Oskar von Rosthorn

Oskar Edler von Rosthorn (born January 28, 1857 in Vienna , † April 19, 1930 in Wiener Neustadt ) was an Austrian industrialist.

Live and act

From 1875, Oskar von Rosthorn was the fourth generation of the Rosthorn industrialist family in Oed an der Piesting to run his father Adolf von Rosthorn's business, which produced brass buttons .

From 1877 to 1879 he studied civil engineering at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic . He worked briefly on the Kaiser-Ferdinand-Nordbahn before he became particularly interested in metallurgy at the Freiberg Bergakademie in Saxony . In Freiberg he joined the free striking Corps Vandalia in 1881 (merged with the Corps Montania Freiberg in 1919). He then worked briefly as a chemist in a silver refinery in Schwäbisch Gmünd , but went back to Oed in 1882 to support his father.

At the beginning of 1884, however, he switched back to the Witkowitz ironworks as head of copper extraction. From 1885 to 1887 he was the manager of a metal works in Olbersdorf in Saxony. On the recommendation of the industrialist Kupelwieser , he came to Felten & Guilleaume in the Carlswerk in Mühlheim, which only opened in 1874 , where he became production manager for wire production. Thanks to the cost reductions it had made on bronze wires , the plant was able to win numerous government contracts. In 1892 he moved to Oberschlesische Eisenindustrie AG and introduced the production of bronze wire in Gleiwitz .

In 1895, however, he returned to Oed to help his father in his business, which was economically troubled by the outdated machines. Nevertheless, the company had to be sold in 1900.

But it was his wish to use the hydropower of the Myra falls in the Piestingtal and to build a hydropower plant there. So you can find in E. Katzer's book:

“The technical successes were already evident to him at the turn of the century. He wanted to bring the Piestingtal closer to the heart of the empire through the ingeniously transparent route of an electric high-speed railway, to connect water forces and them to complement each other, that was the other of his ideas; The third was to improve the line material. "

- E. Katzer

In order to realize the power plant, he had already secured the right of first refusal for the necessary land in 1898 . He wanted to use the electricity generated to electrify the Gutenstein Railway from Leobersdorf to Gutenstein . There were delays initially due to the Ministry of Railways and, after the building permit was granted, due to protests by the municipalities, as they feared a loss of tourism if the Myra Falls were built. In 1902 he received the final permit. But the search for pantographs delayed the process for so long that in the meantime he had to surrender all rights to the real estate bank, which became the actual builder of the Myrawerk .

The second power plant, which he built with the then independent municipality of Wopfing between 1906 and 1908, became the first power plant in the Piestingtal.

During the First World War he turned back to the alloys . He developed a bearing metal that was particularly low in tin and was very important during the war. In 1919 he signed a production contract with the Stein company, which bought his original plant, for bronze wires, which had a particularly high conductivity . The Austrian postal administration was a major customer.

literature

• FH Ucik:  Rosthorn, Oskar von. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 9, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7001-1483-4 , p. 272.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Oscar von Rosthorn und die Elektrizität  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from the Waldegger Chronik N1.1 / 2007 retrieved on December 30, 2009