Karl Krause (entrepreneur)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karl Krause

Karl Krause (born November 29, 1823 in Liemehna near Eilenburg , † March 3, 1902 in Leipzig ; full name: Johann Gottfried Karl Krause ) was a Leipzig entrepreneur .

Life

Karl Krause was the eleventh child of the farmer Johann Gottfried Krause and his wife Johanna Regina, née Heyer. Since his father died when Karl was only eight years old, he had a very hard childhood. In 1838 he went to Leipzig and worked as an errand boy for the café français of the confectioner Wilhelm Felsche . Since he saw no further progress here, he completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith from 1842 to 1846, after which he went on a journey to southwest Germany and Switzerland . Back in Leipzig in 1848, he worked as a journeyman in several Leipzig machine factories until 1855. At the same time, he trained himself further.

The Karl Krause machine factory around 1900

With little capital saved and the help of pastry chef Felsche, he opened a repair shop for machines in the graphic arts industry in Leipzig's Erdmannstrasse in 1855. He soon began to build such machines himself, from 1855 lithographic presses , from 1856 copper printing presses, smoothing and packing presses and from 1857 calendering mills. In addition to systems for the graphic industry, his specialty was above all paper cutting machines and other machines that were used in bookbinderies , such as toggle presses for blind printing from 1857 onwards. The first expansion of his factory took place with the move to Inselstraße. In 1857 he set up his own iron foundry and in 1859 the export of his products began. Other machines for the manufacture of covers followed, for example gold, blind printing and embossing presses in 1867.

In 1873/1874 he had a new factory built on a large piece of land he had acquired in 1870 in Crottendorf, east of Leipzig, which soon became the largest employer in the municipality of Anger-Crottendorf , which was formed through the merger with Anger in 1883, and after its incorporation in 1889 also for the new Leipzig district. In 1896 the factory had 600 employees. It became a leading company in the industry. With its products, the company made a significant contribution to the mechanization and industrialization of the bookbinding trade in Germany, thus pushing the spread of publishing covers and thus the displacement of the manual bookbinding trade.

Karl Krause had married Emilie Polter (1835–1911) from this village in Gottscheina in 1857 . Their daughter Anna married Heinrich Biagosch (1855–1924). The Biagosch family lived with Karl Krause's widow in a villa built on the factory site in 1906.

Honors

  • In 1893, Karl Krause was given the honorary title of Kommerzienrat .
  • The street running north of the company premises in Leipzig-Anger-Crottendorf bore his name from 1905 to 1963 (now Theodor-Neubauer-Straße).
Former machine factory Karl Krause in March 2020

consequences

The relief plates of the former grave of Karl Krause in the New Johannisfriedhof Leipzig, now restored in the Old Johannisfriedhof

Heinrich Biagosch, the husband of Karl Krause's daughter, had already joined the company in 1893 and ran it alone after the death of his father-in-law. Later his sons took over the company. This continued to grow and in 1913 already had 1,500 employees.

The plant was bombed during World War II. From 1945 onwards numerous machines were dismantled and brought to the Soviet Union as part of the reparations payments . In 1948 the company was expropriated and from 1960 was part of the VEB Buchbindereimaschinenwerke Leipzig. The former Karl Krause factory survived until 1994. The empty factories were demolished and the site leveled.

After the expropriation, the Biagosch family moved to Bielefeld and founded Krause-Biagosch GmbH there in 1949, which has belonged to the Horstmann Group since 1975 when the owner changed hands. Krause-Biagosch is still a leading company in the graphic industry.

literature

  • Hans Jaeger:  Krause, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 703 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ernst-Peter Biesalski: The mechanization of the German bookbinding: 1850 - 1900 . Frankfurt am Main: Booksellers Association, 1991. Zugl .: Mainz, Univ., Diss., 1989. ISBN 3-7657-1614-6 , especially p. 14f.
  • VEB Buchbindereimaschinenwerk (Hrsg.): A century of bookbinding machinery. 1855-1955 . Leipzig 1955.
  • Memorial sheet to Karl Krause, royal Saxon Commerzienrath, born on November 29, 1823, died on March 3, 1902 . Polz, Leipzig 1902 ( nbn-resolving.org ).
  • Ulrich Hess; Holger Starke: Chamber History. 150 years IHK for Saxony; 1862--2012 . Ed .: Chambers of Industry and Commerce Chemnitz, Dresden and Leipzig. Friebel, Dresden, p. 30–33 ( bsz-bw.de ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig of A-Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 318.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Krause, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krause, Johann Gottfried Karl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Leipzig entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Liemehna
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1902
Place of death Leipzig