Max Maria von Weber

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Max Maria von Weber

Max Maria Freiherr von Weber (born April 25, 1822 in Dresden , † April 18, 1881 in Berlin ) was the Saxon railway director, Austrian court advisor and Prussian ministerial advisor . He was baptized with the first name Philipp Christian Maximilian Maria.

family

Inscription on the memorial stone of the family grave of Carl Maria von Weber

Weber was a son of the composer Carl Maria von Weber and his wife Caroline , nee Brandt. His two siblings, Maria Caroline Friederike Auguste von Weber (* December 22, 1818 in Dresden - † April 28, 1819 in Dresden) and the painter Alexander Heinrich Victor von Weber (* January 6, 1825 in Dresden; † October 31, 1844 in Dresden), died early. On April 27, 1846, he married Katharina Huberta Kramer (born September 7, 1823 in Cologne, † January 29, 1874 in Vienna) in Dresden, with whom he had three children:

  • Maria Karoline von Weber (born February 23, 1847 in Chemnitz, † July 1, 1920 in Weimar), who married the writer Ernst von Wildenbruch in 1885
  • Karoline Maria von Weber (born October 22, 1848 in Chemnitz; † July 2, 1878 near Vienna)
  • Karl Maria Alexander Eduard von Weber (born November 19, 1849 in Dresden, † December 15, 1897 in Dresden), who was a royal Saxon lieutenant colonel and writer and married Marion Mathilde Schwabe in 1877

Life

Max Maria von Weber was born less than a year after the premiere of his father's opera Der Freischütz and was given the name of the male protagonist, Max. When he lost his father at the age of four, his mother and his father's friends took over as guardians, the Natural scientist and Africa traveler Hinrich Lichtenstein and the writer Carl Theodor Winkler the education. Max Maria first went to a private grammar school and then to the Dresden Technical College . He then studied natural science, economics and modern languages ​​at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin .

In addition, he worked as a design engineer in the locomotive works of August Borsig . At the end of his studies he passed the exam to become a locomotive driver and drove in this position and as a machine technician on the Berlin – Jüterbog line for a year .

From 1841 he worked in the Leipzig-Dresden , the Saxon-Bavarian and the Cologne-Bonn railroad, the technical and administrative functions of the railway system up to management positions. He complemented his technical knowledge with a research stay in England .

First he took over the mechanical engineering management of the Chemnitz-Riesaer Eisenbahn in 1846 , a little later the overall management of the Niedererzgebirge Railway , which was taken over by the Saxon state in 1850. On December 1, 1849, he entered the Saxon civil service , initially with the title of Finance Councilor, and remained there until 1868.

From 1870 to 1875 he was in Vienna with a 5-year contract with the Austrian Ministry of Commerce KK Hofrat 1st class for the Eastern State Railways. According to his testimony as an expert in the Ofenheim trial , which ended in acquittal and led to the resignation of the minister, Weber's contract was not extended.

He then lived in Vienna as a freelance appraiser, writer and consulting engineer.

By Heinrich von Achenbach 1878 as Councilor in the Prussian appointed Commerce Department, he traveled on behalf of the Prussian government England (1878), Sweden (1879) and (1880) to the local public transport systems, especially the channels to study the USA.

Max Maria von Weber died of heart failure on April 18, 1881 while walking in Berlin. He was buried on April 22, 1881 in the family grave of the Old Catholic Cemetery in Dresden-Friedrichstadt.

Act

Supervisor with a weaver hat

With his commitment to occupational health and safety , Max Maria von Weber left behind an astonishing wealth of practice-oriented achievements from the beginnings of railways and road safety for posterity . Thus, for example in Germany, the first tachograph , the first speedometer for locomotives , the first rails bending machine, the introduction of the covered driver's cabs for locomotives, the railway barrier , configuring stations for logistical point of view, the first entirely of wrought iron built road bridge and the red cap the inspectors - the "Weber cap" - attributed to him.

As a factual author, Max Maria von Weber wrote about everything that had to do with the railway, from life insurance and the construction of locomotives to track construction and the management of railway companies. Contemporaries certified that he treated brittle, technical materials in a very clear and attractive way . However, the broad sentences require careful reading. His works and novellas received a lot of attention at the time because of their social engagement, but are almost forgotten today. Only the illustrated volume of short stories, Storm on the Rails , published in 2004 , puts together his most beautiful railway novels , his travel letters from North America from 1880 and a short biography. In addition, Max Maria von Weber wrote the first (unfortunately not always reliable) biography of his father.

Max Maria von Weber conducted a study on rail suicide as early as 1854 . He writes in The Technology of Railways in relation to the safety of the same :

“The dangers that have arisen for the company through the behavior of people who have voluntarily sought death under the wheels of the trains can also be reckoned with with some justification. Events of this kind are not as rare as one would like to believe, such as For example, the following notes on suicides on the German railways indicate, from which the author received official reports about it. "

He considered it difficult or even impossible to take precautions of any kind to prevent yourself from being thrown in front of the train; at best, "good guarding of the railway [...] might prevent such an unfortunate act here and there".

Fonts (selection)

  • On the principles of public transport administration. 1849.
  • The Tantième system. Chemnitz 1849.
  • The technology of the railway company in relation to its safety. Leipzig 1854.
  • Algeria and the emigration there. Leipzig 1854.
  • The life insurance of the railway passengers in connection with the support of the railway officials. Leipzig 1855.
  • Railway School. Leipzig 1857.
  • The smoke-free combustion of hard coal. Leipzig 1859.
  • The wear and tear of the physical organism of the railway officials. Leipzig 1862.
  • The endangerment of the personnel in machine and driving services. Leipzig 1862.
  • From the world of work. Berlin 1865.
  • Carl Maria von Weber. A picture of life. 3 volumes. (Volume 3: Letters and Other Sources ). 1864-66.
  • The scout of the sea . In: The Gazebo . Issue 49–50, 1866, pp. 765-766, 783-785 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • The Railway School. 1862 ( books.google.com ).
  • The telegraph and signal system of the railways. Weimar 1867 ( ekeving.se ).
  • The stability of the structure of the railroad tracks. Weimar 1869.
  • Works and days. Weimar 1869.
  • Training the railways for war and peace. Weimar 1870.
  • Deeds and phrases. Leipzig 1871.
  • Practice of building and operating secondary railways with normal and narrow gauge. Weimar 1871; 2nd edition 1873.
  • The secondary orbits with normal track and slow movement. Weimar 1874.
  • The geography of the Locomotivconstruction. In: Deutsche Rundschau . Volume 3, 1875, pp. 87 ff. ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • On the State Influence on the Development of the Lower Order Railways. Leipzig 1878.
  • From the rolling impeller. Sketches and pictures (bequeathed work). With a biographical introduction by Major Max Jähns. A. Hofmann & Comp, Berlin 1882.

literature

  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Weber, Max Maria Freiherr . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 53rd part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1886, pp. 210–214 ( digitized version ).
  • Maximilian Jähns :  Weber, Frhr. Max Maria from . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 41, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, pp. 349-352.
  • Christiane Todrowski: Bourgeois technology "utopians". A contribution to the function of optimism for progress and technology euphoria in bourgeois thinking of the 19th century, illustrated using the example of the publications Max Eyths and Max Maria von Webers. Dissertation, University of Münster 1996.
  • Hartmut Herbst: From the “Freischütz” to the “Iron Century”. A picture of the life of the son Carl Maria von Weber, Dr.-Phil. hc Max Maria von Weber. In: Sächsische Heimatblätter. 3/1997, pp. 142-153, ISSN  0486-8234 .
  • Hartmut Herbst: Max Maria von Weber. Engineering, humanitarian and cultural-historical life's work. Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3-18-150048-8 .
  • Michael Kern: Max Maria Freiherr von Weber: a Saxon railway pioneer. In: Scientific journal of the Technical University of Dresden. 2000, Vol. 49, No. 3, pp. 18-21, ISSN  0043-6925 .
  • Michael Kern: Max Maria Freiherr von Weber - a Saxon railway pioneer. In: Scientific journal of the Technical University of Dresden. H. 3/2000 vol. 49 p. 18 ff.
  • Hartmut Herbst (ed.): Storm on the rails and other railway novellas by Max Maria von Weber. Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-937463-02-X .
  • Hartmut Herbst (Ed.): From the Orient to America. Travel letters and landscapes by Max Maria von Weber. Bochum 2007, ISBN 978-3-937463-08-7 .
  • Eveline Bartlitz : " To let the reader live with him". The long way to Max Maria von Weber's biography of his father , in: Weberiana. Announcements from the International Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Society e. V., Issue 25 (2015), pp. 5-32.
  • Eveline Bartlitz: “I grew up with the Freischütz, so to speak”. Max Maria von Weber's reports on his audiences with Emperor Napoleon III. In Paris 1865 and 1867 , in: Weberiana. Announcements from the International Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Society e. V., Issue 26 (2016), pp. 57-69.

Web links

Wikisource: Max Maria von Weber  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Peter Stadler: Max Maria von Weber - Biographical Information. In: Weber Complete Edition. Retrieved April 18, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Michael Kern: Max Maria Freiherr von Weber: a Saxon railway pioneer . In: Scientific journal of the Technical University of Dresden . tape 49 , no. 3 , p. 18-21 .
  3. ↑ Family Tables for Carl Maria von Weber (PDF) accessed on January 7, 2017
  4. ^ Letter from Caroline von Weber to Hinrich Lichtenstein dated June 21, 1826 .
  5. ↑ Councilor Karl Theodor Winkler appointed as guardian .
  6. ↑ Max Jähns: Max Maria von Weber .
  7. ↑ Obituary. In: Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung. April 23, 1881, p. 31; Retrieved December 7, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Weber, Max Maria von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weber, Philipp Christian Maximilian Maria von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German railway engineer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH April 18, 1881
Place of death Berlin