Kilian von Steiner

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Kilian von Steiner

Kilian Steiner , from 1895 from Steiner , (born October 9, 1833 in Laupheim , † September 25, 1903 in Stuttgart ) was a German banker and patron . He is considered to be the driving force behind the founding of the Württembergische Vereinsbank in 1869, which, under his leadership, was involved in the founding of other banks. Steiner was also interested in literature and played a major role in founding the Schiller National Museum in Marbach and the Swabian Schiller Club .

Life

Origin and education

Steiner came from the Jewish community of Laupheim . He was the eighth of twelve children of Victor Steiner (1790–1865) and Sophie geb. Reichenbach (1800–1867) from Hohenems in Vorarlberg . In the beginning , his father was still a peddler , had founded a leather business according to the emancipation laws of 1828 and quickly became wealthy, so that in 1843 he was able to acquire the Groß Laupheim estate, where he also built a brewery .

Kilian attended the Jewish school in Laupheim, then grammar schools in Stuttgart and Ulm . He met his future wife Clotilde Bacher while he was still at school in Stuttgart. He studied law at the universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg . In 1858 he passed the first state examination, after which he was trainee lawyer at the Oberamtsgericht in Ulm. The second state examination followed in autumn 1859.

Lawyer in Heilbronn

Lifelong friendships with the economist Gustav Schmoller and the banker Georg von Siemens began during his student days . On Schmoller's mediation, Steiner settled down as a lawyer in Heilbronn in 1859 . There he frequented the Schmoller house and was in contact with the respected families Feyerabend, Buttersack and Rauch as well as Gustav von Rümelin and the Württemberg finance minister Adolf Goppel . The intercourse with the upscale Heilbronn districts, especially in the Rauch'schen Palais , shaped Steiner very much. His circle of friends urged the single woman to marry Schmoller's sister Emma, ​​which Steiner, for reasons of faith, did not want to consider.

Political agitator in Stuttgart

In 1865 Steiner moved to Stuttgart. His friends there included the paint dealers and producers Gustav Müller and Gustav Siegle , the publisher Adolf von Kröner , the textile merchant Lorenz Chevalier , the insurance director Max Duttenhofer , the financier Eduard Pfeiffer and also Adolf Goppel. Steiner worked as an agitator in Stuttgart and wrote political memoranda on economic policy. Together with his political friends, Kilian Steiner was one of the founders of the small German , Bismarck- oriented German party in Stuttgart in 1866 . Many of Steiner's valuable business contacts later go back to his political commitment. Several important partners, including the financier Pfeiffer and the Kaulla family , were part of the established, emancipated Jewish community in Stuttgart. Alfred von Kaulla (1852-1924) was Steiner's closest colleague.

Business strategist from the early days

In 1869 Kilian Steiner was involved in founding the Württembergische Vereinsbank . In contrast to many banking houses founded after 1870, the bank was not founded by bankers, but (as Steiner himself put it in 1894) an association of local trading and industrial companies , which took place as an act of self-help by the local trading community . The establishment of the bank, with the aim of a bank independent of external influences, was the logical consequence of the economic policy demands of the German party . The “external influences” with which one wanted to prevent with an independent Württemberg institute were not only in other European countries, but also in other German countries at the time of the German states. In particular, the Württemberg Vereinsbank was supposed to guarantee the independence of the Württemberg economy from the financial centers of Frankfurt am Main and Augsburg , and in the case of the wool industry also from Berlin . In addition to Steiner, the other founders of the Vereinsbank included his friends Gustav Müller, Heinrich Siegle, Lorenz Chevalier and the Rauch brothers from Heilbronn, as well as the Calwer patrician Zahn, the manufacturer Zoeppritz from Heidenheim, the manufacturer Laiblin from Pfullingen and the banker Benedict from Stuttgart , Rümelin from Heilbronn and Lödel from Ulm. Steiner, from whom the idea of ​​founding the bank association originated, was initially only a bank consultant (legal advisor), but was then appointed to the supervisory board in 1870 and delegated from there to the management board. The rapid development of the Vereinsbank was facilitated by the fact that the Benedict bank went into liquidation at about the same time as the Vereinsbank was founded and the Vereinsbank was able to take over most of Benedict's customers, so that within nine months by the end of 1869 there were already over 430 accounts and already 6.5 million marks credits were set in current account.

Numerous other start-ups came from Steiner and the Vereinsbank. He or the Vereinsbank were involved in founding the Württembergische central bank and the Stuttgarter Gewerbekasse, the Deutsche Bank in Berlin, the Rheinische Creditbank in Mannheim, the Deutsche Vereinsbank and the Deutsche Effecten- und Wechselbank in Frankfurt am Main, the BASF , the Daimler- Motoren-Gesellschaft in Untertürkheim and the Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik (WMF) in Geislingen participate in the Steige . Again and again, these enterprises from the early days took place together with people from Steiner's circle, as the number of entrepreneurial and economic-political actors in Württemberg was still small at that time. The Vereinsbank supervisory board member Chevalier sat on the supervisory board of WMF, Siegle owned a majority of shares and chaired the supervisory board at WMF, Steiner, in turn, sat on the supervisory board of Duttenhofer's Rottweiler powder factory and helped with the conversion of Daimler into a stock corporation. Eduard Pfeiffer was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Vereinsbank and helped found the central bank.

Under Steiner, the Württembergische Vereinsbank played an important role in the construction of the Anatolian railways . H. the lines from Ismid to Ankara and from Eskishehir to Konya, an important section of the later Baghdad Railway . The Württembergische Vereinsbank held 431 of 4,500 shares in the construction company, while Steiner and his confidante Kaulla privately owned further shares. Steiner is considered to be one of the key figures behind the railway project, from which numerous Württemberg companies benefited, especially the Esslingen machine factory . Steiner's confidante Kaulla conducted numerous negotiations on site.

Family started in 1869

On October 17, 1869, Steiner married his childhood friend Clotilde Goldschmidt nee. Bacher, who was meanwhile already widowed and mother of two daughters. The marriage had three more children: Victor (1870–1939), Luise (1872–1932) and Adolf Wohlgemut (called Mut ) (1876–1957). The family's initial domicile can no longer be clearly identified. Steiner presumably initially had an official apartment at the Vereinsbank, later a villa in Goethestrasse. In 1877 Steiner acquired the Waldhaus in Niedernau as a country residence, and in 1881 a property at Kanzleistraße 34 / Schloßstraße 26 in Stuttgart as a city apartment. In 1895 he also acquired Laupheim Castle, which had come from his father's inheritance into the hands of a brother and a brother-in-law. Steiner's hospitality in all three residences was widely praised, but it was also part of the business relationships that were based on personal friendships in the early days .

Social contacts

Due to his diverse obligations, Steiner was often on business trips, especially to Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna. In Berlin, in addition to his business partners at Deutsche Bank, he met numerous national liberal politicians, including Karl von Varnbüler , Eduard Lasker , Alexander Levin von Bennigsen and Ludwig Bamberger . In Frankfurt he mainly had to do with the upper Jewish business class, i. H. with the Goldschmidt, Hohenemser, Ladenburg, Ellisen and Dreyfus families. He also made the closer acquaintance with numerous well-known personalities, u. a. with the entrepreneur Adelbert Delbrück , the painters Otto von Faber du Faur and Franz Lenbach , the prelates von Gerok and von Schmid, representatives of the Tübingen professors and the engineer Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin .

Last but not least, Steiner was interested in literature in many ways and was in contact with Hermann Sudermann , Paul Heyse , Heinrich Leuthold , Wilhelm Raabe , Joseph Victor von Scheffel and Berthold Auerbach . Through personal collaboration and foundations, he also played a major role in founding the Schiller National Museum in Marbach and the Swabian Schiller Club .

Last years

In 1888 and 1890 Steiner was ill for a longer period of time. In the meantime he had largely withdrawn from the day-to-day business of the Stuttgarter Vereinsbank, whose supervisory board he continued to chair. There were also a number of other supervisory boards. In 1895 Steiner mentioned for the first time that he suffered from diabetes and therefore had to continue to withdraw from the business. He then devoted himself increasingly to expanding the castle estate in Laupheim. In 1903, the progressive sugar disease required the amputation of his left foot. He died of cardiac paralysis six days after the operation.

honors and awards

literature

  • Kurt Diemer (Ed.): Laupheim. City history . Anton H. Konrad Verlag, Weißenhorn 1979, ISBN 3-87437-151-4 .
  • Ernst Schäll: Kilian von Steiner; Banker and industrialist, patron and humanist . In: Schwäbische Heimat 44 (1993), p. 4ff.
  • Georg Schenk: Laupheim: History - Land and People , Anton H. Konrad Verlag, Weißenhorn 1976, ISBN 3-87437-136-0 .
  • Otto K. Deutelmoser: Kilian Steiner and the Württembergische Vereinsbank , Ostfildern: Thorbecke 2003, ISBN 3-7995-5554-4 .
  • Michael Ruhland: Summer residence of a tree friend. The former Villa Steiner in Rottenburg – Bad Niedernau. In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg , 35th year 2006, issue 4, pp. 238–240 ( PDF ).
  • Jan Eike Dunkhase / Wulf D. von Lucius: Kilian von Steiner and his library , Marbach: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 2018 (Marbacher Magazin; 162) ISBN 978-3-944469-40-9 .

Web links

Commons : Kilian von Steiner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Steiner, Kilian von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steiner, Kilian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German banker, legal advisor; writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1833
PLACE OF BIRTH Laupheim
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1903
Place of death Stuttgart