Julius Poensgen

Julius Poensgen

Julius Poensgen (born February 15, 1814 in Kirschseiffen near Hellenthal / Eifel, † December 11, 1880 in Düsseldorf ) was a German industrialist . He comes from the widespread Eifel entrepreneur family Poensgen , who have operated iron works in the Schleiden area as Reidemeister since the middle of the 15th century . Some lines have moved to Düsseldorf and were instrumental in building up the Rhenish iron, steel and pipe industry.

Live and act

Julius Poensgen was the son of the Düren textile manufacturer Daniel Gisbert Poensgen (1774-1817) and Gertrud Schmidt. After completing his training, he initially worked for the Jünkerath trade union in Jünkerath near Stadtkyll / Eifel, whose sole owner was a relative, Carl Poensgen (1802–1848). He then went into business for himself and, together with his younger brother Albert Poensgen , ran a lead pipe factory, a nail factory and a company for the manufacture of heating systems in the Eifel towns of Gemünd and Mauel , which were run separately by the two brothers. In 1847 the individual companies were combined under the name of Gebr. Poensgen . The pipe works belonging to Albert Poensgen were not included. This was moved to Düsseldorf in 1860. Went from him in 1872 by merging with the Düsseldorf metallurgical and rolling mills of his relatives Gustav Poensgen and Rudolf Poensgen the " Düsseldorf tube and iron mills AG , vorm. Poensgen ”.

Since Albert Poensgen was fully occupied with the construction and expansion of the Düsseldorf pipe works, his brother Julius Poensgen took over the management of the Poensgen Brothers , which had also been moved to Düsseldorf in 1860. There the manufacture of steam heaters with the then patented “Perking heater” began. The main customers were hotels, sanatoriums, hospitals, but also industry. When Julius Poensgen died in 1880, his then 20-year-old son Reinhard Poensgen (1860–1924) took over and developed the company, which was converted into a stock corporation in 1906, after 44 years of activity into a leading company in the field of Design and manufacture of laundry machines. In 1924 his son Siegfried Poensgen (1893–1955) took over the management of Gebr. Poensgen AG . At the 1926 “ GeSoLei ” exhibition in Düsseldorf , which attracted millions of visitors, the Poensgen steam laundry machines attracted a great deal of attention. The majority of the shares in Gebr. Poensgen AG were transferred to Siegfried Poensgen's brother Helmuth Poensgen in the following years . Until his death in 1945 he was a member of the board of “ Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG ” and chairman of the supervisory board of Gebr. Poensgen AG .

family

Tomb of Julius and Louise Poensgen at the Nordfriedhof Düsseldorf (2010)

Julius Poensgen was married to Louise Mayer (1829–1907), daughter of Jacob Anton Mayer (1782–1857) from Aachen , the bookseller, publisher and founder of Mayersche Buchhandlung . They had four children together. Poensgen's daughter Emilie (Milla) (1856–1935) married the painter Gregor von Bochmann in 1877 . The grave monument for Julius and Louise Poensgen was created by the grandson and sculptor Gregor von Bochmann around 1907. The relief depicts the "four ages".

literature

• Lutz Hatzfeld:  Poensgen. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 567 ( digitized version ).
• Edmund Strutz (Ed.): German Gender Book , Volume 123, 1958, Verlag CA Starke, Glücksburg, Ostsee.
• Josef Wilden: Five Poensgen create a new Düsseldorf , Düsseldorf, 1942
• Heinrich Kellerter, Ernst Poensgen: The history of the Poensgen family ; Ed .: A. Bagel-Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1908
• Horst Wessel: The entrepreneurs of the Poensgen family in the Eifel and in Düsseldorf , in: Bewegen -verbindungen-Gestalten, entrepreneurs from the 17th to the 20th century , writings on the Rhenish-Westphalian economic history, vol. 44, foundation Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv zu Cologne, Cologne, 2003