Otto Helmholtz

Otto Helmholtz (born January 27, 1834 in Potsdam , † June 30, 1919 in Hagen ) was an engineer who, as director of several iron and steel works, made a name for himself in the modernization of steel production. Otto was the younger brother of the physicist and mathematician Hermann Helmholtz , with whom he had a close relationship throughout his life.

Life path

Otto Helmholtz attended high school in Potsdam, which he left in 1852 with the Abitur. Inspired by the construction of the Potsdam-Berlin railroad, he began to study mechanical engineering at the industrial school in Berlin, against the resistance of his parents, for whom dealing with material things seemed too banal. After a five-month apprenticeship as a moulder in the royal iron foundry in Berlin, he joined a small machine shop in Oliva near Gdansk as a draftsman in April 1856 . Since he had given up his position for military service but was singled out as unfit, he then took up a position as a draftsman at the German-Dutch Actienverein in Duisburg until the blast furnace plant there was completed. Due to the uncertain economic situation, he then worked as a rolling mill and puddler in the Gutehoffnungshütte in Oberhausen, before he took up a position as a master mechanic at the royal mines in Saarbrücken in 1859 and married in 1862. In 1863 he succeeded in turning back to metallurgical engineering and switched to the Phoenix in Eschweiler -Aue. Just two years later, however, he was brought to Bochum by the Bochum Association for Cast Steel Manufacture (BVG) as head of the design office, where he worked for the next 16 years. The first roller ovens and the introduction of the "rapid process" at Bessemern go back to his initiative, which enabled the Bochum Association to blow Bessemerstahl very efficiently. After Jacob Mayer's death , he even became technical director of the BVG.

In 1881 Helmholtz joined Hanomag in Hanover as technical director , as the Bochum association acquired the Thomas patent and a concession for the (phosphorus-rich) Minette field "Fentsch" in Lorraine due to its misjudgment. He stayed at Hanomag until 1887 - August Thyssen then brought him back to Bochum as technical director for the Society for the Steel Industry . The Gesellschaft für Stahlindustrie was a smaller competitor to the mighty Bochumer Verein with a very similar product field - through his previous contacts with the general director of the BVG, Otto Helmholtz arranged the takeover of the "steel industry" by the BVG in 1889. After a short time at the BVG, he returned to Bochum for good his back and becomes director of the Rheinische Stahlwerke , where he starts a modernization program. In July 1903 Otto Helmholtz switched to the supervisory board as a consultant, which he left a little later due to increasing old age. He moves to his retirement home in Bonn, but is later forced to move to his only daughter in Hagen, who takes care of him until his death.

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• Obituary in Stahl und Eisen 33rd Volume, No. 33 from August 14, 1919, pp. 958f.
• Lars Ulrich Scholl: Engineers of early industrialization: state and private technicians in the Kingdom of Hanover uad Ruhr (1815-1873). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1978, ISBN 3-525-42209-1 , chapter "Employed engineers: Bochumer Verein"

1. ↑ Ulrich Wengenroth: Corporate strategies and technical progress of dt u. British steel industry 1865-1895. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986, ISBN 3-525-36302-8 , p. 183.