John Volkmann

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John Heinrich Volkmann-Rogge (1855–1928) entrepreneur, inventor of chocolate machines, produces them in New York for Stollwerck. Family grave field 4, in the Friedental cemetery, City of Lucerne. Sculpture by Schibler. Family grave field 4, at the cemetery Friedental, town Lucerne, Switzerland
Family grave in the Friedental cemetery

Johann Heinrich Volkmann , called John Volkmann , (born December 15, 1855 in Bremen , † September 16, 1928 in Tübingen ) was a German merchant who invented, produced and installed thousands of chocolate machines in New York .

family

Volkmann came from a widespread Bremen merchant family. His father was the Bremer private banker, member of the Bremen citizenship and president of the Bremer Eiswette Daniel Georg Volkmann (1812-1892). The brother of his father Johann Heinrich Volkmann (1804–1865), who was elected as a theologian for the first class, the academic class, and was married to the daughter of the Bremen mayor Diederich Meier , had also been part of the Bremen citizenship since 1854 .

Volkmann's three brothers were Georg Friedrich Volkmann, merchant in San Francisco , Gustav Volkmann, merchant in Colombia and German consul in Bucaramanga , and Otto Volkmann, merchant in London .

On April 27, 1909, John Volkmann married Dorothea Rogge (born March 31, 1881 - † January 27, 1960). In 1913 the son Wilfried Volkmann was born. The family grave is located in the Friedental cemetery .

Career

Volkmann's Stollwerck machine from 1892

After completing his commercial training, John Volkmann went to the USA. First he joined A. Schilling & Co. as a partner in San Francisco, in which his older brother Georg F. Volkmann was also involved. Together with the Cologne-based chocolate company Stollwerck , they founded the company Schilling, Stollwerck & Co. Later, John Volkmann separated from this company and founded the company Volkmann, Stollwerck & Co. together with Ludwig Stollwerck .

John Volkmann had the idea to set up self-produced chocolate and other machines in train stations. He imported Stollwerck semi-finished products from Germany and had them processed into machine goods in New York, which he used to equip his machines. For example, on September 27, 1892, he was granted the patent for a candy vending machine. In the same year he produced the first Stollwerck machine. The machine sold the products Chocolate, Dentyne Gum, Wintergreen Gum with Pepsin and Chiclets at 1 cent each. In 1894 there were already more than 4,000 of his machines in New York train stations alone. From 1898, Volkmann, Stollwerck & Co. opened vending machine restaurants in San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis and other American cities.

With this business idea, which was revolutionary at the time, John Volkmann made a fortune in the millions. Many of the machines he has manufactured by John Volkmann since 1880 are exhibited in the International Arcade Museum in the USA, the world's largest museum for coin operated machines.

In 1904 John Volkmann returned to Bremen as a privateer. He died on September 16, 1928 in Tübingen and was buried in Bremen in the Riensberg cemetery .

literature

  • Bruno Kuske: 100 Years of Stollwerck History 1839–1939 . Cologne 1939.
  • The William Daegener and George F. Volkmann Families . San Francisco 1966.
  • When the penny drops ... coin-operated machines - yesterday and today . Exhibition catalog Deutsches Museum, Munich 1988.
  • Martin Loiperdinger: Film & Chocolate - Stollwerck's business with living images . Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mira Wilkins: The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914 . Harvard Studies, 1989, ISBN 0-674-39666-9 .
personal data
SURNAME Volkmann, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Volkmann, Johann Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1928
Place of death Tübingen