Hermann Strassburger

Johann Hermann Strassburger (born April 30, 1820 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ; † November 8, 1886 there ) was a German entrepreneur at the height of industrialization . In 1861 he founded an iron foundry in Gelsenkirchen together with his brother Johann . This company is considered to be the early forerunner of Gelsenkirchener Gussstahl- und Eisenwerke AG, also known as Gelsenguss.

Hermann Strassburger 1820–1886. Photo at the Weimer studio, Limburg adLahn, 1880

Live and act

Hermann Strassburger was the first of five children of a family of day laborers from Mülheim an der Ruhr. At the age of thirteen he had to experience how his thirty-nine-year-old father Matthias died in 1833 of the rampant cholera that had been introduced during those years . Nothing is documented about the following years of youth or the first professional beginnings of Hermann Strassburger, but for 1848 he is named as a sandformer in his marriage certificate. This suggests that he was already working as a moulder or iron caster before this date.

The life of Hermann Strassburger was shaped by the rapidly advancing industrialization, in particular by the rapid developments in iron casting technology. In 1851 he moved from Mülheim an der Ruhr to Berlin on Chausseestrasse, the leading center of Prussia's iron foundry , where he and his family stayed until 1855. Two of his sons were born around this time. It can be assumed with certainty that Strassburger worked as a master former for the pioneer of modern mechanical engineering Franz Anton Egells , who copied mechanical engineering knowledge from England on behalf of the Prussian ministry and thus contributed significantly to the accelerated development of German mechanical engineering. Egells' company achieved world fame with steam engines for ships and mining. In the immediate vicinity of his company building, August Borsig , who had earned a good reputation as a technician at Egells from 1827 to 1837, developed with his own company into the greatest competitor and model forge in Prussia.

In 1856, Strassburger left what the Berliners called Tierra del Fuego and moved with his family to Dessau . Here the mechanical engineering company Jahn & Ahrendt had built an iron foundry in 1853 as an extension of their business for the production of spinning machines. Strassburger and a partner named Gustine, about whom nothing is known, ran this foundry as tenants. The cooperation doesn't seem to have worked, so that the foundry was again directed by Jahn & Ahrendt after 1856. From this company the "Berlin-Anhaltische Maschinenbau Aktiengesellschaft", or BAMAG for short, emerged in 1872 .

In 1861, Strassburger built up his own company in Gelsenkirchen with his brother Johann. The two brothers bought a site at what is now Rheinelbestraße 12-16, together with a nail smithy located on it, which they connected with a forge and locksmith's shop, and finally founded the “Eisengießerei Gebrüder Strassburger”. In 1866 Wilhelm Munscheid joined the company as a businessman and financier, which is now known as “Gebr. Strassburger & Co. ”was named. Munscheid and the two brothers Strassburger were shareholders. (Johann Strassburger retired in 1872.) The company grew and in 1873, with 46 workers, it produced almost 1,000 tons of cast iron per year. Since it was presumably no longer possible to expand the business premises, Wilhelm Munscheid and Hermann Strassburger also founded the "Munscheid & Co cast steelworks" not far from the old location. There they had the first two tempering furnaces used, with which one could transform brittle cast iron into an easy-to-work iron, from which steel wheels and wheel sets were then made.

Gertrud, Hermann Strassburger's wife, died in 1881. For another four years after the death of his wife, Strassburger worked with Wilhelm Munscheid, with whom he had a 24-year working life. In 1885, Hermann Strassburger left the company at the age of 65 and died just one year later on November 8, 1886.

Wilhelm Munscheid remained the sole owner and renamed the company to "Wilhelm Munscheid Eisengießerei und Maschinenfabrik".

In 1889 the "Gelsenkirchener Gussstahl- und Eisenwerke AG, formerly Munscheid & Co.", the Gelsenguss, was founded. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Gelsenkirchen cast steel and iron works were the largest tempered steel foundry in the world.

The Gelsenkirchen Science Park is located on the premises of the company, where Hermann Strassburger also cast glowing iron into molds . The address of the park, Munscheidstrasse, is reminiscent of Hermann Strassburger's long-term partner.

Marriage and offspring

Hermann Strassburger married Maria Elisabeth Gertrud, born on December 30, 1848. Pothmann (July 19, 1819 - November 13, 1881). Her father was a blacksmith, her mother the daughter of a shipbuilder.

She gave birth to eight children to Hermann Strassburger in six different cities:

Hermann Matthias	(* November 22, 1849 in Mülheim ad Ruhr)
Wilhelm	(* November 22, 1851 in Berlin)
Heinrich Eberhard	(* November 15, 1853 in Berlin)
Anna Maria Elisabeth	(* April 28, 1856 in Dessau)
Caroline Henriette Gertrud	(* May 7, 1858 in Dortmund)
Ernst Hermann Heinrich Wilhelm	(* August 15, 1860)
Heinrich Arnold	(* January 11, 1863 in Essen)
Johann Friedrich Carl	(* October 17, 1865 in Gelsenkirchen)

The fourth child Anna, b. in Dessau, married on March 1, 1878 in Gelsenkirchen Johann Wilhelm Bauer, the founder of a steam soap factory from Diez an der Lahn.

Heinrich Arnold, seventh child, b. in Essen, had on February 8, 1863, as godfather Hermann Heinrich von Eicken , also known as the red Eicken, who, as head of the city council of Mülheim ad Ruhr, prevented bloodshed during the Mülheim riots in the revolutionary year 1848 through his influence. Heinrich Arnold's trail is lost in North America. In 1891 he emigrated to Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Nothing is known about the fate of the other children of Hermann Strasbourg.

literature

• Manfred Rasch: Technicians and engineers in the Ruhr area . In Stefan Goch, Lutz Heidemann, 100 Years of Bismarck, Klartextverlag Essen 2001, ISBN 3-89861-039-X
• Will Rinne: Die Ruhrstahl Aktiengesellschaft, The development of Ruhrstahl Aktiengesellschaft and its six plants , 4 vols., Cologne 1937, (typescript)
• Ilse Barleben : Mülheim ad Ruhr, contributions to its history from the elevation to the city to the founding years , Mülheim ad Ruhr 1959
• Josef Arens: Gel casting . Strüdersche Verlagsanstalt, Neuwied 1953, in the chapter "How the work came about"
• Franz Brückner (Ed.): House Book of the City of Dessau 1 , City of Dessau, City Archives, Dessau 1975–1997

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ilse Barleben: Mülheim ad Ruhr, contributions to its history from the elevation to the city up to the founding years, Mülheim ad Ruhr 1959, p. 97
2. ↑ See Berlin address books for the years 1799 to 1943 of the Central and State Library Berlin (ZLB), year 1852–1855 ( online ).
3. ↑ Oskar Gromodka: Egells, Franz Anton. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 323 (digitized version).
4. ↑ See: Franz Brückner (Ed.), Häuserbuch der Stadt Dessau, Stadtarchiv, Dessau 1975–1997, p. 1769
5. ↑ Will Rinne: Die Ruhrstahl Aktiengesellschaft, The development of the Ruhrstahl Aktiengesellschaft and its six works, 4 vol., Cologne 1937, p. 355, (typescript)
6. ^ Manfred Rasch: Technicians and engineers in the Ruhr area. In Stefan Goch, Lutz Heidemann, 100 Years of Bismarck, Klartextverlag Essen 2001, ISBN 3-89861-039-X , p. 94
7. ^ Will Rinne: Die Ruhrstahl Aktiengesellschaft, The development of Ruhrstahl Aktiengesellschaft and its six works, 4 vol., Cologne 1937, p. 357, (typescript)
8. ↑ Will Rinne: Die Ruhrstahl Aktiengesellschaft, The development of the Ruhrstahl Aktiengesellschaft and its six works, 4 vol., Cologne 1937, p. 380f, (typescript)
9. ↑ Ilse Barleben: Mülheim ad Ruhr, contributions to its history from the elevation to the city up to the founding years, Mülheim ad Ruhr 1959, p. 123