Oskar Poppe

Oskar Poppe 1910

Emil Oskar Poppe (born July 9, 1866 in Leipzig ; † August 8, 1918 in Berlin-Neukölln ) was a German chemist and manager who headed the German Linoleum and Oilcloth Compagnie AG as general director .

Life

Born as the son of Hermann Oskar Poppe and his wife Ida Poppe nee Schumann, he spent his youth in Berlin, where his father and Hermann Wirth founded a wholesale and retail business for interior equipment under the company Poppe & Wirth in 1868 , initially as an open company Trading company , later as a limited partnership , from 1910 as a stock corporation . After graduating from high school, Oskar Poppe studied chemistry and physics in Munich, at the University of Leipzig and most recently at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin , where he was awarded a Dr. phil. received his doctorate .

After a practical activity in Preston (Lancashire, Great Britain) in the local linoleum works, in 1894 he took over the management of the second German linoleum factory , the Deutsche Linoleum- und Wachsuch-Compagnie AG in Rixdorf near Berlin - a subsidiary of the Poppe & Wirth company with British Partner companies, whose rapid expansion he pushed ahead in the following years. After his father's death in 1898, he was a board member of his father's company and general manager of the linoleum factory.

His main field of activity was the development of inlaid linoleum , the colored patterns of which were not only printed on, but were achieved through the complete coloring of the linoleum mass and thus withstood wear and tear on the surface. The process, which was developed together with the Bohemian inventor Karl Klič at the turn of the century , was protected several times by patents. The product, which is sold under the Rixdorfer Linoleum trademark , primarily by Poppe & Wirth , was awarded at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 .

After disagreements with the board of directors about the future of the company, he temporarily resigned in 1909, but returned to his old post as general manager after two years. During the First World War , the close business ties to Great Britain fell away, and the company was subsequently renamed Deutsche Linoleum-Werke Rixdorf AG in 1915 . However, the demand for linoleum fell sharply as a result of the war, and production had to be switched to goods essential for the war effort, such as oilcloth for helmet covers and protective mask containers.

In 1893, Oskar Poppe married Carla Buschick from Oldenburg in Hamburg , and three sons and three daughters were born in Berlin in the following years. The family bought a country house in Zippendorf near Schwerin at the turn of the century . The naval aviator Hans Albrecht Wedel was his nephew.

In addition to his professional activity, Poppe devoted himself as a voluntary city councilor to Rixdorf (later Neukölln ) to expand the municipal gas works and street lighting. He was also involved in the Federation of Industrialists (BDI), where he was a board member from 1895 and secretary from 1896–1898.

His great passion was sailing, to which he devoted almost all of his free time; Since 1905 he was also a member of the Imperial Yacht Club (KYC, today Kieler Yacht Club ) and regularly took part in the Kieler Woche with his sailing yacht “Windekind” .

Oskar Poppe died in Rixdorf in 1918 after a serious illness and was buried near his Mecklenburg country house in the cemetery of the Consrade village church . The tombstone is still there.

Linoleum production was continued after 1918 in Delmenhorst and Bietigheim under the umbrella of the Deutsche Linoleum-Werke (DLW) . The factory site in Neukölln, on Lahnstrasse west of the confluence with Mittelbuschsweg, was later used by the Gaubschat Fahrzeugwerke company and the city of Berlin as the seat of the Neukölln Adult Education Center; Remnants of the factory buildings have been preserved to this day.