Otto Wolfskehl

Otto Wilhelm Nathan Benjamin Wolfskehl (born November 9, 1841 in Darmstadt ; † August 17, 1907 there ) was a German banker and politician in the Grand Duchy of Hesse . He is the father of the poet Karl Wolfskehl .

family

Otto Wolfskehl comes from an old Jewish patrician family originally resident in the Hessian Ried , who named themselves after the village of Wolfskehlen . His father was the banker and owner of the Heyum Wolfskehl & Sohn banking house in Darmstadt, which existed until 1881 , Joseph Carl Theodor Wolfskehl (1814–1863), his mother Hannchen Johanna nee Kaulla (1820–1894) a daughter of the Stuttgart court banker Nathan Wolf Kaulla (1785 -1838).

Otto Wolfskehl's first marriage in 1868 was Paula, nee Simon (1845–1876), a daughter of the banker and commercial councilor Israel Simon in Hanover. The couple had three children: their son Karl , who became a well-known poet and had to go into exile, their daughter Margarete (1862–1925), later wife of Lieutenant General Karl Freiherr von Preuschen , and their son Eduard Wolfskehl (1864–1943). After the death of his first wife, Otto Wolfskehl married the pianist Lilli Schulz (1841–1920) in 1878 .

The mathematician Paul Wolfskehl was his brother.

Professional career

Otto Wolfskehl attended a grammar school in Darmstadt and studied law from the summer semester of 1859, first at Heidelberg University and then in Paris. After his father's early death in 1863, he joined his father's banking business Heyum Wolfskehl & Sohn, which was located at Rheinstrasse 4. He was introduced to the banking business by his grandfather and his uncle Moritz Wolfskehl (1811–1872), who has since advanced to become a court banker. Otto Wolfskehl was its director until 1881, when it merged with another bank.

Wolfskehl was also a member of the Grand Ducal Chamber of Commerce in Darmstadt from 1873 to 1875 , Deputy President of the Chamber of Commerce from 1876 to 1880, and finally President of the Chamber of Commerce in Darmstadt from 1880 to 1881. From 1879 to 1885 he held the office of commercial judge. In addition, after it was founded in 1903, he was long-standing chairman of the supervisory board of the Hessische Landeshypothekenbank.

Political and social engagement

Otto Wolfskehl belonged to the National Liberal Party . From 1874 to 1907 he was a member of the Darmstadt city ​​council, along with Heinrich Blumenthal (factory owner), where he was chairman of the finance committee for a long time. From 1875 to 1897 he was a member of the second chamber of the state estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and also worked there as chairman of the finance committee. From 1884 to 1897 he held the office of vice-president of the second chamber. He turned down the post of finance minister offered to him by Grand Duke Ernst-Ludwig . In February 1897 he left the Hessian state parliament in the course of anti-Semitic attacks.

Wolfskehl is considered to be a pioneer of the railway industry through his support for the Prussian-Hessian Railway Community and as one of the driving forces behind the maintenance and expansion of the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1876, 1882 and in the 1890s. He was one of the founders of Südhessische Gas- und Wasser AG through the takeover of the private gasworks in Darmstadt, which was owned by the city . He was a co-founder of the Landeshypothekenbank in 1902/03. Together with Carl Merck (entrepreneur) and other Darmstadt personalities, he founded the building association for workers' housing in 1864. As a long-standing member of the board of the Central Association for Workers' Housing Welfare , he was a co-founder of the Darmstadt Construction Association . He was also the honorary managing director of the building association for more than forty years.

Otto Wolfskehl was the founder of several foundations and for many years chairman of the Darmstadt Musikverein, founded in 1832. He promoted the expansion of the Darmstadt Mathildenhöhe . His basic liberal convictions become clear when he is named both as a supporter of the Darmstadt liberal Jewish community , which was emerging at the time , and also as a major promoter of the construction of the Darmstadt Evangelical St. John's Church.

Otto Wolfskehl was buried in the old cemetery in Darmstadt (grave site: III L 96).

Honors

• Holder of the Grand Commander's Cross of the Grand Ducal Hessian Order of Philipps .
• The Otto-Wolfskehl Street in Darmstadt (now Goebelstraße) was named after him; the Wolfskehl'sche Park was formerly owned by the family.
• Otto Wolfskehl rejected the proposal to raise him to the nobility.
• The TU Darmstadt guest house at the Lichtwiese site, which was inaugurated in 2013, was named Otto Wolfskehl-Haus on June 16, 2014 .

literature

• Stadtlexikon Darmstadt , ed. Historical association for Hesse on behalf of the city council of the City of Science Darmstadt. Stuttgart: Theiss Verlag 2006, pp. 1006-1007.
• Eckhart G. Franz : Jews as Darmstadt citizens. Roether, Darmstadt 1984, pp. 240-244 and p. 378.
• On the 75th anniversary of death. Otto Wolfskehl. In: IHK. Starkenburger Wirtschaft 1982, p. 280.
• Otto Wolfskehl , in: Ernest Hamburger : Jews in public life in Germany: members of the government, civil servants and parliamentarians in the monarchical era. 1848-1918 . Tübingen: Mohr, 1968, p. 335
• Erwin Viefhaus: University - State - Society , in: 100 Years of the Technical University of Darmstadt, yearbook 1976/77, Darmstadt 1977, pp. 57–111.

Web links

• Wolfskehl, Otto in the Hessian biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Liberale Synagoge Darmstadt (with portrait photography by Otto Wolfskehl) ( Memento of the original from September 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ "Wolfskehl, Otto Wilhelm Nathan Benjamin". Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).