Moritz Becker
Moritz Becker (born May 1, 1830 in Danzig ; † August 25, 1901 in Heringsdorf ) was a mining entrepreneur in Samland and Bohemia . He introduced the industrial mining of amber in East Prussia .
Life
Moritz Becker was the son of poor Jewish parents. Initially a peddler and merchant (according to some sources, Becker is said to have had a small amber trade at the beginning of his working life), he hired himself out to the Memel innkeeper Wilhelm Stantien, who exploited the amber store near Prökuls . In 1858, when he became a partner in the company Stantien & Becker , which was established in the same year, Becker set up the amber dredging in Schwarzort , which proved to be very profitable.
1861 leased Stantien & Becker , the amber extraction from the Prussian state. According to some sources Becker to Stantien forced out of the company and have become in 1871 the sole owner, but Becker mentioned even in a 1896 written writing a shareholder called Cohn and indirectly Stantien as shareholders of the company at least until 1884. Becker bought in 1872 the estate Palvininkai and built the first amber factory there. This was followed by the Anna pit north of the Kraxtepeller river. With around 2,000 employees, the company was the largest industrial company in East Prussia in 1883. Becker received the title of Commerce Councilor and Privy Councilor of Commerce . Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II gave him personal honorary gifts in 1866 and 1885, respectively. His joint-stock company used steam excavators to extract amber from the Curonian Lagoon until 1899 .
With the geologist Richard Klebs , who worked as a consultant for Stantien & Becker, he founded an amber museum in Königsberg. In the 1890s, a public discussion of his company's amber monopoly was held in Prussia. In 1896 a monopoly trial was carried out in Stolp. In 1899, Becker sold all industrial facilities, his property in Königsberg and in the Fischhausen and Memel districts, as well as the amber museum, to the Prussian state for at least 8.5 million Reichsmarks. The amount approved by the Prussian Landtag was 9.75 million Reichsmarks. Becker's fortune was estimated at 14.5 million Reichsmarks at the time. Moritz Becker was only involved in the Roudný gold mine .
Becker had lived in Vienna for the last few years, then moved to Berlin and probably died during a stay at a spa in Heringsdorf (Usedom). He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee .
family
Moritz Becker's wife Henriette, who came from a Jewish family from Tilsit, founded an association for charity and women's education. She made large donations to several institutions. The son Benno Becker became a painter and was a co-founder of the Munich Secession . Another son Arthur Becker was a German politician and landowner in Bartmannshagen in the Grimmen district . The great-great-grandson Ludwig Becker was born in Palmnicken in 1935 and runs a hotel there.
Beckerite and Stantienite
Two of the accessory resins (varieties of amber that are not succinite) that occur in the Baltic Sea region together with Baltic amber (succinite) were named after the owners of the company "Stantien & Becker" as stantienite and beckerite . Both amber varieties are also found in Bitterfeld .
literature
- Karl Andrée: The amber - the amber country and its life. Stuttgart 1951.
- Moritz Becker: Memorandum on the verdict of the Royal Regional Court of Stolp. Berlin 1896.
- Richard Klebs: Amber and its history. Koenigsberg 1889.
- Wilhelm Tesdorpf: Extraction, processing and trading of amber in Prussia from the time of the order to the present. Jena 1887.
- Евреи в Кёнигсберге на рубеже столетий / The Jews of Königsberg at the turn of the 20th Century . Berlin: Association of Jews in East Prussia. ISBN 978-3-00-057974-5
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b After Wolfgang Wilhelmus Moritz Becker died in Hennigsdorf near Berlin.
- ↑ a b c d e A. Brekenfeld: The entrepreneurial personalities Friedrich Wilhelm Stantien and Moritz Becker. In: Amber - Tears of the Gods. Bochum 1996.
- ^ A b c d e Wolfgang Wilhelmus: Arthur Becker: Agrarian - Social Democrat - Jude. In: Irene Diekmann (Ed.): Guide through the Jewish Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 1998, ISBN 3-930850-77-X , p. 429.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Becker, Moritz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur in amber extraction |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 1, 1830 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Danzig |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 25, 1901 |
| Place of death | Heringsdorf |