Reinhard Poensgen

Reinhard Poensgen

Reinhard Poensgen (born September 4, 1792 in Solingen ; † December 10, 1848 in Schleiden ) was a German master craftsman and factory owner who made a significant contribution to the expansion of the Gemünder and Schleiden iron industry in the first half of the 19th century.

Live and act

Poensgen was the son of the iron manufacturer Johann Heinrich Poensgen (1760-1814) and Johanna Maria Wilhelmina Knecht (1761-1819). Influenced by his father, who was the seventh generation of Reidemeister of the Eifel family Poensgen and ran an iron factory in Solingen, Reinhard Poensgen also completed his training as an iron specialist. As early as 1819 he was drawn back to his Eifel roots and he joined the business of his uncle Johann Heinrich Rotscheidt († 1842) at the former Eisenau hut and ran the "Gemünder Schneidwerk". From 1828 to 1834 he was works manager here and converted this plant into a puddling and rolling mill . After 1834, for economic reasons, he took over another rolling mill and the English wire factory “Mariahütte” in Gemünd, which had existed since 1763 . In cooperation with the manufacturer Hoesch in Düren, the Schaaffhausen'schen Bankverein and the trading house Carl Joest in Cologne , Poensgen organized a flourishing purchase and sale of Scottish pig iron . With its existing range of bars and dies as well as wire and sheet metal, the Poensgen company was now one of the most modern and first of its kind in Europe, which ultimately led to a visit by the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1839 . The production numbers rose rapidly and Reinhard Poensgen at times employed more than 300 people, which meant an enormous economic factor for this region. He used the company profits for the purchase of shares in iron ore mines near Keldenich / Kall , in the Hellenthal ironworks , in the machine factory " Dobbs & Poensgen " of his brother Eduard (1806–1871) in Aachen , which went into liquidation in 1841, in the oil - and Fulling Mill in Dreiborn and through his marriage to the Axmacher family at the “Gangforther Hütte”. After Rotscheidt's death in 1842, he brought all these shares together to form the "Handelsgesellschaft Reinhard Poensgen" in order to protect them from inheritance disputes.

However, a series of industrial accidents and the unfavorable infrastructure of the remote Eifel valleys led to a massive slump in profits in the mid-1940s, which after Poensgen's death in 1848 even forced him to temporarily shut down his operations. His sons, Gustav Poensgen and Rudolf Poensgen , who were only 24 and 22 years old at the time , initially took over production and were also awarded prizes at the Paris World Exhibition and the Munich Trade Exhibition in 1855 . Nevertheless, for economic reasons, as the infrastructure in the Eifel did not improve, they followed their relatives Albert Poensgen to Düsseldorf with their "Handelsgesellschaft Reinhard Poensgen" when he, who had completed an apprenticeship with Reinhard Poensgen after his school days, took his tube rolling mill there in 1860 misplaced. From their mutual merger, the " Düsseldorfer Röhren- und Eisenwalzwerke AG " emerged in 1872 .

In addition to his work as a company manager, Reinhard Poensgen was also politically active. In 1828 he was elected as a merchant's deputy to the trade tax commission of the municipality of Gemünd and in 1836 as the first district deputy in Schleiden. In addition, he was a co-founder of the Association for the Promotion of the Iron Industry and took over the management of the Eifel district himself.

family

Reinhard Poensgen was married to Katharina Henriette Axmacher (1796–1850), daughter of Reidemeister Paulus Axmacher (* 1746) and Lucia Cornelia Philippine Rotscheidt (1742–1841). In addition to the two sons already mentioned, he had seven children. One of his grandsons, Carl Rudolf Poensgen , son of Rudolf Poensgen, also became an important steel industrialist in Düsseldorf, as did the other relatives of the cousin line Julius Poensgen (1815–1880), Carl Poensgen , Ernst Poensgen (1871–1949) and Helmuth Poensgen (1887 -1945).

Literature and Sources

• Lutz Hatzfeld:  Poensgen, Reinhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 568 ( digitized version ).
• Edmund Strutz (Ed.): German Gender Book , Volume 123, 1958, Verlag CA Starke, Glücksburg, Ostsee.
• From Heinrich Kellerter, Ernst Poensgen: The history of the Poensgen family ; Ed .: A. Bagel-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1908.
• Horst Wessel: The entrepreneurs of the Poensgen family in the Eifel and in Düsseldorf , in: Bewegen -verbindungen-Gestalten, entrepreneurs from the 17th to the 20th century , writings on the Rhenish-Westphalian economic history, vol. 44, foundation Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv zu Cologne, Cologne 2003.
• Lutz Hatzfeld: The beginning of the German tube industry, for the 100th return of the relocation of the Poensgen plants from Mauel to Düsseldorf. In: Tradition, magazine for company history and entrepreneur biography, issue 6 (pp. 241–258), 1960.

Web links

• Paul Schröder: From the water wheel to the steam engine on wisoveg.de