Karl Supf

Karl Supf

Grave site , Königin-Luise-Straße 55, in Berlin-Dahlem

Karl Supf (born October 8, 1855 in Nuremberg , † January 27, 1915 in Berlin ) was a German entrepreneur and founder and chairman of the Colonial Economic Committee (KWK).

Life

After graduating from high school in Nuremberg, Karl Supf and his brother Willy Supf joined the management of Supf & Klinger in 1877. The company was founded by her father Friedrich Supf in Nuremberg in 1850. She manufactured non-ferrous metal sheets and foils, ran a brass, copper and gold beating shop and dealt with the coating of textiles with powdered non-ferrous metals. The company was renamed "Factory of bronze-color-leaf metal-Rauschgold & Folien" and with the advent of the packaging industry the company began to produce tin foils ( tinfoil , silver paper ) from 1890 onwards . In addition, the company was one of the first aluminum foil manufacturers in Germany from 1913 . In 1892 Supf moved to Berlin in order to be able to better represent the factory's political interests, particularly with regard to raw material procurement. In addition, his particular concern was the independence of Germany from raw material imports from abroad. As a colonialist , he saw the opportunity to produce and mine raw materials from tropical regions in the newly acquired German colonies .

In 1895 he was appointed to the entire board of the German Colonial Society , and one year later he became chairman of the committee.

In order to allow practical activities to follow these theoretical activities, Supf founded the Colonial Economic Committee together with the agricultural botanist Otto Warburg in the summer of 1896, which he headed as first chairman until his death . The committee had its headquarters in Berlin and a permanent representation in German East Africa . It maintained commissions on various industrially usable raw materials that could be grown in the colonies (e.g. cotton , rubber , vegetable oil raw materials and sheep's wool ), and there was also a commission on colonial technology.

The respective committees commissioned colonial economic expeditions of various well-known scientists to various tropical regions in order to explore possibilities for growing raw materials. Reports of these trips, as well as regular inventory reports of the current cultivation projects, were then regularly made available to the Reich Chancellor and the Colonial Department in the Foreign Office and the Reich Colonial Office in order to receive state support for the intended projects. Supf was particularly interested in the Cotton Commission, which was founded in 1906 to promote cotton cultivation, especially in the African colonies (East Africa, Togo and Cameroon ). Indeed, the state provided substantial funds. According to Wilhelm Supf, the KWK received around 4 million marks, of which 1,670,000 marks alone were for the cotton trials. He continued his work during the First World War , but died in 1915 after an illness.

Karl Supf badge

Karl Supf plaque

The surviving Supf family donated the “Karl Supf plaque”, which was awarded by the Colonial Economic Committee, to honor merits in boosting the colonial economy. Prize winners were "men who have made special contributions to the German colonial economy in the spirit of the immortalized Karl Supf".

Fonts (selection)

Cotton map Cameroon 1909 - issued by the KWK

Cotton map of Togo 1909 - issued by the KWK

• Cotton expedition to Togo , justified by the text On the Cotton Question by Karl Supf and Ferdinand Wohltmann , Berlin, 1898.
• German colonial cotton , reports, Berlin, 1900/08.
• New branches of machine industry: German cotton harvesting machines; German palm oil and palm kernel extraction machines , contribution to the 1909 exhibition of the colonial-economic committee, Berlin, 1909.
• German colonial cotton companies , annual reports submitted to the KWK Cotton Building Commission, Berlin, 1906–1910.
• Results of the German East Africa trip in 1913 , Berlin, 1913.

Web links

Commons : Karl Supf  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Newspaper article about Karl Supf in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sören Utermark: "Black Subject versus Black Brother". Bernhard Dernburg's reforms in the colonies of German East Africa, German South West Africa, Togo and Cameroon , dissertation at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Kassel, Kassel, 2011, p. 331.
2. ^ Articles of Association for the Foundation of the Supf Plaque. In: Kolonialwirtschaftliches Komitee (Hrsg.): Negotiations of the board of the Kolonialwirtschaftliches Komitee , Berlin, April 1, 1916 ( online ).

literature

• Karl Supf. In: Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): German Colonial Lexicon. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, Volume III, p. 439 ( online ).
• Wilhelm Supf : The end of the German colonial economy? Commemorative publication in honor of the 25 years of work of the Colonial Economic Committee , published by the Colonial Economic Committee, Berlin, 1921.
• Sören Utermark: "Black subject versus black brother". Bernhard Dernburg's reforms in the colonies of German East Africa, German South West Africa, Togo and Cameroon , dissertation at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Kassel, Kassel, 2011, p. 143 ff.