Johann Friedrich Ludwig Wöhlert

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Friedrich Wöhlert (born September 16, 1797 in Kiel , † March 31, 1877 in Berlin ) was a Prussian foundry manufacturer and designer in the fields of steam engines and locomotives.

Live and act

Drawing of the first steam locomotive from Borsig (1840), which Wöhlert was involved in designing

Friedrich Wöhlert was the son of a brewer and broker . He attended elementary school in Kiel and then received an apprenticeship as a carpenter , which followed from 1818 as a traveling journeyman. In Berlin , he worked until 1836 for the New Berlin iron foundry from Franz Anton Egells (1788-1854). Wöhlert was friends with August Borsig (1804–1854), whom he had met here. When he became self-employed in 1836, he brought Wöhlert to work as a foreman in the A. Borsig'sche iron foundry and mechanical engineering institute at the Oranienburger Tor . Wöhlert stayed until 1841 and was instrumental in building Borsig's first locomotive. Later he even claimed to have been their spiritual father, which Borsig always denied.

Possibly on the initiative of his sponsor Christian Peter Wilhelm Beuth (1781-1853), a Prussian ministerial official and head of the royal trade institute , Wöhlert left Borsig in 1841 and took over the position of head of the Berlin branch on Invalidenstrasse at the Royal Prussian iron foundry . The company belonged to the Prussian Seehandlungs-Societät in Berlin-Moabit , which explains the occasional employment relationship with this predecessor of the Prussian State Bank . Accordingly, Wöhlert would also have had a career in the Prussian state.

Instead, he founded his own company at Chausseestrasse 29 in 1842 with the Wöhlert'schen Maschinenbau-Anstalt , where locomotives were also manufactured from 1848 onwards. After a few years, Wöhlert also bought the property at Chausseestrasse 30. After the street was renumbered in 1852, the entire site was given the address Chausseestrasse 36/37. From 1851 to 1853 Hermann Gruson (1821–1895) was chief engineer in the locomotive department, in which Rudolf Ernst Wolf (1831–1910) also worked.

A serious eye condition that almost led to blindness and an unregulated succession caused Wöhlert to sell the company in 1872; he himself was then chairman of the board for a short time . As was customary at the time, the buyers converted it into a stock corporation and received additional capital for investments in this way.

Wöhlert remained unmarried, but had adopted two sons of a master carpenter. After his death in 1877 he was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin-Mitte.

Proximity to the factory

View from Chaussee- into Wöhlertstrasse (May 2004)

During his Berlin entrepreneurship, Wöhlert always lived near his factory:

  • from 1836, while working for August Borsig, Wöhlert lived at Chausseestrasse 73c,
  • In 1842, the year the mechanical engineering company and iron foundry was founded, Wöhlert lived in Alt-Moabit 14,
  • From 1844 he lived at Chausseestrasse 29.
  • In 1873 his villa at Königgrätzer Straße 2 (today Ebertstraße) was completed. The architects were Orth & Knoblauch .

He also had a summer residence in Hangelsberg near Fürstenwalde / Spree ( Brandenburg ). Artificial iron from his factory can be seen on several buildings there.

The end of the F. Wöhlert'schen Maschinenbau-Anstalt und Eisengiesserei AG

The MÁV IIIk 3043 is the only surviving locomotive from the Wöhlert mechanical engineering institute and iron foundry.

Friedrich Wöhlert did not live to see the downfall of his company. As early as 1879, two years after his death, bankruptcy proceedings began. The company was saved again. 1879–1880 a small series of steam hitchhikers was created based on a patent by Amédée Bollée père (1844–1917). The rescue company was dissolved on June 25, 1883.

Honors

Base of the monument to Christian Peter Wilhelm Beuth by Friedrich Drake (1861)

Trivia

Friedrich Wöhlert is said to have answered every request with: "Mach ick". In fact, he also declined inquiries when necessary, e.g. B. when the company was asked to work on the Gotthard Tunnel in 1871 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Johann Friedrich Ludwig Wöhlert  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Wolfgang Messerschmidt: Paperback German locomotive factories. Their history, their locomotives, their designers. Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-440-04462-9 , p. 218
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Hans-Heinrich Müller: Wöhlert - a pioneer of mechanical engineering . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 3, 1996, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 16-19 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  3. ↑ August Borsig. albert-gieseler.de; accessed on January 27, 2015
  4. ↑ a b c d Catalog-30 / F. Wöhlert'sche Maschinenbau-Anstalt and Eisengiesserei AG. gutowski.de; accessed on January 27, 2015
  5. ↑ Royal Iron Foundry Berlin. werkbahn.de
  6. ^ Johann Friedrich Ludwig Wöhlert . In: General housing gazette for Berlin, Charlottenburg and surroundings , 1837, p. 404. “Wöhlert, F., Maschinenbauer, Chausseestraße 73c”.
  7. ^ Johann Friedrich Ludwig Wöhlert . In: General housing indicator for Berlin, Charlottenburg and surroundings , 1843, p. 506. "Wöhlert, F., Maschinenbauer, Alt-Moabit 14".
  8. ^ Johann Friedrich Ludwig Wöhlert . In: General housing gazette for Berlin, Charlottenburg and surroundings , 1845, p. 516. "Wöhlert, F., mechanical engineer and iron foundry., Chausseestraße 29".
  9. ↑ Orth & garlic; Villa Wöhlert, Berlin (1873) . Architecture Museum TU Berlin; Retrieved November 19, 2015
  10. ↑ Wöhlertstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  11. ↑ F. Wöhlert to Alfred Escher, September 1, 1871; online edition at briefedition.alfred-escher.ch accessed August 17, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Wöhlert, Johann Friedrich Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wöhlert, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian foundry manufacturer and designer in the fields of steam engines and locomotives
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiel
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1877
Place of death Berlin