Johann Heinrich Kaspar Gerdau
Johannes Heinrich Kaspar Gerdau (born November 14, 1849 in Altona , † November 24, 1917 in Porto Alegre ), known in Brazil as João Gerdau , was a Prussian farmer who emigrated to the Brazilian Empire in 1869 and became an entrepreneur there. It was there that he founded the beginnings of today's Gerdau Group , which is now the leading steel producer in South and North America.
Born in Holstein during the Schleswig-Holstein uprising (1848-1851), Gerdau was the son of Johannes Gerdau and Anna Focken, farmers who lived in Neuenfelde in the Kingdom of Hanover (today Hamburg-Neuenfelde). As a graduate of a technical school in Hamburg wandered Gerdau in 1869 in search of better living conditions in the Empire of Brazil and initially settled there in by German immigrants founded Colônia de Santo Ângelo in the city of Cachoeira do Sul in the former province of São Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul (now the state of Rio Grande do Sul ).
In the neighboring town of Agudo he bought a piece of land on which he built a house and a business building. In the 1870s he founded the grocery trading company João Gerdau & Cia . On February 9, 1875, he was one of the 31 founding members of the Men's Choir Hope who elected him their treasurer .
In 1883 Gerdau built a new commercial building on the market square of Cachoeira do Sul. There he traded in barley, wheat, rice, rye, beans, corn and other goods, while the existing company in Agudo served as a trading post for the purchase of products, which he then had transported to Cachoeira do Sul.
In 1895 Gerdau and a partner founded the wholesale company Gerdau & Naschold in Porto Alegre , which traded wholesalers in dry and fresh goods and imported brewery supplies such as machines, equipment, malt, hops, corks and bottles. In addition, the company imported wine directly from Jerusalem in Palestine.
On August 18, 1886 Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca , the then President of the Province and later the first elected President of Brazil , sold still free land in Agudo to the captain of the National Guard and large landowner Policarpo de Carvalho e Silva. This in turn transferred the lands to the Sociedade João Gerdau & Cia, as their owners João Gerdau, Manuel Py and Antônio de Oliveira were listed.
On January 16, 1901, Gerdau and his eldest son Hugo acquired the run-down nail factory Pontas de Paris in Porto Alegre , which they renamed João Gerdau & Filho . This company was founded by 95 shareholders, including Manuel Py and Antônio de Oliveira. In 1908 Gerdau acquired the small furniture manufacturer Fábrica de Móveis Navegantes, which had existed in Porto Alegre since 1893, and began producing bentwood furniture in the Viennese style of Michael Thonet . Gerdau handed over the management of this company to his second son Walter.
With the death of João Gerdau on November 24, 1917, the management of the company passed to his son Hugo Gerdau. With his death, the management of the company fell to Curt Johannpeter, the husband of Hugo Gerdau's daughter Helda. From then on the company developed very dynamically into one of the largest of its kind in Latin America today.
literature
- William Werlang: A Família de Johannes Heinrich Kaspar Gerdau: Um estudo de caso sobre a industrialização no sul do Brasil , dissertation (1999), Universidade Federal de Santa Maria , Agudo 2002, Editora Werlang, ISBN 85-88970-01-5
- José Lannes de Mello: Do capital comercial na fronteira agrícola ao capital industrial: um estudo de caso das origens do Grupo Gerdau. XXXIV Encontro Nacional de Economia, Salvador, 2006 (Portuguese).
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gerdau, Johann Heinrich Kaspar |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gerdau, João |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-Brazilian company founder of Gerdau SA |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 14, 1849 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Altona |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 24, 1917 |
| Place of death | Porto Alegre |