Karl Ruhmann

Karl Ruhmann (* February 23, 1897 ; † April 4, 1972 ) was an Austrian paper manufacturer and tin collector who built up the largest private tin collection in Europe, the tin collection Dr. Karl Ruhmann . He worked as an expert on issues such as hallmarking , maker's mark , lead evidence, tin pest , origin, quality and age categorizations, classifications or assessments. Its specialist library enjoys an international reputation.

Life

Karl Ruhmann was born in 1897 as the youngest of the four sons of Moritz Ruhmann (1858-1936) and Clementine Ruhmann-Koessler into the industrial family Ruhmann, his grandfather was the paper industrialist Adolf Ruhmann (1832-1920). As a child he started collecting pewter objects. In the First World War , he made like his brothers as a reserve officer service and was awarded for bravery. His eldest brother Georg was seriously wounded near Lemberg and died shortly after the war, possibly of the Spanish flu .

After the war Ruhmann studied law and received his doctorate . Together with his two other brothers, Franz and Alfred , he joined their parents' company after the end of the war. There, he managed to put his idea, in addition to paper production and beer coasters make.

In the 1930s, Karl Ruhmann and his brothers Franz and Alfred took over and ran the family business independently.

Second World War

After Austria was annexed to the German Reich in March 1938, the Ruhmann brothers, as “non-Aryans ”, were forced to sell the family company “ Guggenbacher Maschinenpapier-Fabrik Adolf Ruhmann ”. With this Aryanization , the family received nothing from the sale.

As part of the contract, the three brothers had to be legally brought to Yugoslavia; from 1939 to 1941 they lived in Zagreb . After the German invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Ruhmann brothers fled to Dalmatia . They were now almost destitute. The brothers fought their way into Italian-occupied Dubrovnik and then back to Split. The Italian military administration did not tolerate any interference by the Germans, which at least allowed them to trade and do business there. Karl Ruhmann traded, bought goods, including in Milan, for Dalmatia and sold Dalmatian products to Italy in order to raise money to survive. Katharina Hofer (1910–2000), later his second wife, helped him a lot with the organization and as an interpreter . She was already familiar with Italy from visiting relatives in South Tyrol and had additional experience from her own interrogations by the Gestapo in her hometown of Innsbruck in the summer of 1938 . When Italy left the alliance with Greater Germany in 1943, Karl and Katharina Ruhmann fled illegally to Switzerland , where they were interned . Karl Ruhmann worked for the Swiss Confederation until the end of the war. His two brothers initially stayed in Dalmatia, then in Croatia until the end of the war. Shortly after the end of the war, Alfred died at the age of 50 in September 1945 in Zagreb and Franz in July 1946 at the age of 56. Nothing is known about the circumstances of death.

post war period

Karl Ruhmann was the only survivor of the Ruhmann family. After the end of the war, Karl Ruhmann and his now second wife Katharina Ruhmann returned to Austria and fought for the restitution of the Ruhmann property that had been squeezed out in 1938. After almost six years of legal proceedings, the relatively small Trattenmühle factory in Wildon, including the manor house and around 17 hectares of land, as well as the technically obsolete cellulose factory in Krems, were returned in 1951 . This corresponded to approx. 7% of the pre-war assets. The restitution proceedings for the much larger part of the Ruhmann company dragged on for nine years. It was not until 1954 that a large printing company in the state of Styria submitted a settlement proposal for 4.9 million schillings in compensation and accepted it by the enervated Ruhmann family. With this money, the obsolete machines in the 100-man factory Wildon could be made operational again and modernized. Many parts of the collections of Karl Ruhmann and his brothers were also returned from various museums such as Innsbruck or Vienna, and a number of works of art could also be secured from collaborators of the Nazi regime. In gratitude for this, Karl Ruhmann organized several painting and tin exhibitions in the 1960s, including one in Innsbruck. He also donated several precious glasses in memory of his brother Franz to museums such as the Museum of Applied Arts and the City Museum in Vienna.

Professionally, Karl Ruhmann succeeded in rebuilding the beer mat production in Wildon, as in the 1930s, with great economic success. Soon the Wildoner Ruhmann-Fabrik was again a well-known and respected beer mat specialist since the 1920s, but now under the name “Ruhmann KG Wildon”. In his private life, he and his wife Katharina concentrated on the new residence they acquired after the war in Ticino and the restituted mansion in Wildon, and they also acquired a new residence in Vienna.

Karl Ruhmann pursued various hobbies. As a nature lover, he was active as a hunter and hunter and worked as a wildlife filmmaker (film award 1936 for his black and white film “The last great egrets on Lake Neusiedl”). He also left an alpine garden that still exists today and his spacious aviary in the Wildon Ruhmann area. He devoted himself with great verve in the arts and collecting area, in addition to pictures, sculptures, furniture, clocks, etc., especially since his youth frühester preferred Edelzinn and attained the status of a luminary in the field.

Karl Ruhmann died in 1972. After his death, his wife Katharina continued to exchange knowledge with other tin collectors. Since the couple had no descendants, Katharina Ruhmann-Hofer signed over the entire remaining assets for the preservation of the tin collection and the other cultural features in the Ruhmann area (manor house, Nullerl house, alpine garden, Voiliere etc.) to the “Dr. Ludwig Karl Ruhmann Foundation ”in Vaduz , which has since maintained the tin museum on the Ruhmannschen Gut" Trattenmühle "in Wildon.

literature

• Ulrike Felber, Peter Melichar , Markus Priller, Berthold Unfried, Fritz Weber: Economy of Aryanization . Part 2: Economic sectors, industries, case studies , Oldenbourg Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-3702905163 , p.
• Katharina Ruhmann: precious pewter. Catalog for the Museum of Dr. Karl Ruhmann Collection . Wildon 1988
• Katharina Ruhmann: The joy of pewter from the Dr. Karl Ruhmann ., Wildon 1991
• Elmar Scheider: Only the tin collection survived ... the rise, persecution and extinction of the big industrialist family Ruhmann . In: Vienna 2010, No. 2, and Vienna 2011, No. 1, of the Austrian Burgenverein. ( Digitaliat ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Archived copy ( memento of the original from August 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on May 14, 2011)