Ludwig Hermann (chemist)

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Ludwig Hermann (born April 10, 1882 in Memmingen ; † May 31, 1938 ) was a German chemist and entrepreneur.

life and work

Hermann was the son of a Memmingen brewery owner. He attended secondary school in his hometown, then secondary school in Augsburg . In 1900 he began studying chemistry at the Technical University of Munich , where he joined the Corps Vitruvia. In 1902 he did his year of voluntary military service in a Bavarian field artillery regiment.

In 1905 he did his doctorate on the separation of ytterbium and erbium earths under Wilhelm Muthmann . He had already received his first job at the Aschersleben potash works , where he set up the chlor-alkali electrolysis . In 1911 he switched to the inking works vorm. Master Lucius and Brüning in Höchst am Main , where he also introduced the electrolysis process and developed a process for compressing and liquefying chlorine .

First World War

At the beginning of the First World War , Hermann reported as a volunteer . Because of his knowledge of chlorine chemistry, he was assigned to the 35th Württemberg Pioneer Regiment , which had been using chlorine gas by the blowing process since 1915 in the gas war . In 1916 he was promoted to captain and took command of a gas company of the regiment.

Hermann developed technical competence and leadership skills during the gas war and showed no scruples about the use of chemical weapons . In the autumn of 1917, the army command appointed him in command of the Breloh gas field in the Lüneburg Heath , where artillery ammunition was produced for the gas war.

1918 to 1933

At the end of the war, Hermann experienced the November Revolution in Breloh , and he became a staunch opponent. After his discharge as an officer, he took over the management of the Hoechst branch factory in Gersthofen near Augsburg. In April 1919, at the time of the Munich Soviet Republic , he reported to management on strikes and discussions with workers' councils and wrote The atmosphere is somewhat freer from Bolshevik bacilli because the workers in Augsburg rejected the Soviet republic in a mass meeting on Sunday. During the Weimar Republic , Hermann was a supporter of the DNVP .

Between 1919 and 1929 Hermann had the Gersthofen plant fundamentally modernized and numerous new products introduced. He was also involved in the acquisition of a 50% stake in Wacker-Chemie by Farbwerke Hoechst. After Farbwerke Hoechst merged with other chemical companies to form IG Farbenindustrie in 1925 , Hermann was one of the next generation of managers at the new company. In 1930 he moved to Höchst as head of the indigo department. On January 1, 1933, he succeeded Paul Dudens as head of the Höchst plant and the Mittelrhein operating group and was promoted to the board.

1933 to 1938

With the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, Hermann became a devout supporter of Adolf Hitler , whom he venerated as a gift of Providence and in which he saw his ideals of the soldier spirit from the world war and the national community represented. Under Hermann's leadership, the plant, in which the NSDAP had only a few supporters before 1933 , was quickly brought into line . On August 1, 1935, he was allowed to join the NSDAP with special permission from Gauleiter Jakob Sprenger , despite the admission ban that existed at the time .

Unlike other IG Farben executives, Hermann was not an unconditional opportunist. As a devout Protestant, he rejected National Socialist anti-Semitism and made a donation of 20,000 Reichsmarks for the construction of a Protestant church in Gersthofen on the condition that the church in Gersthofen should not fall into the hands of the Working Group of the German Faith Movement .

The fundamental modernization of the infrastructure of the Höchst plant, founded in 1863, is considered an important achievement by Hermann, which suffered from inefficiency and a lack of expansion possibilities due to the haphazard expansion during the First World War and lost numerous production and research facilities to other locations during the first years of IG Farben. The modernization lasted until 1939 and was under the direction of his deputy and chief engineer Friedrich Jähne . This included the generous construction of new streets and expansion areas, the reorganization of the works railway network and the establishment of a central electricity and steam supply in place of the earlier small power plants and transmission drives. Between 1932 and 1939 around 10 million Reichsmarks were invested annually.

In 1936 Hermann fell ill with throat cancer . At the celebration of the plant's 75th anniversary in January 1938, he could barely speak, but he remained committed to his work until his death. Karl Winnacker reported in his memoirs that just a few days before his death on May 31, 1938, Hermann approved the purchase of an electron microscope that was newly developed for the process engineering department. The device was handed over to the Deutsches Museum in the 1950s .

In Gersthofen a street is named after Ludwig Hermann.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Hermann, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Memmingen
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1938