Paul Thierfelder

Paul Thierfelder (ca.1913)

Paul Thierfelder (born August 17, 1884 in Auerbach (Erzgebirge) ; † September 24, 1917 ; full name Paul Richard Thierfelder ) was a German architect and inventor .

Life

Paul Thierfelder was born on August 17, 1884 as the son of the landowner Ernst Thierfelder and his wife Minna, nee Viertel in Auerbach, where he also spent his childhood. After successfully completing elementary school, he began an apprenticeship as a carpenter . It is not known where he completed this. From February 1901, an apprenticeship at the crafts school in Chemnitz followed . It can be assumed that he was trained as a master builder there. After this time, he was trained by the architect Kühn. In September 1906 he took a theory test in Schwerin, whereupon he went to Chemnitz to take up a position with the master builder Kurt Heinsius.

In 1907 Paul Thierfelder returned to his birthplace Auerbach and took a position as technical manager in August Robert Wieland's hosiery factory . This was an unusual move as he had no previous experience in the hosiery industry. In the following years Thierfelder designed many buildings for Wieland, including manufacturing buildings and a villa. On May 19, 1912, he married Rosa Wieland, his boss's daughter. In the same year Thierfelder successfully participated in a tender by the Auerbach municipal council to build a new town hall. For this place he also designed a gym and a school. However, the latter project was not carried out as a result of the First World War.

Thierfelder became famous as a co-inventor of the so-called whole stocking . He had constructed knitting machines for this, with which stockings could be worked from the double edge to the tip. This made the so-called foot machine with one worker and two pushers unnecessary, which represented a great economic saving. The patent was granted on February 12, 1914 under the number 293168 as a “method for the production of a knitted regular stocking”. It was widely recognized in specialist circles and became world-famous as the “Wieland heel” or “W heel”. The Imperial Patent Office in Berlin was so interested in this invention that a high-ranking official stayed in Auerbach in June 1914 in order to receive information from the von Wieland company on the state of the art in the field of knitted goods .

In addition to developing a number of other patents, Thierfelder designed a large number of designs for stockings, with which the company was able to record particular sales successes. He created the basis for Wieland ( ARWA ) to become a leading company in the industry.

Petinet and jacquard stockings by A. Robert Wieland from the years 1907–1910, design a. a. by Paul Thierfelder

In 1914 Paul Thierfelder was called up for military service. In the first years of the war he was employed on the Western Front as a fighter officer and from October 1916 as an air observation officer in the Balkans. On September 20, 1917, he was wounded in an aerial combat. As a result of the injuries sustained, he died on September 24, 1917 and was buried in Resna (Macedonia). After the body was transferred to Auerbach, it was reburied there on May 7, 1918 in the crypt of the Wieland family.

Awards

Thierfelder received various military awards: He was a knight of the Iron Cross of both classes, the Observer Badge , the Iron Crescent , the Knight's Cross II. Class of the Order of Civil Merit with swords and the Knight's Cross II. Class of the Albrecht Order with swords.

The glider club in Auerbach named a glider after him.

After Thierfelder's death, his father-in-law set up a foundation called the “Paul Thierfelder and Georg Oehme Foundation”. In the Baden-Württemberg town of Gaildorf , to which Thierfelder's son Hans Thierfelder moved after the Second World War, a street was named after him.

literature

• Falk Drechsel, Heike Krause, Klaus Michael Oßwald: ARWA. The rise and fall of a stocking empire. Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 2014.

Web link

• Falk Drechsel: Thierfelder, Paul Richard. In: Saxon Biography. Published by the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore , edit. by Martina Schattkowsky .