 he was commissioned by the supervisory board of the Übigau AG shipyard and started his own business with the start of the global economic crisis . Since then he has appeared as a freelance management consultant. In 1930, the year his father-in-law Otto Feuerlein died , he began studying economics and received his doctorate in 1934 at the TH Berlin, where he taught economics from 1935 and was appointed honorary professor in March 1940 . Until the end of the Second World War he was an honorary professor for business administration at Faculty I for general sciences.

After the end of the war and before the currency reform , Funke advised Ullstein Verlag and the general magistrate of Berlin . Since 1950 he has worked as a business consultant mainly for BEWAG in the western part of Berlin. As a lecturer he taught again at the now Technical University of Berlin from 1946 to 1964 in the subjects of industrial management , cost accounting , business administration , bookkeeping and operational accounting . His academic focus was on industrial accounting and business management issues in mechanical engineering.

Grave site (with alternative spelling of the first name)

He is buried in the Heerstrasse cemetery.

Family background

Hermann Funke's ancestors originally came from Ohrdruf and have been there since the beginning of the 17th century. The great-grandfather Friedrich Wilhelm Funke (* 1785; † 1862), who was born there, was a merchant, shipowner and Russian consul in Flensburg. The grandfather August Ernst Eduard Funke (* 1813; † 1877) was a landowner and pharmacist in Groß-Quern . His son Hermann Nicolai Funke (* 1848; † 1916) advanced to senior engineer and authorized signatory in Magdeburg and was married to Elisa Martha Clara Fritsche (* 1863; † 1938) since 1881. Their son Hermann, born in Flensburg in 1884, married Gertrud Feuerlein (* 1891; † 1967), a daughter of Otto Feuerlein , in 1916 . The marriage of Hermann and Gertrud Funke had two sons, including Werner Funke (* 1919; † 2016), from 1964 to 1982 authorized signatory of the electricity company in Nagold .

Military awards

• September 1914 Iron Cross 2nd class
• May 1915 Friedrich-August-Kreuz 2nd class
• May 1916 Iron Cross 1st Class

Works

Funke made contributions of great importance to various areas of business administration and accounting in mechanical engineering:

Books

• Short-term calculation and splitting of profits in machine factories. Konkordia, Bühl-Baden 1935.
• Industrial accounting. 2nd Edition. VDI, Berlin 1937.
• Business administration in mechanical engineering. Press and Economy, Halle (Saale) 1940.
• with Hans Blohm : General principles of the industrial enterprise. Girardet, Essen 1952.
• with Konrad Mellerowicz (1st and 2nd edition) and Hans-Günther Abromeit (2nd edition): Basic questions and technology of operational accounting. Berlin 1949. (2nd edition: Haufe, Freiburg 1954, 3rd edition. 1964)
• Business administration in mechanical engineering and related industries. 2nd Edition. Haufe, Freiburg 1955. (3rd edition. 1964)

As a contribution to compilations

• Basics of organization in factories. Volume II of the company hut. Berlin 1954.

Essays

Hermann Funke published scientific articles in specialist journals, including:

• Authoritarian market regulation and price law. In: Journal for craft research. 1935.
• Do-it-yourself and external procurement. In: Technology and Economy. 1936.
• Recording of the depreciation of assets. In: VDI magazine. 1936.
• Today's cost accounting for industrial operations. In: Mechanical engineering - The company. 1940.
• The war-related development of the operating account. In: Mechanical engineering - The company. 1942.
• What does the engineer need to know about business operations? In: Electrical engineering. 1942.
• with R. Fischer: material accounting and inventory. In: Electrical engineering. 1943.
• The payroll. In: Electrical engineering. 1943.
• Development of industrial cost accounting. In: Electrical engineering. 1943.

literature

• Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar. 1950.
• University news from TU Berlin. 1970.
• Walter Killy (Ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia . Volume 3: Ebinger – Gierke. DTV and Saur, 2001, p. 542.

Web link

• Curriculum vitae in the Catalogus Professorum of the TU Berlin , accessed on July 23, 2020