Otto-Felix Mannesmann

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Otto Mannesmann as a corps student, 1893

Otto-Felix Mannesmann (born May 10, 1874 in Remscheid , † April 10, 1916 in Tripoli , Ottoman Empire ) was a German physicist and engineer . Together with his brothers Reinhard and Carl , he founded the Mannesmann Lichtwerke  AG in Remscheid. Otto Mannesmann is considered the inventor of the Hängeglühlichts , a hanging gas lamp that the in shape bulb is similar.

Life

Otto Mannesmann was born in 1874 as the youngest of eleven children of Johanna Henriette Emma Clara Mannesmann, nee. Rocholl (1834–1910) and Reinhard Mannesmann (1814–1894) were born. He attended secondary schools in Remscheid and Lennep , then a grammar school in Kiel and graduated from high school in 1892 . He then studied physics and chemistry at the Technical University of Munich and the Technical University of Charlottenburg . At the University of Tübingen , he was with a dissertation on "Air resistance measurements with a new rotation system ' doctorate . During his student days in Munich, he joined the Corps Franconia there.

At the end of the 1890s Otto Mannesmann studied languages ​​in Naples and visited his much older brothers in the USA , who wanted to open up markets for their tube rolling technology there. The widespread use of kerosene lamps and the frequency of fires caused by them gave the brothers the idea of further developing the gas lamp . Already the first patents of the brothers Reinhard and Max showed a lamp pointing downwards in contrast to the Auer light, which has been popular since 1885 . In patent 126135 from 1901 Otto Mannesmann then presented a hanging gas lamp with a considerably higher energy yield. It was produced with great success by Mannesmannlicht GmbH in Remscheid and Sparlichtgesellschaft in Berlin and sold worldwide. The company advertised the light source with the slogan "Mannesmann light - 50–60% gas savings". The core idea was the controlled supply of fresh air into the glass housing, which the physicist Otto Lummer from Wroclaw described as an “amazingly simple invention”.

The lamp factory Ehrich & Graetz OHG , among others, filed an objection against the patents of the Mannesmann family . In 1905 it lost the "Mannesmann processes" for patent 126135 and, like Auergesellschaft , became a licensee of Otto Mannesmann's gas lamp technology in the course of the following years . The license fee for building the lamp was 0.25  marks ; Thanks to the booming business, competitors transferred five to six-figure amounts per year. Even before patent protection expired in 1915, Mannesmann stood there as a monopoly and provided all the street lighting in major German cities before the start of the First World War .

Otto Mannesmann spent some time with his brother Robert in Morocco to buy land and explore natural resources. Whether their interests played a role in the decision to send the gunboat SMS Panther in 1911 ( Panther jump to Agadir ) is controversial.

In May 1912, the two were briefly captured by locals along with other industrialists.

Grave of the Mannesmann family in the Remscheid-Bliedinghausen evangelical cemetery

During the First World War, Mannesmann, disguised as the Vice Consul of the German Empire in Tripoli , was an agent of the German and Ottoman Empire against the British. His task was to encourage the Sanusiya under Ahmad al-Sharif to fight the British and to support them by delivering weapons.

In April 1916, after the defeat of the Sanussis in the western Egyptian desert and the resignation of Ahmad al-Sharif, Otto Mannesmann was murdered by followers of his successor Muhammad Idris , as a secret mission sent by Germany under Paul Wolff von Todenwarth found out. His body was transported to Cattaro and then to Remscheid in the submarine SM U 39 and buried there. The transfer apparently took a long time, because half a year later the daily newspapers wrote:

“The second man's man liked. Remscheid, December 10th, by letter. The inventor of the hanging incandescent light, graduate engineer Dr. Otto Mannesmann, Rittmeister of the Reserve and Turkish Major , was buried in his native Remscheid. The deceased, already the second war victim of the Mannesmann brothers, fell at a distant post and his body was brought to Austrian soil by submarine . "

- The Daily Democrat of January 9, 1917.

Fonts

  • The Misdirection of Public Opinion on the Mannesmann Affair , 1910

literature

  • Horst A. Wessel : Dr. Otto Felix Mannesmann. An unjustifiably forgotten pioneer of gas lighting. In: Der Zündfunke , No. 68 from October 2016.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ During the First World War, Tripolitania was recaptured from the Ottoman Empire.
  2. ↑ see Mannesmann-MULAG
  3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 106 , 571
  4. ↑ At that time, the competition also argued with gas savings without sacrificing brightness. The Auergesellschaft advertised with 40%, Graetzin-Licht with 42–60% gas savings.
  5. ↑ The end of the struggle for the Mannesmann patent. In: News from Ehrich & Graetz , 4th year 1912, issue of November 14, 1912.
  6. ↑ Reinhard Mannesmann jun. (1856-1922) , accessed February 7, 2017
  7. ^ New Vienna Journal of May 31, 1912
  8. ^ Donald M. McKale: War by Revolution. Germany and Great Britain in the Middle East in the Era of World War I. Kent State University Press, 1998, ISBN 9780873386029 , p. 146.
  9. ^ Paul Freiherr Wolff von Todenwarth in the Regiowiki Niederbayern
  10. ^ Donald M. McKale: War by Revolution. Germany and Great Britain in the Middle East in the Era of World War I. Kent State University Press, 1998, ISBN 9780873386029 , p. 191.
  11. ↑ Almost identical text can be found in other newspapers such as the Prager Tagblatt of November 11, 1916 and the New Vienna Journal of December 7, 1916.
personal data
SURNAME Mannesmann, Otto-Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist and engineer
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Remscheid
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1916
Place of death Tripoli , Libya