Jakob Steiger

Jakob Steiger (born November 8, 1833 in Uetikon ; † April 6, 1903 in Herisau ; legal resident in Uetikon) was a Swiss textile entrepreneur from the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden .

Life

Jakob Steiger was a son of Jakob Steiger, innkeeper , and Elisabeth Steiger. In 1860 he married Elise Meyer, daughter of Emanuel Meyer . He attended schools in Zurich and completed a commercial training at the white goods manufacturing and export company J. Bischoff & Co. in Teufen . From 1855 to 1857 he worked as an authorized signatory in the London branch of the teaching company. In 1858 Steiger founded an embroidery export company in St. Gallen . At the request of his father-in-law, he moved this to Herisau in 1860.

He campaigned for improvements in the textile industry . I.a. he initiated the renovation of the finishing industry , thanks to which Herisau moved up to become the center of textile finishing. Steiger also introduced the iron yarn weaving mill from Wuppertal and discovered the etching process for textiles . In 1863 he founded the Herisau commercial advanced training school. In 1866, Steiger was one of the founders of the bank for Appenzell Ausserrhoden. He published well-regarded position assessments on the Swiss textile industry. At the world exhibitions in Vienna in 1873 and in Paris in 1878 Steiger was a member of the jury .

From 1868 to 1872 he was a councilor for Herisau. Politically, he was close to the Federal Association . Steiger fulfilled several trade policy missions on behalf of the Federal Council . As an important exponent of the pietistic dominated Protestant positivism he was one of the Protestant society in St. Gallen. In 1873 he acquired the Heinrichsbad health resort in Herisau, which he converted into a Christian health resort with a Protestant-positive orientation. As a Protestant-Orthodox antithesis to the liberal Appenzeller Zeitung , Steiger brought the Appenzeller Tagblatt and the Appenzeller Nachrichten to life. The Appenzeller Tagblatt appeared from 1879 to 1882, the Appenzeller Nachrichten from 1882 to 1889. In addition, he was allegedly one of the founders of the Christian-social international association for worker protection in Berlin . He set up savings , old-age and health insurance for his employees and founded a private hospital in Herisau in 1865. He was a major .

In 1889 he went bankrupt as a result of unsuccessful foreign engagements. Then Steiger tried unsuccessfully as a handkerchief producer in the USA . He founded two trading companies in London for the exploitation of Greek magnesite mines and marble quarries .

Steiger spent the last years of his life in the lap of his family in London. When his health deteriorated increasingly in 1902 and the doctors could no longer do anything for him, the family moved to Herisau, where he died on April 6, 1903.

literature

• Oscar Alder : memorial sheets to Jakob Steiger-Meyer. In: Appenzellische Jahrbücher , Vol. 60, 1933, pp. 1–65. ( Digitized version )
• Peter Holderegger: Entrepreneurs in Appenzellerland: History of industrial entrepreneurship in Appenzell Ausserrhoden from the beginning to the present. Herisau: Schläpfer 1992.

Web links

• Thomas Fuchs: Jakob Steiger. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . February 20, 2012 , accessed April 30, 2020 .
• Entry on Jakob Steiger in the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland 1848-1975

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