Louis Schwartzkopff

Portrait medallion on the family grave in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin-Mitte

Louis Victor Robert Schwartzkopff (born June 5, 1825 in Magdeburg , † March 7, 1892 in Berlin ) was a German entrepreneur and founder of the Berliner Maschinenbau-Actien-Gesellschaft (BMAG).

Life

Between 1831 and 1842 he attended high school in Magdeburg and the trade school there, where he and Carl Wilhelm Siemens took mathematics lessons from his brother Werner von Siemens . From 1842 to 1845 Schwartzkopff attended the Berlin Trade Institute founded by Wilhelm Beuth . This was followed by practical training at the Borsig company, where he met August Borsig personally. Schwartzkopff finished this training with a six-month job as a locomotive driver on the Berlin-Hamburg railway . Between 1847 and 1851 he was a mechanical engineer for the Magdeburg-Wittenberg Railway .

With the support of his family, he acquired the property at Chausseestrasse 20 in the Oranienburger suburb of Berlin , which was bordered in the south by Invalidenstrasse and in the east by the Berlin-Stettiner Eisenbahn . The underground station Nordbahnhof of the north-south S-Bahn is located under the latter area .

On October 3, 1852, together with the Berlin foundry master Nitsche, he founded the Schwartzkopff und Nitsche iron foundry and machine factory , from which the Berliner Maschinenbau-Actien-Gesellschaft, formerly L. Schwartzkopff, emerged in 1870 . Schwartzkopff wanted above all to intensify mechanical engineering , while Nitsche preferred artificial casting. Schwartzkopff therefore paid Nitsche out in 1853 and from then on ran the company as the sole owner. He was general manager of the company until June 30, 1888, but then withdrew from the company.

Berlin memorial plaque in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen (Scheringstrasse)

The production of his company for the army and railroad requirements led to Schwartzkopff being awarded the title of Kommerzienrat in the 1860s . When the production of locomotives for freight trains for the Lower Silesian-Märkische Eisenbahn began in 1867 , Schwartzkopff outsourced general mechanical engineering to a previously acquired property in Ackerstrasse , while the main factory expanded to the newly acquired properties at Chausseestrasse 19 and 23. In addition, Schwartzkopff had expanded the location to Scheringstrasse 13–28 in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen .

At the end of the 1880s Schwartzkopff was appointed to the State Council of the Prussian government . On March 7, 1892, Louis Victor Robert Schwartzkopff died of a stroke . He was buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin. The grave monument created by the government architect Carl Schilling bears the portrait of Schwartzkopff cast in bronze, the work of the sculptor Lilli Wislicenus-Finzelberg .

Throughout his life, Schwartzkopff always honored his teacher August Borsig.

Schwartzkopff was the curator of the Lazarus Hospital near the company's headquarters. Schwartzkopffstrasse in Berlin-Mitte was also laid out nearby and named in his honor on March 12, 1889.

literature

• Friedrich Kleinhans: Louis Schwartzkopff 1825-1892 . In: Erhard Born (ed.): Pioneers of the Railway System, Darmstadt: Röhrig [1962], pp. 85–91.
• Felix Escher:  Schwartzkopff, Louis. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 799 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Louis Schwartzkopff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• schwartzkopff-wildau.de - Short biography with picture.