Peter Witte (writer)

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Peter Witte monument in Solingen (2019)

Peter Daniel Witte (born November 24, 1876 in Solingen ; † March 17, 1949 there ) was a German scissors manufacturer and local poet .

biography

Peter Daniel Witte was the younger of two sons of the scissors manufacturer Peter David Witte and his wife Emma Helene, née Suberg. His brother, who was three years older, was named Paul David. He attended the Realgymnasium Friedrichstrasse in Solingen, where he also learned English and French; This was probably due to the parents' realization that manual skills were no longer sufficient to trade internationally. Presumably his brother Paul also received a secondary education with foreign language lessons because it was he who represented the joint company at large trade fairs in later years. In 1896/97 Peter Witte did his one year military service in Hanover and only left his hometown when he had to serve as a soldier in the First World War .

Peter David Witte died in 1905 and the two sons took over the company as PD Witte OHG . They lived in one household with their mother. Professionally they had a division of labor: Peter Witte, who had completed a commercial apprenticeship, did the office work, while Paul Witte took care of production. The Wittes trademark represents a man who smokes a pipe, the so-called "pipe man". The company's main buyers were customers from Central and Eastern Germany . A later president of the Solingen Chamber of Commerce and Industry , Hans Robert Grah, praised the Witte products: “The two manufacturers delivered a range of fine scissors with the highest quality standards [...] For me, the Wittes always embodied the highest standards of Made in Solingen. "

After his mother's death in 1925, Paul Witte married Gertrud Luthien from Leipzig , who was 20 years his junior and whom he had met while visiting trade fairs there. henceforth she ran the household for the two men. The marriage remained childless.

After the air raids on Solingen on November 4th and 5th, 1944, only rubble plots of real estate remained from the Witte brothers' real estate, the factories and residential buildings were destroyed. Peter Witte later reported that what he had saved fit into a small box. Peter, Paul and Gertrud Witte found refuge among others with a former military friend of Peter Witte near Goslar . In 1945 production was resumed on a modest scale with the support of Solingen homeworkers . In 1949 Peter Witte succumbed to a heart condition. He was buried in the Evangelical Cemetery on Kasinostraße, the mayor and an “almost unmistakable mourners” accompanied the coffin. Paul Witte died about six months later; the brothers were buried in a double grave that the parents had bought for their sons. In 2005 the grave was supposed to be leveled, but could be saved with donations.

plant

Before the First World War, Peter Witte began to write poetry and short stories in Solinger Platt . A friend urged him to publish his very popular profound, but also humorous poems and prose pieces in a book. Heimatruschen appeared shortly before Christmas 1939. The Solingen artists Anneliese Everts , Paul Ern and Willy Schwickerath had illustrated the volume. In 1948 a second book, Heimatleuten , was published, which contains one of Witte's most famous poems: An minn Vaterstadt , which expresses his feelings after the devastating air raids. In the real dictionary of German literary history from 1958, it says that Witte is one of the “valuable Rhenish dialect poets” and that in his pictorial language he proves to be a master of depicting nature and people.

Honor

On June 22, 1963, a bronze sculpture by Peter Witte was inaugurated on Solingen's old market, a central square in the city, in the presence of Gertrud Witte. It was created by the sculptor Lies Ketterer .

Originally, Witte sat on a stone bench at the edge of a well that was later no longer in use. During the renovation work, the monument was put into storage and put up again in 2014 with Witte sitting on a glass cube.

literature

  • Werner Ph. Trunk: Peter Daniel Witte - company and family . In: On behalf of the Bergisches Geschichtsverein Abt. Solingen (Hrsg.): Die Heimat. Contributions to the history of Solingen and the Bergisches Land . tape 26 , 2011, p. 38-44 .

Web links

Commons : Peter Witte  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Trunk, Peter Daniel Witte , p. 38.
  2. ^ Trunk, Peter Daniel Witte , p. 39.
  3. ^ Trunk, Peter Daniel Witte , pp. 39/40.
  4. ↑ a b c Trunk, Peter Daniel Witte , p. 40.
  5. ^ Trunk, Peter Daniel Witte , pp. 41/42.
  6. ^ Wenke: Mein Solingen / Dialect Books 2. In: solingen-internet.de. March 11, 2005, accessed November 20, 2019 .
  7. ↑ *: Real Lexicon of German Literary History. P. 524 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  8. ↑ Peter Witte Memorial. In: solingen.de. Retrieved November 20, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Local poet Peter Witte has a new seat made of glass. In: solinger-tageblatt.de. Retrieved November 20, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Witte, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Witte, Peter Daniel (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur and local poet
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Solingen
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1949
Place of death Solingen