Paul van Elsen
Paul van Elsen (born October 19, 1901 in Gräfrath ; † October 18, 1988 in Bochum ) was a German travel company .
Life
Paul was born the son of a bread manufacturer in Gräfrath , today a district of Solingen . In 1921 he made in Elberfeld , now a part of Wuppertal , the High School . He then studied traffic sciences in Munich and Cologne . In 1928 he wrote his doctoral thesis in Cologne on the development of German country road traffic up to the appearance of the railway and received his doctorate with " summa cum laude " from Franz Thorbecke . He then wrote about the current traffic problems for various magazines and received a teaching position at the Higher Police Vocational School in Wuppertal for the period from 1929 to 1931. In 1938 he married Mathilde Ostwald, a sports teacher . The marriage had two children: Wolf (* 1940) and Horst-Eike (* 1942), who died at the age of six.
Bochum tourist office
In 1931 Paul van Elsen succeeded the retiring Lothar Freiherr von Richthofen as managing director of the Bochum tourist office , which also had a small travel agency attached. He created the first hotel prospectus in the city and helped defuse dangerous level railroad crossings and narrow street crossings. This also included the relocation of the old main train station by raising the rail route on the cast steel line. He was supported in this by the then general director of the Bochum association Leopold Bering, whose daughter Elsbeth later became his authorized signatory and who, through her intimate relationships with industry, played a major role in the company's rise.
Van Elsen was involved in setting up the bus network of Bochum-Gelsenkirchener Straßenbahnen AG and was a founding member of the Friends of Bochum Zoo , of which he later became an honorary member, and co-founder of the large Bochum carnival company GroBoKa. In cooperation with the Bochum schools and the local police, he initiated the systematic traffic education of children in Bochum. He founded the municipal advertising community, which u. a. entertained the residents with illuminations in the city park , square concerts and lectures by famous contemporaries (including Sven Hedin ). In addition, he organized the first St. Nicholas parades with thousands of children and “ Riewekauken ” food.
Travel agency at the town hall
In 1945, after the Second World War , he and his wife Mathilde rebuilt the orphaned travel agency on Rathausplatz (today Willy-Brandt-Platz 8) on their own. Business began with a small shop window (picture) , borrowed tables and chairs and a typewriter that was also borrowed . The ticket cabinet was made of simple bricks. Since there were only chalk recordings for the few trains in the local train station, he inquired about the departure and arrival times at the neighboring train stations and had the first Bochum timetable printed out. As the times slowly calmed down after the war and turned for the better, he recognized the opportunity to expand the travel agency with tourist offers. The personal friendships with Carl Degener , the founder of Touropa , and Willy Scharnow , the founder of Scharnow-Reisen, helped him here . Both companies later became part of TUI . He also helped develop the first special holiday trains. The introduction of couchette cars also goes back to his idea, which Degener implemented together with the Deutsche Bundesbahn .
As the largest official travel agency in Bochum, his company represented the German travel agency in Frankfurt and was thus the first address for the sale of tickets for the Deutsche Bundesbahn and all international railways. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Montreal , founded in Havana , Cuba in 1945 , granted him the license to sell flight tickets not only from the newly founded Lufthansa .
His office, in collaboration with the Red Cross , brought the soldiers returning from captivity together with their dispersed families. At that time, the office also developed as an information center for missing persons. His travel agency was also the largest agency for European luggage insurance in Bochum and one of the city's top-selling tote and lottery points. She also represented well-known shipping companies such as the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag) and North German Lloyd as well as many international shipping companies. The entire (large) industry in the extended Bochum area was now a customer of his office. The annual turnover rose to more than ten million marks . The purchase of the "Rote Erde travel agency" on the Südring from the then entrepreneur Paul Rosenkranz from Dortmund also contributed to this .
In 1955 van Elsen became chairman of the working committee of representatives of the German travel agencies (DER) and in 1964 president of the German travel agency association eV in Frankfurt , today's German travel association . In addition, in 1954 his colleagues elected him chairman of the “Touropa-Scharnow Committee”.
Awards
He received several domestic and foreign awards, including a. In 1967 the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon , which Lord Mayor Fritz Heinemann presented to him at a ceremony. As President of the German Travel Agency Association he was invited to Rome in 1967 by the Council Congregation of the Holy See together with some foreign cardinals . In 1986 he received the transport association's jug of honor from the managing director of the Bochum Transport Association, Ferdi Lammert, the father of the current President of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert , for his services to the urban development of Bochum.
Handover to son Wolf
In 1971 Paul van Elsen handed over the management of the travel agency to his son Wolf , who opened further branches at Bochum's Dr.-Ruer-Platz and, directly opposite Bochum's main train station , at Kurt-Schumacher-Platz , making it one of the largest private official travel agencies of the Federal Republic of Germany. He consolidated the supra-regional importance of the company, which at times comprised more than 60 employees, and increased the average annual turnover to over 13 million D-Marks .
death
Paul van Elsen died in 1988, one day before his 87th birthday with his family, his wife Mathilde just under a year later.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Birth certificate of the registry office Gräfrath no .: 231/1901 of October 22, 1901
- ^ Karl Fuss: History of the travel agencies. Verlag Erwin Jäger Darmstadt 1960, Volume 8 in the publication series of the German Travel Agency Association (DRV), pages 110 ff.
- ↑ Paul van Elsen: Die deutsche Landstraße: traffic-geographic considerations about its development from the post age to the present. Verlag Danielewski 1929. Inaugural dissertation
- ^ Karl Fuss: History of the travel agencies. Erwin Jäger Verlag, Darmstadt 1960, Volume No. 8 in the series of publications by the German Travel Agency Association (DRV), pages 110 ff.
- ^ Birth certificate at the Bochum-Mitte registry office no .: 443 from February 5, 1940
- ^ Birth certificate at the Bochum-Mitte registry office no .: 556 from February 26, 1943
- ^ Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), Bochum edition of March 31, 2001
- ^ Ruhr-Nachrichten (RN), Bochum edition of April 1, 1971 and Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), April 2, 1971 edition
- ^ Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), Bochum edition of October 19, 1971
- ^ Yearbook of Aviation 1961, p. 195: Travel agency at the Rathaus OHG
- ^ Ruhr-Nachrichten (RN), Bochum edition of April 1, 1971 and Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), Bochum edition of April 2, 1971
- ^ Karl Fuss History of Travel Agencies , Erwin Jäger Darmstadt Publishing House 1960, Volume 8 in the series of publications by the German Travel Agency Association (DRV), pages 110 ff
- ^ Ruhr-Nachrichten (RN), Bochum edition of May 3, 1956
- ^ Karl Fuss History of Travel Agencies , Erwin Jäger Darmstadt Publishing House 1960, Volume 8 in the series of publications by the German Travel Agency Association (DRV), pages 110 ff
- ^ Ministerialblatt - Nordrhein-Westfalen - Düsseldorf - F 4763 A - from October 2, 1967 - number 133 PDF 403 KB - accessed on November 22, 2016
- ↑ Albert Oeckl: Paperback of public life, volumes 16-17. NfA sales and advertising company 1966 - p. 315.
- ^ Ruhr-Nachrichten (RN), Bochum edition of April 5, 1967
- ^ Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), Bochum edition of October 27, 1986, Ruhr-Nachrichten (RN), Bochum edition of October 18, 1986, Bochum city mirror of November 1, 1986
- ^ Ruhr-Nachrichten (RN), Bochum edition of October 19, 1976 and Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), Bochum edition of October 19, 1976
- ^ Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), Bochum edition of October 20, 1988
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Elsen, Paul van |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 19, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Graefrath |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 18, 1988 |
| Place of death | Bochum |