Julius Meinl II.

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Painting by Hans Stalzer (before 1910)

Julius Meinl II. (Born January 18, 1869 in Vienna ; † May 16, 1944 in Alt-Prerau , Lower Austria) was managing director of the Austrian food company Julius Meinl AG. Under his leadership the simple grocery store of his father Julius Meinl I became one of the leading companies in the Austrian food industry. In May 1910 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Franz Joseph Order by the Emperor .

During the First World War he is said to have won the War Ministry as a major customer for biscuits from Meinl, and in November 1914 alone the ministry ordered 100,000 kg of biscuits. At the turn of the year 1915/1916, in the middle of the First World War, Meinl and the Viennese industrialist Max Friedmann initiated the establishment of the “Austrian Political Society” for short “ÖPG”, which soon included numerous members of the upper class and the intelligentsia, industrialists and business people Active and university professors included. In addition to Meinl, there were mainly two personalities who played a key role in the efforts of the ÖPG to achieve a rapid peace of understanding while renouncing the expansion of Austria-Hungary: the internationally respected constitutional lawyer Heinrich Lammasch and the lawyer and member of the Reichsrat Josef Redlich . Meinl, whose dense network of grocery stores stretched across the entire Austro-Hungarian monarchy, recognized the monarchy's rapidly deteriorating supply situation in the raw materials and food sector much earlier than most others, so that worries about his company in his endeavors also became one Role played. The efforts of the ÖPG were ultimately unsuccessful, although Emperor Karl I Heinrich Lammasch repeatedly offered to form a government under his leadership.

Meinl also seems to have played a key role in financing the pacifist magazine Der Friede , which appeared in Vienna from January 1918. Meinl was allowed to manage savings deposits after he founded the savings and credit association of friends and employees of Julius Meinl AG as a cooperative in 1923 .

In 1924 he had Joseph Binder design the well-known Mohrenkopf logo - a dark-skinned child's head with a high red fez on a yellow background. These metal signs shaped the Austrian streetscape until the 1990s. They are now getting high prices at auctions.

As part of his group, he also implemented a number of socio-political ideas that should also be decisive for other companies, such as the introduction of the 5-day week in 1931. Julius Meinl III. took over the operative business in 1933.

Meinl also worked as a diplomat outside of the ÖPG: in the context of the so-called Meinl Group , a loose association of pacifist politicians, lawyers and business leaders, he played a decisive role in the preparation of a peace treaty with the Entente in 1917/1918 . However, these actions were ultimately unsuccessful.

His first wife, Emmy (née Emma Amilie Schörner, March 21, 1871), who was famous for her sense of charity, died on April 27, 1922 after a brief serious illness in the Lahmann Sanatorium in Dresden . For more than 20 years she was an honorary administrator of the Karolinen Children's Hospital . Her burial in the family crypt on the Dornbacher Friedhof drew numerous people, including a large number of representatives from politics, big industry and the banking world.

In 1931 Meinl remarried with the 40 years younger, joyful singer and actress Michiko Tanaka , which saved him from returning to Japan and enabled the permanent relocation of the center of her life to Central Europe. They divorced in 1941 after actor Viktor de Kowa asked for her hand. At the subsequent marriage Meinl was the best man.

In 1954 Julius-Meinl-Gasse was named after him, where Julius Meinl's traditional headquarters have been located since 1912. It begins at the elementary school Julius-Meinl-Gasse 1, runs largely through Ottakring , the 16th district of Vienna, and ends in the 17th district on Hernalser Hauptstraße.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Die Arbeit , Vienna, May 22, 1910. p. 5.
  2. ↑ Oberösterreichische Nachrichten of January 3, 2009, Meinl bankers started out as coffee roasters .
personal data
SURNAME Meinl, Julius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meinl, Julius II.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 1944
Place of death Alt-Prerau , Lower Austria