Julian Prerauer

Julian Prerauer (born November 23, 1848 in Landeshut in Silesia , † December 15, 1934 in Berlin ) was a German industrialist .

Origin, life

Julian Prerauer was born on November 23, 1848 in Landeshut in Silesia as the second child of textile merchant Bernhard Prerauer and his wife Rosalie Bruck. Like many other members of the family, the father later lived in Berlin . The Prussian and then German capital , a center of rapid economic developments in the 19th century, attracted many people from all directions, including many Jewish traders and merchants from Neumark , Silesia and Poznan .

The parents and grandparents on the paternal side came from Groß Strehlitz in Upper Silesia , about 160 km east of Landeshut. The grandfather Joseph Prerauer was a merchant and official of the Jewish community there . The maternal grandparents came from Zülz , southwest of Opole .

Julian Prerauer had an older and a younger brother from his father's first marriage to Rosalie Bruck. After the death of the first wife, the father Bernhard Prerauer entered into a second marriage with Friederike (called Ricca) Libas (also: Liebas), in which at least five more children were born.

All of Julian Prerauer's known siblings and half-siblings later lived in Berlin, as did his father and stepmother. The family name Prerauer appears in the Berlin address book for the first time in 1871. These are the father's brothers, merchants who traded in lime and building materials as well as linen and tea or brokered business. Julian's father, Bernhard Prerauer, appeared in the Berlin address book for the first time in 1873, with a Gogoliner & Goradzer lime and product store at Fruchtstrasse 5, east of Berlin's old town , in the so-called Stralauer Vorstadt and not far from the Frankfurt train station . At Gogolin and Goradze , only a few kilometers southeast of Opole and not far from the Oder , there were significant limestone deposits . The lime or the processed products could be transported by rail and across the Oder. Since around 1868, Count Erdmann von Pückler had been running a lime distillery in Gogolin , and the Bunke and Co. trading company in lime products, obviously together with the Prerauer company in Berlin.

Acts of Brandenburg Landeshauptarchiv suggest that the family Prerauer later than 1874 in the brick production was boarded.

On January 19, 1875, Julian Prerauer married his 20-year-old cousin Jenny Prerauer in Berlin . On December 27, 1875, daughter Ilse was born in Berlin, who remained Prerauer's only child.

The industrialist

In 1875 Prerauer was still called the Kattowitz merchant . He apparently ran a branch of the family business in Upper Silesia, that is, near the raw material deposits and lime kilns.

According to the address book entry, the Berlin lime and products business of the Prerauer brothers traded in lime, cement , gypsum and masonry stones around 1875 . The headquarters were still in Fruchtstrasse, a storage area at Mühlenstrasse 26-30, between the Spree and Frankfurt train station.

Julian Prerauer appears for the first time in the Berlin address book in 1878 as a businessman, living in Berlin southwest , Kreuzbergstrasse 3, and as a co-owner of the company Gogoliner and Goradzer Kalk- und Producten- Komtoir , Prerauer & Co. The Prerauer family's trading branch now also had one Steam mortar factory and a coal shop .

The location of the Prerauer company shifted completely to Berlin's Luisenstadt , to Görlitzer Straße and Lausitzer Platz . The Görlitz train station had been built there since 1866 . The railway line connected Berlin with Niederlausitz ( Cottbus ) and Lower Silesia ( Görlitz ) and had connections in the direction of Breslau .

In 1880 Markus (Marius) and Julian Prerauer were the owners of Prerauer & Co., Markus Prerauer was also Julian's uncle and father-in-law. For the first time, the company is also registered as the owner of the building at Görlitzer Strasse 21–28. In addition to the wholesale of lime, gypsum, cement and coal, a mortar factory is mentioned. After the death of Markus Prerauer (1881), Julian Prerauer appears in the Berlin address book as the sole owner of the company. The above-mentioned mortar works will have been in Niederlehme , where Julian Prerauer maintained a transport line for the Berlin mortar works in 1887.

To the north of Zehdenick , massive clay deposits were discovered during exploration and construction work on the railway line from Löwenberg to Templin . From 1888 they began to develop them for the brick industry. Julian Prerauer belonged to the "second wave" of entrepreneurs who had brickworks built along the Havel . The main Prerauer factory was built in 1891 on the eastern side of the Havel in Zehdenick, south of the railway line. In 1893, on the opposite side of the Havel, north of the mouth of the Welsengraben and east of Mildenberg, a second location, called "Prerauer-Neubau", was added with a furnace. A little later (1896) the Berlin entrepreneur had new clay deposits developed north of Badingen near the former Badingen official brick and a field railway built from Badingen via Mildenberg to his factory.

With the expansion of the main factory in Zehdenick to a total of three ring kilns and the construction of a third brick factory with two ring kilns on Welsengraben north of Mildenberg from 1904, Julian Prerauer became the largest brickworks operator and thus one of the largest employers in the “Zehdenick area” a few years before the outbreak of the First World War ". A fourth plant was to be built between the "new building" and the "Am Welsengraben" plant. Construction work began before 1914, but was stopped again, possibly due to the war. There were plans to expand the Welsengraben and make it navigable in order to connect the brickworks to the Havel waterway , but this was not implemented either.

In addition to the actual ring kilns with the combustion chamber, the respective brickworks also included residential buildings for the brick masters and brickworkers, outbuildings such as stables, wagon sheds as well as toilet and shower buildings, technical facilities such as drying sheds, clay cutters, machine buildings, forge and workshop buildings, coal sheds, transformer houses and rolling mill buildings , Ports or loading points, loading houses, etc.

In January 1889, the United Berlin Mortar Works was created through the merger of the companies Robert Guthmann, Wilhelm Caspari and Prerauer & Co. The corporation owned lime works , gravel and sand pits and other properties, including in Berlin, Charlottenburg , Spandau , Staaken , Niederlehme and the surrounding area as well as in Phöben and the surrounding area and had a mine with limestone quarries in Groß Strehlitz in Silesia. Major parts of the Prerauer company, with the exception of the brickworks near Zehdenick, became part of this company.

Julian Prerauer appears for the first time in the Berlin address book with the “brickworks” branch from 1892, and later as the brickworks owner. The new residential address is Klopstockstraße 8 in the "middle-class" Hansaviertel between the Spree and the Great Tiergarten .

The entrepreneur Julian Prerauer also appeared in other areas. Until about 1904 he was a city ​​councilor in Zehdenick, in 1907 the Jewish entrepreneur donated two large chandeliers and six wall sconces on the occasion of the renovation of the Badingen church . In Zehdenick, the first fortification of today's Waldstrasse, which led to his brick factory there, is attributed to him. He also donated to the needy in the city and to the war aid fund during the First World War.

His marriage to Jenny Prerauer was divorced by the judgment that became final on January 10, 1906. She died on August 29, 1906 at the age of 51 in the Dr. (James) Fraenkel 's sanatorium in Lankwitz . The urn with its ashes was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee in Julian Prerauer's hereditary burial in April 1920 .

On February 12, 1906, Julian Prerauer entered into a second marriage with 39-year-old Fanny Wittner.

In 1909 Julian Prerauer's daughter Ilse married her cousin, Magistrate Assessor Dr. jur. Walter Prerauer.

From 1914 the company Prerauer & Co., brickworks, with the owner Julian Prerauer at the address Kaiserdamm 113 in Charlottenburg; the private apartment was also there.

When the war began in August 1914, the brick factories stood still. The Prerauer'sche brick factory at the mouth of the Welsengraben (Prerauer new building) was probably not used again after the war. It is possible that parts of the complex were used by Johannes Zimmermann's brickworks south of the Welsengraben.

Julian Prerauer's second wife, Fanny, née Wittner, died in Berlin on October 1, 1919 at the age of 52.

The brick and tile industry also hit hard during the times of crisis in the 1920s and early 1930s .

The takeover of the Nazis in January 1933, the anti-Jewish violence shortly thereafter and the first laws against Jews and political dissidents has never experienced Julian Prerauer. In November 1933 he was already 85 years old, so one can assume that his son-in-law Walter Prerauer and daughter Ilse, perhaps other people as well, had already taken over part of the business activities long before that. The name Julian Prerauer appears for the last time in 1934 in the Berlin address book. He did not live to see the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, the burning synagogues on the night of the pogrom in 1938 and other actions and atrocities against the German Jews. He died on December 15, 1934 in Berlin-Charlottenburg at the age of 86. The last place of residence was the apartment at Kaiserdamm 113 in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

On January 14, 1935, he was buried at the Prerauer's hereditary funeral at the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee at the side of his two wives. The hereditary burial is unfortunately in a bad and overgrown condition today. The tall tombstones are overturned and covered with earth and leaves.

After his death, his son-in-law Dr. Walter Prerauer, who was director of the Pfandbriefamt Berlin from 1919 and from May 1923 was one of the founders and board member of Deutsche Verkehrs-Kredit-Bank AG in Berlin, continued the brick making business.

Prerauer's Mildenberg brickworks were - probably still in 1939 - taken over by HC Kröger Aktiengesellschaft Berlin (later “Märkische Ziegeleiwerke”), and Prerauer & Co. was liquidated in 1940 at the latest . That ended the history of the German-Jewish building materials company. The Zehdenick plant of Prerauer (main plant, last three ovens) went to the company Riesenberg & Behrens after 1933.

The brickworks of the Zehdenicker Revier became "state- owned enterprises " after the Second World War . Prerauer's daughter Ilse managed to emigrate with her husband and daughter via the USA to Australia , where she died in 1952.

The mining and production sites have permanently changed the landscape. The area north of Zehdenick - from 1888 the largest brick making area in Brandenburg - is characterized by the former brickworks and clay pits. The Mildenberg Brickworks Museum that resulted is today an important industrial monument , an important venue and an interesting excursion destination.

Today in Zehdenick there is a clay stich named after Prerauer's brickworks , north of it the street “Am Prerauer Stich”. At the Welsengraben near Mildenberg there are still remnants of his brickworks, some residential and farm buildings are listed .

Web links

• Private website about family research and regional history of Mildenberg
• Mildenberg brickworks park