Josef Beikircher

Josef Beikircher (born September 15, 1850 in Mühlen in Taufers ; † November 4, 1925 there ), state-certified and licensed Tyrolean electrical engineer , pioneer of industrial fabric production and electrification through hydropower plants .

Professional activities

Josef Beikircher, born as the son of the sturgeon weaver Josef Beikircher (1814–1867) in Mühlen, first learned his father's craft; after his premature death, the barely seventeen year old has to take on the responsibility of a family father for his four siblings. Through the mediation of his aunt, the kuk postmaster's wife Maria Bacher in Innsbruck , the technically gifted young man got to know the sheep wool factory there, Franz Baur's Sons , and began to draw the card , wool spinning and other textile machines that he saw there, to recreate them at home in wood and with help of a large, self-made water wheel, later to be operated with the help of a steam engine .

Regardless of the resistance of a large number of envious fellow citizens, as well as the church, which fears the influx of foreign, non-Catholic textile workers, he was able to start regular operations of his "factory for woolen fabrics and natural-colored loden " as early as 1874 . Initially, it employs around 15 people. The loden production, which was initially still operated on an in-house basis, is going very well: In 1882, Crown Prince Rudolf even bought a hunting suit made from Beikircher loden, making Josef Beikircher de facto a purveyor to the imperial and royal court , which was particularly well received in the Tyrolean press.

Nonetheless, Beikircher still suffers from the fact that no bank is prepared to grant a loan to a man who cannot offer the appropriate land security ; so in 1885 he accepted the offer of the Viennese businessman Josef Moessmer (1854–1921), who wanted to participate in the company partly with outside capital , but always as a silent partner . However, since the new partner, contrary to this requirement set out in § 1 of the business contract, interferes more and more actively in the management , a break occurs before Beikircher's planned relocation of the factory to Bruneck , which has been specifically prepared through preliminary contracts for property purchases : In 1890 , Moessmer and his Viennese financier Alexis Lazarich demanded the money brought back from Beikircher for the day, which of course is impossible for Beikircher, subsequently acquire Beikircher's shares in the factory and his home through a purchase contract , and finally move the factory in 1893/4 as Beikircher had planned, to Bruneck, where it still exists today under the name of “Tuchfabrik Moessmer”.

Beikircher moves to Innsbruck with his family of eight and tries to start a new life there, first as an innkeeper and then as an insurance agent , before he returns to Mühlen in 1893 for health reasons (his wife suffers from extreme susceptibility to hairdryers ) and buys an inn there. At the same time he built his own hydroelectric power station in 1893 to generate electricity for around 70 lamps in order to have light in his house on the basis of the state concession he had meanwhile acquired in the state capital to practice the electrical engineering trade . After Ludwig Gröbner in Gossensaß ( 1886 ), the Rössler Art Mill in Bozen ( 1886 ) and the Sulden Hotel at the foot of the Ortler ( 1892 ), it is the fourth such facility in South Tyrol . Of course, Josef Beikircher went bankrupt with the inn, but the self-built power plant became the basis for a new entrepreneurial start. Starting from a small workshop, after various land purchases and the corresponding construction work, the electromechanical company Josef Beikircher, "machine factory, foundry, light, power and water installation, electricity and sawmill in Mühlen on the Taufererbahn - Tyrol", as it is on the business paper from 1912 is called. Together with his four sons Josef, Gustav , Emil and Eugen, all of whom had received basic technical training (their 5th son Hermann died in 1903 as an 18-year-old student ), he mainly plans and builds water turbines , electrical plants , saw mills u, hoists, drives for grain mills and sawmills. in the entire former Kronland Tirol . A promising attempt to incorporate the series production of steel screens into the company's production program comes to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the First World War . After all, Beikircher had already penetrated into the Tsarist Empire by selling the product . After Josef Beikircher's death, his sons and later his grandson Dr. Ing.Adolf Beikircher continued to operate by concentrating more and more on turbine construction ( Pelton , Francis and Kaplan ), also for large-scale systems.

Activity in public space

Enthusiastic about technology and progress from a young age, Beikircher naturally belongs to the liberal camp, which in the then extremely conservative Tyrol repeatedly caused him new difficulties of all kinds. Nevertheless, he is unwaveringly committed to public concerns. Mention should be made of his work as chairman of the building committee for the construction of the large, new school building in Taufers ( 1909 - 1912 ), but above all his pioneering role in the development of the Taufer Valley for traffic. This concerns, on the one hand, enabling motorized individual transport. As early as 1901, Josef Beikircher was the first in the whole of the Pustertal to buy an automobile and, after years of legal dispute, had to put a lot of effort into getting his car to use the "Concurrenzstrasse" (no state road) leading from Bruneck to Sand in Taufers to be allowed. He had to spend a much longer period of time realizing his other dream of creating a rail link between Bruneck and Sand in Taufers for public transport . Since 1888 he had tried in vain in several attempts, before he and three other interested parties finally succeeded against great resistance in obtaining the concession first for the implementation of the preliminary work and then also for the construction, which the renowned Tyrolean railway specialist Dr. Ing. Josef Riehl from Innsbruck is entrusted. Following the ideas of Josef Beikircher, an electric train with standard gauge was created so that in Bruneck there can be a direct connection to the Villach - Franzensfeste southern railway, which has existed since 1871 . On 20th July 1908 the new railway line will be opened. Josef Beikircher considered the Taufererbahn, according to Karl Felix Wolff in the Deutsche Alpenzeitung “the most modern railway that Tyrol has today”, to be the culmination of his life's work.

literature

• Ivo Ingram Beikircher: Josef Beikircher (1850–1925). A man from the founding years in Tyrol. Innsbruck, Vienna, Bozen, Studienverlag 2008. ISBN 978-3-7065-4602-7
• Ivo Ingram Beikircher: Tyrolean auto pioneers in the First World War. Galicia, Alto Adige and the Middle East in photographs and letters from the kuk fireworker Gustav Beikircher. HAYMONverlag Innsbruck-Vienna 2o12. ISBN 978-3-85218-740-2
• South Tyrolean area guide 8 Tauferer-Ahrntal, Athesia Publishing House, Bozen 1976
• Tauferer Ahrntal cultural mile, published by the municipalities of the Tauferer Ahrntal, 2014
• Paul Preims: Josef Beikircher, in: 52 Pioneers in Word and Image, ARUNDA 89, 2015. ISBN 978-3-99028-536-7