Paul Schulenburg
Paul Friedrich Schulenburg (born November 1, 1871 in St. Louis , † June 6, 1937 in Gera ) was a German entrepreneur in the textile industry and an important patron of the arts .
Life
Paul Schulenburg was born the son of a German-American in St. Louis . The family, whose roots go back to Soest , became prosperous in the USA through the timber trade and returned to Germany in 1879. Paul Schulenburg attended a textile school and in 1895 became an authorized signatory in the East Thuringian textile industry. In 1897 he founded a wool and silk weaving mill in Gera together with Alexander Bessler . Under the company Schulenburg & Bessler this company expanded rapidly and acquired 1905 the Land of the textile factory Meinhardt & Zimmermann in Gera district Zwötzen . In the 1920s the company had up to 800 employees and exported to up to 50 countries. In the period from 1925 to 1928, the architect Thilo Schoder , a master student of Henry van de Velde , built new buildings and extensions for the company in the New Building style , which have been preserved to this day. In addition to the modern equipment of his company's production facilities, Paul Schulenburg always had the social security of his employees in mind: works council , pension schemes and holiday camps for the recreation of his employees were part of his recipe for success.
In his private life, Paul Schulenburg was an art lover and shared the intentions of the artist Henry van de Velde for an objectified and functionally based aesthetic. As early as 1906 he bought a dining room furniture from van de Velde at the 3rd German Applied Arts Exhibition in Dresden. In 1913 Schulenburg commissioned van de Velde to design and build his house on the western outskirts of the industrial city of Gera. With the House Schulenburg an architectural work of art that combines the new design ideas in it was from 1913 to 1915. The interior of his house was complemented by woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer , drawings by Auguste Rodin , paintings by Vincent van Gogh , Paul Signac , Camille Pissarro , Édouard Manet , Claude Monet , Alfred Sisley and Max Liebermann . Sculptures by George Minne , Guillaume Charlier and Constantin Meunier as well as works by Thuringian artists such as Theodor Hagen , Walther Klemm , Richard Engelmann , Paul Neidhardt , Kurt Günther , Heinrich Linzen and Hilde Linzen-Gebhardt . Otto Dorfner and Thilo Schoder were represented as book artists in his extensive collection. In addition to his predilection for Maybach cars , Paul Schulenburg was also a lover of orchids. Schulenburg's greenhouse housed the largest orchid collection in Germany at the time.
Paul Schulenburg was married to Elisabeth geb. Thierbach, a landowner's daughter from Lobeda near Jena. The Schulenburgs had five children: Wolfgang, Richard, Grunhilde, Adelheid and Joachim. Paul Schulenburg fell ill at an early age and passed the company on to his sons Wolfgang and Richard, who continued the company after Schulenburg's death until the end of the Second World War . In 1947 the family was expropriated and left Gera.
literature
- Sabine Schellenberg, Ulla Dittmann, Susanne Spindler u. a .: House Schulenburg. In: Lower monument protection authority Gera (ed.): Villas and villa gardens in Gera. 1999.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Siegfried Mues: The street name of the city of Gera from A to Z . Publishing house Dr. Frank GmbH, Gera 2006, ISBN 978-3-934805-23-1 , p. 219 .
- ↑ Fanny Zölsmann: The remarkable life of Paul Schulenburg. August 15, 2014, accessed on 26 March 2018 .
- ↑ From August 17, 2014: "100 years of Schulenburg House - a family, company and cultural history". Retrieved March 26, 2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schulenburg, Paul |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Schulenburg, Paul Friedrich (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur in the textile industry and an important patron of the arts |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 1, 1871 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | St. Louis |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 6, 1937 |
| Place of death | Gera |