Prym (family)
Prym (variations: Pryme, Priem, Preim ) is the name of an old Aachen patrician family that can be traced back to the 14th century . Members of an important branch of the family settled in Stolberg as copper masters from 1642 . From this branch of the family, the internationally active company for the production of haberdashery , William Prym Holding GmbH , which was founded in 1530, developed. The family is thus the oldest entrepreneurial dynasty in Germany and one of the oldest in the world.
Origins
The oldest documented ancestor is a certain Leonhard Prym (around 1340–1420), married to Agnes Dollart, whose son William (around 1380–1447) became known in Aachen as a councilor and benefactor during a rampant famine. His descendants soon appeared as knife and goldsmiths and at the end of the 16th century the Prym family split into several Catholic and Protestant lines.
The remaining Catholic part of the family continued to work mainly in Aachen and retained the new spelling of the name Priem, which appeared towards the end of the 16th century and which later changed to Preim in individual branches. Jean Preim, founder of one of the first photo shops in Germany in Aachen in 1882 , is in all probability one of the descendants of this line.
The first branch to convert to the Protestant denomination began with the shoemaker and trader Matthias Preim (1582–1642), who, however, was banned from the Reich due to his faith and expelled from Aachen in 1604, whereupon he fled to Frankfurt am Main with his family . His also converted cousin, the cuirassier captain in the imperial service William Prym († 1645), grandson of the goldsmith of the same name William Prym (1490–1561), however, saw himself forced, like the Aachen copper master families Amya , Hoesch , Peltzer , Schleicher and before others, due to the disadvantages and persecution in the context of the Aachen religious unrest, emigrate with his family permanently to the neighboring Stolberg, where he became the progenitor of a family branch that has been successful and known to this day.
The Laufenburg near Langerwehe is still owned by the Prym family today.
Stolberger line
The successful rise to an entrepreneurial family began with the entry of William's son Christian Prym (1614–1683) into the copper yard Roderburgmühle of his brother-in-law Heinrich Peltzer, in which his son Heinrich Prym (1652–1717) also worked. Heinrich's son Christian (1676–1747) acquired the Dollart hammer between 1708 and 1714 , probably the oldest and first documented riding workshop in the Vichtbachtal , which was to become the origin of the later Prym works. His grandson Isaac (1758–1806) expanded the company by taking over the “Salzrumpf” plant as a part of the Dollart hammer. Finally, Isaac's grandson William Prym (1811–1883) acquired the Derichsberger Mühlen hammer mill, set up a modern brass rolling mill there and equipped it with a steam engine in 1860. This was the actual hour of birth of William Prym GmbH & Co KG , whose production was soon concentrated on the Dollart hammer, which is still the company's location today.
The descendants of the last named William continued the work as an industrially structured company, expanding to Austria before 1890, where they set up branches in Vienna and in Weissenbach an der Triesting, among other places . The company built a workers' settlement in Weissenbach, which still exists today and bears the name Prymhäuser .
But the real breakthrough came through the led still by William specialized in dry goods, and later an improved in 1903 by patenting through an inserted spring and Heribert Bauer invented the push button by Williams grandson Hans Friedrich Prym (1875-1965). For their services, both Hans and his father Heinrich August Prym (1843–1927) were made honorary citizens of the city of Stolberg. Today William Prym GmbH & Co KG is a globally operating holding company with three independent subsidiaries and locations in Europe, America, Asia and Africa.
The founding of the city library and swimming pool in Stolberg as well as social housing and one of the first German company health insurance funds , which is now part of Actimonda BKK , go back to the financial commitment of this line of the Prym family of entrepreneurs .
Thus, while William Prym and his descendants were resigned to the Dollard Hammer, his brother Richard underwent (1814-1894) training as a textile manufacturer and, together with his father Carl Friedrich Schoeller (1784-1860), brother of Leopold Schoeller , the Friedrich Schoeller & Prym Tuchfabrik Düren. Richard's two eldest sons, however, opted for other professional paths, and so Friedrich Prym (1841–1915) became a well-known mathematician and his brother Eugen Prym (1843–1913) became professor of Arabic and Aramaic languages .
Literature and Sources
- Andrea Prym-Bruck: Prym, family. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 749 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Hermann Friedrich Macco : Aachen coat of arms and genealogies , Vol. 2, Aachen, 1907, pp. 74-77
- Fritz Brüggemann : The older Prym family in Aachen and their connection with the younger Prym family in Stolberg, a critical genealogical investigation , In: Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein , (ZAGV) 44/1922, pp. 1-64
- Walther Th. Prym: Ancestors and descendants of Gustav Isaak Prym, April 3, 1783 - January 8, 1832, brass manufacturer on the Dollart hammer and in Eschweiler, and his wife Emilie Lynen, November 2, 1791 - August 20, 1844 , Hamburg 1996, 5th, completely revised edition
- Walther Th. Prym: Ancestors and descendants of Richard Prym, September 21, 1814 - April 18, 1894, cloth manufacturer and landowner in Düren (Rhld.) And his wife Ernestine Schoeller, May 21, 1816 - June 24, 1878 , Hamburg, 1986 , 4th, revised edition
- Franz Willems: Prym, History and Genealogy , Guido Pressler Verlag , Wiesbaden 1968
