Oskar Rauter
Friedrich Oskar Rauter (born March 16, 1840 in Gumbinnen , Prussia ; † June 11, 1913 in Cologne-Neustadt-Nord , German Empire ) was a German entrepreneur and long-time director of the Rheinische Glashütten-Actien-Gesellschaft in Cologne-Ehrenfeld .
Life
The Protestant Friedrich Oskar Rauter was the son of the later government building officer Friedrich Gustav Rauter and his wife Berta Rauter nee. Grohnert . His parents lived most recently in Wroclaw . After completing his commercial training, Rauter first worked in Elberfeld . On June 1, 1867, Oskar Rauter entered the Julius von Holleben & Co glass factory in Ehrenfeld with a capital of 8,000 thalers . Three years later he took over the commercial management of the company. During the Franco-German War was convened by Holleben for military service and Rauter took over sole technical management of the reorganized company Rauter & Co . On July 1, 1872, the company was transformed into the Rheinische Glashütten-Actien-Gesellschaft in Ehrenfeld near Cöln with a starting capital of 250,000 thalers. Rauter took over the technical and commercial management and was largely responsible for the glassworks product designs.
In the first few years the company mainly produced industrial and pressed glass . The economic heyday of the Wilhelminian era was ended in 1873 by the founder crash . Despite economic difficulties, Rauter invested in new production facilities and experimented with new glass manufacturing processes. In 1879 he founded a "department for art products". In order to design suitable models for his upscale production line, Rauter visited numerous arts and crafts museums in Europe and recorded his impressions in sketchbooks. In addition to replicas of Roman, Venetian and old German glasses from museums, he also reinterpreted these topics and produced entire series of glasses. Rauter endeavored to design uniform glass series for the bourgeois household. For example, champagne glasses were designed in the Roman style that did not exist in the original. Oskar Rauter attached great importance to the quality of the drinking glasses that were manufactured in the art products department. The glasses were made of crystal or lead glass , had no or only very sparse cut decorations. The enamel painting , which was very popular for this time , is only very subordinate to the Ehrenfeld glasses by Rauters . A characteristic feature of the Ehrenfeld glass production was the use of green glass in different shades: antique green, moss green, apple green, yellow green, olive green, sea green, from 1886 also fir green and blue green.
In 1881 and 1886 with supplements from 1888 and 1893, the price courants of the "Department for Art Glasses" were published, which show the designs by Rauters. The German imperial family was also one of the customers of the glassworks . For the wedding of Prince Wilhelm II , the German cities had a crystal glass set made as a wedding present in the Ehrenfeld glassworks.
In the 1880s, Oskar Rauter succeeded in developing a new process for the production of solid gold ruby glass , which attracted a great deal of attention at the arts and crafts exhibition in Munich in 1888. In addition to the Ehrenfelder Glashütte, only the Josephinenhütte in Schreiberhau in the German Empire was able to produce hollow glasses from gold ruby glass. In 1898 Rauter handed over the management of Rheinische Glashütte AG to his successor Eduard von Kraliks, who completely realigned the product range. In 1905 Rauter left the company for good.
In 1888, Rauter was appointed, together with Albert von Oppenheim , Hermann Otto Pflaume , Alexander Schnütgen , Arthur Pabst , Jakob Pallenberg , Friedrich Romberg and Gabriel Hermeling , to appoint the first board of directors of the newly founded Cologne Arts and Crafts Association . On Rauter's initiative, the arts and crafts museum, founded on July 16, 1888, is showing a retrospective of the products of the Rheinische Glashütte Ehrenfeld just two months after it opened .
In addition to his work as director of the glassworks, Oskar Rauter was a member of the council of Ehrenfeld from 1879 to 1888 .
As a pensioner he last lived in the Neustadt district of Cologne, where he died in June 1913 in the house at Bismarckstrasse 22. He was married to Laura Rauter geb. Bertel . He was buried in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne . The tomb no longer exists.
In May 2014, a memorial plaque was placed on the site of the former glassworks, which also commemorates the former director of the glassworks, Oskar Rauter.
literature
- Kurt Pittrof: Rauter, Friedrich Oskar. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 216 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Werner Schäfke : Ehrenfeld Glass of Historicism - The Prize Courants of the Rheinische Glashütten-Actien-Gesellschaft in Ehrenfeld near Cöln. Department for art products. 1881 and 1886, addenda 1888 and 1893 , Walther König Köln 1979, ISBN 3-88375-005-0 , 203 pp.
- Christian Eckert : Rheinische Glashütten-Aktiengesellschaft Cologne Ehrenfeld 1872–1922. Commemorative sheets for the 50th anniversary of the stock corporation . Cologne 1922
- Barbara Mundt: Historicism - arts and crafts and industry in the age of world exhibitions . Catalogs of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, Volume VII, State Museums of Prussian Cultural Heritage
- Werner Neite: The Ehrenfeld glassmakers and their "artifacts" . Bull. Of the museums of the city of Cologne, 9, Cologne 1970, p. 830ff.
- World Exhibition in Paris 1900. Official catalog of the German Empire.
- Catalog of the trade and art exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1880 and 1881
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dept. Rhineland, civil status register, registry office Cologne II, deaths, 1913, document no. June 11, 1913.
- ↑ Werner Schäfke: Ehrenfeld Glass of Historicism - The Prize Courants of the Rheinische Glashütten-Actien-Gesellschaft in Ehrenfeld near Cöln. Department for art products. 1881 and 1886, supplements 1888 and 1893 , Walther König Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-88375-005-0 , 14ff.
- ^ Oskar Rauter: Drawing book of the head of the glassworks Cologne-Ehrenfeld Oskar Rauter , Ehrenfeld 1882
- ↑ Werner Schäfke: Ehrenfeld Glass of Historicism - The Prize Courants of the Rheinische Glashütten-Actien-Gesellschaft in Ehrenfeld near Cöln. Department for art products. 1881 and 1886, supplements 1888 and 1893 , Walther König Köln 1979, ISBN 3-88375-005-0 , pp. 39, 90
- ↑ A celebration of work . In: Kölnisches Tageblatt, No. 122 of May 30, 1892
- ^ District directory 4: Rheinische Glashütten , accessed on February 14, 2014
- ^ Gerhard Dietrich: Museum of Applied Arts Cologne - Chronicle 1888 - 1988 . City of Cologne (Ed.), Cologne 1988, p. 22
- ^ Josef Abt, Johann Ralf Beines, Celia Körber-Leupold: Melaten - Cologne graves and history . Greven, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7743-0305-3 , p. 154
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rauter, Oskar |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rauter, Friedrich Oskar (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 16, 1840 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gumbinnen , Prussia |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 11, 1913 |
| Place of death | Cologne-Neustadt-Nord , German Empire |