Jakob Küner

Jakob von Küner (born March 19, 1697 in Volkratshofen near Memmingen , † 1764 in Vienna) was a German entrepreneur. Küner was a very versatile entrepreneur: he traded in mercury, jewels and healing earth, carried out banking and exchange transactions and acted as an advisor at the imperial court in Vienna, with the Bavarian elector and the Duke of Württemberg.

Jakob Küner was the son of pastor Georg Küner and his wife Sibylla Schütz. From 1715 he lived for a few years in the imperial capital Vienna, where he later worked as an authorized signatory in a business of Viennese high finance. In 1728 Jakob Küner married Regina von Greiff in Augsburg , the daughter of a businessman. The couple had four daughters and one son.

In 1739 he settled back in his hometown and opened a banking business, the first in Memmingen. In the same year he was from Emperor Charles VI. raised to the nobility. A year later he was appointed imperial council and two months later he was made Knight of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1741 he acquired the place Künersberg in what is now the municipality of Memmingerberg , to which he gave his name. While building his mansion , he discovered soil there that was suitable for the manufacture of porcelain. In 1745 he founded a faience factory that existed until 1768. Künersberg faiences were among the best German ceramics of the 18th century. In 1746 Küner received an imperial privilege for the entire Swabian district and the associated exemption from duty for his ceramics.

Since neither the Memmingen bank nor the manufactory brought the hoped-for profits, he went back to Vienna in 1751 and took over the management of his Viennese bank again and made big business again. He died in Vienna in 1764. The faience factory only existed for four years. The bank under the management of his son Johann Jakob Küner had to declare bankruptcy in 1773.

In his will, Jakob von Küner stipulated that his Künersberg Foundation should be used to improve the Latin and German schools. The focus should be on "arithmetic and writing by means of an orthographic and beautiful handwriting". The state commercial vocational training center in Memmingen is named after Jakob von Küner.

literature

• Joachim Jahn , Hans Wolfgang Bayer (ed.): The history of the city of Memmingen. Volume 1: From the beginning to the end of the imperial city. Theiss, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-8062-1315-1 .
• Sabine Rogg, Christoph Engelhard: Memmingen - key to the city. Maximilian Dietrich, Memmingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-87164-166-4 .
• Rainer Rückert :  Küner Edler von Künersberg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 220 f. ( Digitized version ).