Julius Bolthausen
Julius Bolthausen (born February 21, 1868 in Gräfrath (today Solingen-Gräfrath ), † December 29, 1947 in Solingen ) was a German teacher and travel company for boat and bike trips to the Orient . He can be seen as a "pioneer in cycling and tourism at the turn of the century".
Bolthausen as a travel company
Julius Bolthausen was born as the son of a farmer and from 1888 was a teacher at various elementary schools in today's districts of Solingen. In 1889 he bought a bicycle and from 1891 on he went cycling all over Europe, for example to Rome in 1892 and to northern Spain in autumn 1894. He sent reports of these trips to the local newspaper. The Solinger Zeitung printed 28 episodes of his travel report from a trip to France in 1895 (2230 kilometers in 18 days) . The reason for this detail was the 25th anniversary of the Franco-Prussian War , which Bolthausen paid tribute to with a visit to and reports on battlefields. On his visit to Paris he commented that "the plans [were] forged here that would bring disaster and ruin to the Germanic tribe". He was a member of the German Cyclist Union and holder of numerous association awards. His wife Emilie - the couple married in 1896 - was also a keen cyclist; The Bolthausens went on their honeymoon on a bicycle to Sanremo . For Bolthausen, however, the bicycle was not a cult object, but merely a means to an end to "get out of the dusty school [...] to roam the world freely and without restrictive shackles". When the bike got too cumbersome, he switched to the “big brother”, the train.
In 1894 Bolthausen was a co-founder and later chairman of the Wanderfalke association to promote cycling and he organized the first group tours for cyclists, especially teachers; the furthest went to Algeria. Since the time was often short, the trips were made by a combination of ship, train and cycling. However, the bicycle as a means of transport played an increasingly minor or no role in his travel plans over time. In 1903 he was released from the Ministry of Culture for a year in the Orient to prepare for trips to Palestine. Since the ministry refused to give Bolthausen a further exemption, he resigned from school in 1904 and became a travel company. In the following years he undertook a total of 86 trips to the Orient, including a trip to India in 1907 . The newspaper Rad-Welt wrote in 1907:
“The previous 22 teacher trips to the Orient, which Mr. Jul. Bolthausen from Solingen has organized in the last six years and in which a total of 380 women and men have participated, will for the first time be a teacher trip to the island of Ceylon in the coming year during the big holidays and line up front India. The excellent connections which North German Lloyd maintains with these countries make it possible to carry out this interesting journey in 7-8 weeks without haste. Here u. a. visited the island of Ceylon, Madras, Calcutta, Darjeeling at the foot of the Himalayas, Benares on the Ganges, Agra, Delhi and Bombay. "
Bolthausen used several series of postcards from relevant publishers for his trips and provided them with impressions that identified him as a tour operator. By sending the travelers home, they served as the ideal advertising medium for his company at the time.
In addition to arranging bookings for his travel participants on NDL ships, he also offered many trips with the express steamer fleet of Austrian Lloyd from Trieste. In his own brochures with detailed travel programs he advertised u. a. also for trips with the pleasure steamer SS Thalia and other ships of the oil, whereby he used positive responses from previous participants as an effective advertising medium. As the official representative of Lloyd, however, he was not listed in its announcements (from Solingen an "E. Karsch" is only mentioned from 1913).
The First World War interrupted his travel business and the implementation of long-distance trips to the Orient. Bolthausen volunteered for the Turkish army without success. In 1915 he moved to Cologne, where he lived with his family until 1931. From the mid-1920s he turned back to the travel business before finally giving up in 1932.
Works
To the Orient . Solingen n.d. [1902], 184 pp.
Julius Bolthausen jun.
His son Julius Bolthausen jun. should be his successor. After attending school in Cologne from 1930 to 1932 he did a traineeship in Palestine and Egypt , but the plans to continue his father's travel company had to be abandoned because of the poor economic situation. From 1933 to 1935 he attended the Bonn State Police School. In 1935 he signed up as a professional soldier in the Wehrmacht .
Arthur Bolthausen
Julius Bolthausen was, like his sons Julius (1913–?) And Arthur Bolthausen (1897–1981), a member of the NSDAP . Arthur Bolthausen was a high-ranking Nazi functionary and adjutant of the Solingen district leader Helmut Otto on November 10, 1938, involved in the murder of the Solingen journalist Max Leven . He was sentenced to two years in prison for complicity after World War II .
The legacies of Julius Bolthausen and his sons are in the Solingen City Archives.
literature
- Hartmut Roehr: "Julius Bolthausen - a Solingen travel pioneer". In: The home. Contributions to the history of Solingen and the Bergisches Land . Volume 23, 2007.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The life data of Julius Bolthausen on archive.nrw.de
- ↑ Description of the holdings on archive.nrw.de
- ^ The German cyclist , December 5, 1894
- ↑ Roehr, p. 32
- ↑ Roehr, p. 31
- ↑ Compare the article The Oriental Travels of Julius Bolthausen in: Tobias Zywietz: The Middle East Philatelic Bulletin , Neulingen 2015 (No. 1, PDF file ).
- ↑ a b Compare the program of the Orientfahrten 1909 . Jul. Bolthausen, Solingen, 32 pp.
- ↑ a b c Solingen City Archives, holdings Na 42, Julius and Arthur Bolthausen
- ↑ It is a description of Bolthausen's first journey to the Orient in 1903.
- ↑ Solingen - Chronicle 1949, July 21 ( Memento from May 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 629 kB)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bolthausen, Julius |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German teacher and travel company |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 21, 1868 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Graefrath |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 29, 1947 |
| Place of death | Solingen |