Karl Waechter (entrepreneur)

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Karl Leonhard Waechter (* 1840 in Stettin ; † May 22, 1913 in (Berlin-) Charlottenburg ) was a German civil engineer , building contractor and founder of numerous railway companies , especially small and branch lines .

Life

Karl Waechter's parents were the Szczecin merchant Julius Leonhard Waechter and his wife Louise Waechter. Karl Waechter grew up in his native city of Stettin, where he passed the Abitur at the local Marienstiftsgymnasium . At the Berlin Building Academy he was one of the youngest graduates to take the state examination to become a government architect ( assessor in public building management). In 1867 Karl Waechter received the Schinkel Prize in the engineering category for water, rail and mechanical engineering for his design of a railway bridge over the Rhine near Düsseldorf. He used the prize money on several study trips to Great Britain.

A brief activity as a government master builder in the civil service during the construction of the Eifelbahn was followed by the supervision of rail projects in Romania . Then he became director of the Berlin Northern Railway Company . When it was nationalized in 1875, he moved to the R. Schneider civil engineering company. Extensive railway and port constructions were carried out under his direction. He was also involved in the construction of the Berlin Ringbahn (until 1877) and the Berlin Stadtbahn (from 1875) by taking on extensive construction projects.

After he had already worked in Hanover as a partner and employee of the company Wilhelm Hostmann & Co. with the construction and operation of mine and connecting railways as well as narrow-gauge railways, Karl Waechter founded the railway company in Berlin in 1885 with civil engineering contractor Carl Hubert Vering from Hanover Vering & Waechter construction and operating company . The Prussian Small Railroad Act, passed in 1892, opened up a broad field of activity for the company, which had been run by Karl Waechter since Carl Vering's death in 1897. Waechter financed and built numerous narrow and standard-gauge small railways, trams and railways for regional and local transport throughout the German Empire.

Karl Waechter was married to Maria Johanna Elisabeth, nee Schneider. He died in 1913 at the age of 72. Contemporary obituaries acknowledged his merits for the small and branch lines in Germany, his great modesty, his "deep, inexhaustible kindness of heart" and his "resulting benevolence towards employees and subordinates".

Railway lines

Awards

literature

  • RM: Karl Waechter †. In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung , 33rd year 1913, No. 43 (from May 31, 1913), p. 288. ( Digitized at the Digital State Library Berlin)
  • Newspaper of the Association of German Railway Administrations , year 1913, page 675. (Obituary)
  • Organ for the progress of the railway system in technical relation , year 1913, issue 12 (from June 15, 1913). (Obituary)
  • Meinhard Döpner: The Deutsche Eisenbahn-Betriebs-Gesellschaft AG. Lokrundschau-Verlag, 2002.
  • Klaus-Peter Quill: Vering & Waechter. In: Branch and narrow-gauge railways in Germany. ( Loose-leaf collection ) GeraNova-Verlag, 1994–2011.
personal data
SURNAME Waechter, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guardian, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German building contractor and founder of numerous small and branch lines
DATE OF BIRTH 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1913
Place of death Berlin