Jacob Schmidheiny (entrepreneur, 1838)

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Jacob Schmidheiny I, 1838–1905

Jacob Schmidheiny (born June 25, 1838 in Balgach ; † February 18, 1905 in St. Gallen ) was a Swiss entrepreneur and founder of the Schmidheiny family dynasty . Jacob Schmidheinystrasse in Heerbrugg was named after him (and his second son) .

Life

Jakob (with k) Schmidheini (with i) was born as the son of the village tailor Hansjakob Schmidheini (1810–1874) von Balgach and Katharina (1811–1867), née. Nüesch, born. He was a frail child and had to work hard early on. At the age of five he became infected with smallpox , which initially made him an invalid and could only walk with pain. At the age of 22 Schmidheiny began to work in the silk weaving mill in Sorntal (municipalities of Waldkirch and Niederbüren ). After several times he was not promoted because colleagues with better schooling were preferred to him, he made up for the missed education, which his parents could not afford. He had a goal, he wanted to become a manufacturer. After Schmidheiny was promoted, but could only work with pain, he had an operation and then took a cure. Then he bought the vacant pottery on the country road between Balgach and Rebstein and began a career as an entrepreneur that founded an entire dynasty.

On September 19, 1867, he married Elise Kaufmann, who came from the Toggenburg valley community , and his mother died four weeks later. On April 1, 1871 his first son Ernst was born, four years later his second Jacob .

education

Jakob Schmidheiny had to be able to build on special skills, otherwise he would not have made it from the simple, frail farm boy who left school at the age of 14 to become a cantonal councilor and industrialist.

For Jacob “life was nothing more than an incalculable series of tasks, a chain of innumerable rings that he put together. If a problem was solved happily, then he immediately faced a more difficult one to test his strength and skill on it. No rest, no standstill! Life is short, the rest that follows is long! That's how he thought and he did it accordingly! ”After his apprenticeship as a weaver in Teufen , he took his secondary school leaving certificate in Berneck and in January 1864 switched to his previous employer, the Sorntal silk weaving mill, where he worked as a director.

As an entrepreneur

After an operation on his left foot, he did not return to his old place of work, but opened his own silk weaving mill in Balgach with three employed weavers. With the help of a former colleague, he was able to acquire Heerbrugg Castle at the beginning of January 1867 with the intention of expanding his production there.

The villa and the castle in Heerbrugg.

1867 Jacob Schmidheiny bought by Professor Karl peoples the Heerbrugg Castle , one of the brickworks. Schmidheiny switched to brick production. The furnace was still there from the previous owner and was replaced by a more modern round furnace a year later. In 1870 his company produced around 250,000 bricks a year. In 1874 Schmidheiny bought the burned down Moser brickworks in Espenmoos, which he machined from 1876 onwards. Heerbrugg Castle was owned by the Schmidheiny family until 2004. The brick factory burned down completely in 1971.

In 1880 Jacob Schmidheiny developed a process that made it possible for the first time to produce the extruded interlocking tile . The finished interlocking tile that came out of the machine only had to be cut to the desired length. 800 bricks could be produced in one hour.

In 1884 Jacob Schmidheiny gave the Balgach community a high-pressure water line for fire fighting, as well as a large hydrant network. Four years later he built a brick factory in Kronbühl .

Schmidheiny had to give up production at Heerbrugg Castle in the 1880s because he was unable to acquire any additional land as a source of raw materials due to the assumption that "the clay swamps were the main creators of the critical wine years", which is the then emerging phylloxera plague.

In 1889 Jacob Schmidheiny began to plan a tram. The route should lead from Hohenems via Diepoldsau and Au - Heerbrugg to Berneck. However, the line was not built for economic reasons and because the Rhine was a safety risk at the time. In 1890 Jakob Schmidheiny presented a new proposal. This time the route should run from Altstätten via Berneck, Au, Rheineck and Thal to Rorschach . In 1892 engineers from Zurich presented a plan for a tram from Altstätten to Berneck. In 1896 the construction of the route began. In 1897 the Altstätten – Berneck tram was inaugurated.

Naue brickworks were built in Horn in 1900 and in Bruggwald in 1903. 1903 Jacob Schmidheiny became President of the Association of Swiss Ziegler. In 1904, he was by Wendelin Heene the Villa Schmidheiny building which today on the List of Cultural Property in Balgach is. In 1900 his company produced around 25 million bricks.

politics

From 1891 to 1905 Jacob Schmidheiny held a mandate in the parliament of the canton of St. Gallen .

death

In 1905 Jacob Schmidheiny died after a heart attack on February 18, 1905 in his factory in Espenmoos in St. Gallen.

See also

literature

  • Jakob Brüschweiler-Wilhelm: From farmer's boy to big industrialist: Cantonal Councilor Jakob Schmidheiny . Friedrich Reinhardt, Basel. 2nd edition 1908
  • Walter de Gruyter: German Biographical Encyclopedia . tape 9 . KG Saur Verlag GmbH & Company, 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-096502-5 , p. 924 .
  • Hans O Staub: From Schmidheiny to Schmidheiny . In: Swiss pioneers in business and technology . tape 61 . Miles: Association for Economic History Studies, 1994, ISBN 978-3-909059-07-2 , p. 208 .
  • François Höpflinger: The uncanny empire: economic integration in Switzerland . Eco-Verlag, 1980, ISBN 978-3-85637-026-8 , pp. 270 .
  • Jost Schmid: Rhine Valley Heads, historical-biographical portraits from five centuries . Rheintaler Druckerei und Verlag AG, Berneck 2004, ISBN 3-03300265-X , Schmidheiny family, Balgach, p. 316-322 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Peter Müller: Schmidheiny, Jakob. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. ↑ a b c Michael Zollinger: Jacob Schmidheiny (1838–1905): From the pox child to the brick king. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Handelszeitung, July 25, 2006, archived from the original on October 13, 2014 ; Retrieved December 23, 2013 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Jakob Brüschweiler-Wilhelm: From farm boy to large industrialist: Cantonal Councilor Jakob Schmidheiny . Friedrich Reinhardt, Basel, 2nd edition, 1908
  4. ↑ Thomas Widmer: Der Ur-Schmidheiny , Tages-Anzeiger , April 8, 2014
  5. ↑ a b Höchstern nature reserve. (PDF) Milly Hug, accessed December 23, 2013 .
  6. ↑ An electric tram as a feeder. Balgach community, accessed on December 23, 2013 .
  7. ↑ Extinguishing water for the fire brigade. Balgach community, accessed on December 23, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Schmidheiny, Jacob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmidheiny, Jacob I.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss entrepreneur and pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH June 25, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Balgach
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1905
Place of death St. Gallen