Johann Jakob Langen
Johann Jakob Langen (born December 17, 1794 in Düssel , † August 27, 1869 in Cologne ) was a German sugar manufacturer.
Career
He was the son of the teacher Johann Jakob Langen and his wife Anna Maria Hölterhoff. He first took up his father's profession. For several years he worked as a teacher in various places in the Bergisches Land , most recently in Arrenberg near Elberfeld. On April 1, 1816, he joined the Solingen company "Schimmelbusch & Joest" as a private tutor and office assistant. Carl Joest also offered Langen a position in his company as an office clerk in order to increase his income. After their marriage in July 1817, the Langen couple also ran a small grocery store together in the immediate vicinity of the company and the apartment. Hermine Zanders died in March 1825. In May 1826, Johann Jakob Langen married Johanna Gustorff, a close friend of his first wife, the daughter of his Solingen schoolmaster, whom he had known since his early youth. Langen's main occupation in the company increasingly became the commercial area, at the end of 1821 Langen was appointed authorized signatory. From his second marriage to Johanna Gustorf a. a. also Eugen Langen , who was to become one of the most important technicians and industrialists in the Rhineland in the second half of the 19th century.
In 1832, JJ Langen took over the commercial management of the sugar refinery from "Schimmelbusch & Joest", which was newly founded in Cologne in September 1831 and which had been run under the company "Carl Joest & Sons" since January 1, 1841. Since 1833 Langen had a 20% share in the profits of the refinery. Because of his work, Langen moved to Cologne in November 1832. Eight factories had already been established in the Rhenish metropolis since 1821, which now themselves processed the colonial cane sugar imported via Holland. The start of steam shipping between Rotterdam and Cologne favored the new industry. The sugar refineries initiated industrialization in Cologne. The decree of the Rhine Shipping Act of 1831 and the associated abolition of the handling rights for the Cologne port favored the settlement of further companies in Cologne. The company " Schimmelbusch & Joest " quickly developed into Cologne's leading sugar refinery under Langen's leadership. In 1836 vacuum cooking was introduced here. With three steam boilers, the company was one of the most modern boilers in Germany. In 1839 the company was at the head of all Prussian settlements with a processing volume of 90,000 hundredweight and 130 employees. The refinery owes its success in the early years primarily to its commercial manager JJ Langen.
Further company acquisitions and start-ups
In July 1843, Langen acquired the " Friedrich-Wilhelms-Hütte " near Troisdorf in order to be able to work as an independent entrepreneur. In 1844 he left Carl Joest's company and in March 1845 bought the relatively small Cologne sugar refinery from “Schleußner & Heck”, which he continued with his sons (see Eugen Langen ). Despite numerous initial difficulties, he managed to expand and expand the company. The Troisdorf "Friedrich-Wilhelms-Hütte" (in which three sons were already accepted as partners in 1854) was converted into a stock corporation under the company "Siegrheinischer Bergwerks-" on June 30, 1858, when the financial requirements for further expansion exceeded Langen's means. und Hütten-Aktienverein “. In July 1845, together with Gustav Mevissen , Friedrich Wiesehahn and Friedrich Giesler, he acquired prospecting rights on coal-mining fields northwest of Essen. This was the first step towards the establishment of the Cologne Mining Association , the first mining company in the Ruhr area, which was finally founded and licensed in Cologne in 1849.
Langen's house bank was the Schaaffhausen'sche Bankverein , which stopped making payments on March 29, 1848. He was one of the bank's largest creditors. At least 170 larger entrepreneurs in the Rhineland had at that time deposited most of their money with Schaaffhausen - a catastrophe for the regional economy. The family chronicle reports that the bank had the order on March 25, 1848, to forward the sum of 20,000 thalers as a customs payment from the company "Langen & Söhne" for imported cane sugar. At the very last moment, Langen is said to have succeeded in making a change at the Kgl. Bank branch to get discounted. At the end of April 1848 the Prussian government was prepared, under certain conditions, to save the private bank by turning it into a stock corporation. When the AG was finally founded on August 28, 1848, Langen immediately took over the mandate as a member of the board of directors and was chairman between 1852 and 1857.
Johann Jakob Langen had already got to know the leading personalities of Cologne's economic life as the head of the Schimmelbusch & Joest sugar refinery. In April 1836 he became a member of the Chamber of Commerce, which he then belonged to, with the exception of 1844 until 1859. The chamber contributions on sugar production and sugar trade are almost all of his pen. From June 1848 Johann Jakob Langen was President of the Cologne Chamber until 1856. As chairman of the Chamber, he gave expert opinions, particularly on customs policy. It was obvious that, as a manufacturer in a branch of industry that was decisive for Cologne at the time, he judged the hotly debated questions about protective tariffs and free trade from the standpoint of promoting local industry. According to Langen, the protective tariff should not act purely as a maintenance tariff, but rather, after a certain period of building up one's own industry, foreign competition should also be gradually restricted. When Gustav Mevissen was elected President in 1856, he thanked Langen in the first meeting he chaired for the “careful and active leadership during his long-standing, difficult period of office”. Although he was a member of the Chamber until 1859, he devoted himself mainly to running his company. He also handed over the chairmanship of the Supervisory Board of the “Schaaffhausen Bank Association”, which he assumed in 1852, to Mevissen.
Pfeifer & Langen
When Emil Pfeifer and Carl Joest founded the first Cologne beet sugar factory in Cologne-Ossendorf in 1851 , Langen fought one-sidedly, almost doggedly, on the side of the "colonial sugar refiners", demanding higher taxation of beets and better import conditions for cane sugar. With this attitude he consciously opposed sugar production from domestic beet and thus contributed to the hindrance of competition. Since Johann Jakob Langen died in Cologne on August 27, 1869, he could no longer witness that his most famous son Eugen Langen founded the beet sugar factory " Pfeifer & Langen " together with Emil Pfeifer and his son Valentin on April 19, 1870 . Langen, who was also a city councilor and member of the Cologne Commercial Court for a long time, left his eight children still alive with a fortune of 480,000 thalers.
His grave is in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne (HWG, between Lit.E + F).
literature
- Ute Jacobs: Johann Jakob Langen. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 569 ( digitized version ).
- Klara van Eyll : Johann Jakob Langen (1794–1869). In: Cologne entrepreneurs in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. (= Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiographien, Volume 12). Aschendorff, Münster 1986, pp. 121-135.
- Carl Otto Langen: Chronicle of the Johann Jakob Langen family in Cologne. Based on handwritten records, the church registers of the Protestant communities Marienberghausen, Mühlheim am Rhein and Bergisch-Gladbach as well as personal communications in the spring of 1899. Korten, M. Gladbach 1899. Digitized
- Heinrich Philip Bartels: 100 years of Pfeifer & Langen (1870–1970) . Pfeifer & Langen, Cologne 1970.
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Langen, Johann Jakob |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 17, 1794 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Düssel |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 27, 1869 |
| Place of death | Cologne |