Karl Friedrich Oppermann (engineer)

Karl Friedrich Oppermann (also: Karl Oppermann ; born April 20, 1889 in Bernburg (Saale) ; † March 23, 1969 ) was a German railway civil engineer and manager in the transport sector. From 1921 to 1964 he was director of the Bentheimer Eisenbahn and temporarily President of the Association of Non- Federal Railways and a member of the administrative board of the Deutsche Bundesbahn . For his life's work, in particular for his efforts to reconcile with the Netherlands after the Second World War and his national commitment, he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 and the Lower Saxony Order of Merit in 1967.

Life

origin

In 1908 Oppermann passed his school leaving examination in his hometown of Bernburg, after which he began to study civil engineering at the Technical University of Dresden . There he passed the preliminary diploma examination and then moved to the Technical University of Braunschweig , where he successfully passed the main diploma examination in October 1913. In November 1913 he was appointed government building supervisor ( trainee lawyer in the public building administration) and transferred to the Halle (Saale) railway operations office. The legal clerkship was interrupted by the beginning of the First World War in August 1914. Oppermann did his military service in the field railway service at various railway depots in France, Belgium and Poland. During this time Oppermann was not only concerned with the operations service at the stations under his control, but also with the technical maintenance and planning of railway lines and operating facilities. After the end of the war, these activities were recognized as training periods, so that in 1919 he was able to register for the second state examination , which he successfully passed in February 1920. He was then employed as a government master builder ( assessor in the public building administration) initially at the Reich Railway Directorate in Halle .

Activity in the county of Bentheim

As early as April 20, 1921, Oppermann left the Prussian civil service and took a job at the Bentheimer Kreisbahn, whose continued existence was in question due to the dire economic and operational conditions. In addition to the inadequate train station and workshop facilities, the main track and the poor state of maintenance of the locomotives and wagons were responsible for the company's economic misery. Oppermann countered these grievances with well-founded specialist knowledge and the introduction of contemporary economic and technical standards. In addition to the reinforcement of the superstructure , seven ELNA steam locomotives from 1925 and four bogie passenger cars from the Wismar wagon factory as well as two baggage cars with a post compartment were procured from 1928 . In Neuenhaus a modern and generously dimensioned new railway workshop had already been built, which formed the foundation of the railway operations on the Bentheimer Eisenbahn, as the district-owned company was called since 1924 at the instigation of Oppermann. In addition to the reception buildings in Quendorf and Hestrup , Oppermann had the new management building built in Bentheim in 1928/1929 according to a design by the well-known Hamburg architect Fritz Höger in the style of brick expressionism. In 1935, the company's conversion was from a publicly owned enterprise into a joint stock company . When the headquarters building in Bentheim was bombed on February 14, 1945, Oppermann was buried and barely escaped death.

After the Second World War, the modernization efforts continued under the sign of new economic prosperity with the procurement of brand-new Krupp steam locomotives for oil transport in 1950, for which the Esche - Osterwald mine connection was specially constructed in 1949 . The rail connection to Coevorden (NL) , which had been interrupted since February 22, 1945 due to an Allied bombing raid , was restored in March 1951. Procurement of brand-new MaK rod diesel locomotives began as early as 1955, which enabled all steam locomotives to be switched off successively until 1969. Modern standards were also set in passenger transport with the Esslingen railcars and a Uerdingen rail bus : passenger trains ran continuously to Rheine , the Grenzlandexpress from Bentheim Nord via Gronau (Westphalia) and Düsseldorf to Mönchengladbach and a daily through car connection Neuenhaus - Hanover (- Helmstedt ) offered passengers comfort and convenience beyond the boundaries of Grafschaft Bentheim . A workshop facility was built in 1952 in Bentheim to maintain the Esslingen railcars.

Supraregional commitment

The increasing importance of the Bentheimer Eisenbahn was already evident on December 1, 1931, when it took over management of the Ahaus-Enscheder-Eisenbahn and the Kleinbahn Lingen-Berge-Quakenbrück . In January 1933, the Meppen-Haselünner Railway was also co-administered by the management in Bentheim. In January 1938 Oppermann was appointed head of the specialist group "private railways of general traffic" of the Reichsverkehrsgruppe Eisenbahnbahnen . In 1951 he became president of the "Association of German Non-Federal Railways" (VDNE) and was chairman of the advisory board. In 1952 he was appointed by the Lower Saxony state government as their representative on the administrative board of the Deutsche Bundesbahn. As a member of the board of the employers' association of German non-federally owned railways, he played a key role in drafting collective bargaining agreements . With the dissolution of the Lower Saxony State Railway Authority in 1959, the Bentheimer Eisenbahn took over management of the Ankum-Bersenbrücker Eisenbahn , the Ihrhove – Westrhauderfehn , the Leer – Aurich – Wittmund and the Emden – Pewsum – Greetsiel railway . In 1960, the management of the Wittlager Kreisbahn was added.

Retirement and death

Karl Oppermann finally left the board of the Bentheimer Eisenbahn AG on December 31, 1964. Formally, he remained in the management of a subsidiary until December 31, 1966 in order to enable him to remain in the position of 1st Chairman of the Association of German Non-Federal Railways. He died on March 23, 1969 after a serious illness. The Grafschafter Nachrichten characterized Oppermann in an obituary on March 25, 1969 with the following words: “Karl Oppermann was not an everyday person (...) and not a comfortable contemporary. He asked a lot of himself, and he asked no less of his staff. For him, performance and success set the standard. But everyone who knew him better knows that a kind heart beat behind what was often a rough shell. Karl Oppermann was generous and helpful, and you could count on his steadfastness. "

literature

• Herbert Raben, Ralf Tyborczyk: Black gold on shiny rails. 70 years of oil transport at Bentheimer Eisenbahn AG. In: Heimatverein Grafschaft Bentheim (ed.): Bentheimer Jahrbuch 2014. ISBN 978-3-922428-88-6 , pp. 111–122.
• Herbert Raben, Ralf Tyborczyk: Six watches for good neighbors. On the history of the cross-border railway line Laarwald - Coevorden. In: Heimatverein Grafschaft Bentheim (ed.): Bentheimer Jahrbuch 2015. ISBN 978-3-922428-92-3 , pp. 217–228.
• Herbert Raben, Ralf Tyborczyk: Up to date. Karl Friedrich Oppermann and the Bentheim Railway. In: Eisenbahn-Geschichte ( ISSN  1611-6283 ), No. 76 (June / July 2016), pp. 20-27.
• Ralf Alexander Tyborczyk, Herbert Raben: Passenger traffic on the Bentheimer railway. Heimatverein Grafschaft Bentheim, Nordhorn 2019, ISBN 978-3-9818211-5-4

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Federal Archives, B 122/38575
2. ↑ Lower Saxony State Archives, Nds. 50, Acc. 2012/042, No. 2
3. ↑ http://graf-mec.de/index.php?page=wismarer- Personenwagen
4. ↑ Ruth Prinz, Peter Koop (ed.): Neuenhaus. Views and insights. Aspects of a city history. Neuenhaus / Nordhorn 2011, ISBN 978-3-938552-05-6 , pp. 230-239.
5. ↑ http://www.db58.de/2015/07/01/fahrplan-des- Grenzland-express /