Robert Bosch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Bosch at the age of 27
Robert Bosch signature.svg

August Robert Bosch (born September 23, 1861 in Albeck near Ulm ; † March 12, 1942 in Stuttgart ) was a German industrialist , engineer and inventor . With the opening of the workshop for precision mechanics and electrical engineering in Stuttgart in 1886, he laid the foundation stone for today's Robert Bosch GmbH .

Life

Youth and career entry

Economy "Zur Krone" in Albeck, birthplace of Carl Friedrich Alexander Bosch

Robert Bosch was born in Albeck, northeast of Ulm , and was the second youngest of twelve children. His parents Servatius (1816–1880) and Maria Margarethe Bosch , b. Dölle (1818–1898) belonged to the regional peasant upper class. The father was the innkeeper of the Krone inn and a freemason . He was well educated and placed particular emphasis on a good education for his children. Robert Bosch attended secondary school in Ulm from 1869 to 1876 and then completed an apprenticeship as a mechanic . In 1879, Bosch went on a traditional hike and was able to close the training gaps caused by the unfavorable conditions in his training company. He chose almost only the first addresses of the high technology of the time. He worked as a belt maker in the company of his brother Carl Friedrich (father of Carl Bosch ) and his brother-in-law Gustav Haag, Bosch & Haag, in Cologne and spent the winter of 1879 with the electrical engineering pioneer Wilhelm Emil Fein in Stuttgart. In December 1879 he moved to Hanau to the court jeweler Friedrich Isaac Roediger , the pioneer in the field of the fully automatic machine production of the foxtail chain . Roediger had learned from his uncle Isaac Bury and in Paris and from his uncle Jean-Frederic Bury in Geneva. He became a partner in his uncle's company in Hanau. In 1851 Bury died and Roediger took over the management of the company. In 1866 he founded his own company in Hanau and invented a process for the fully automatic production of jewelry chains. At Roediger, Bosch got to know the first production machine of his career. When he found out in September that his father had pneumonia, he returned to Ulm. After his father's death, he returned to Bosch & Haag in Cologne .

From October 1, 1881 to October 1, 1882, Robert Bosch did his military service as a one-year volunteer with the Württemberg Pioneer Battalion No. 13 in Ulm, which he finished as a non-commissioned officer and officer candidate. However, he did not pursue the officer career promised by his superiors. Bosch then worked for four years at various companies in Germany , the USA (at Edison ), and Great Britain ( Siemens Brothers & Co. ).

Company formation and history

Pendulum sleeve magneto
(DRP 99399)

On November 15, 1886, Robert Bosch opened a workshop for precision mechanics and electrical engineering (today Robert Bosch GmbH ) in Stuttgart (Rotebühlstrasse 75 B) with a journeyman and an apprentice . In 1887 he made decisive improvements to a magneto ignition system originally patented by Siegfried Marcus from the Deutz machine factory and thus had his first economic success with stationary gas engines . The device was used to generate an electrical spark with which the gas mixture in a (stationary) internal combustion engine was ignited. In 1897, Bosch employee Arnold Zähringer succeeded for the first time in adapting such a magneto to a high-speed motor vehicle engine. With this he solved one of the greatest technical problems of the still young automotive technology . In 1901/02, Robert Bosch's first engineer, Gottlob Honold, developed the high-voltage magneto; thus a way to ever faster running gasoline engines was found - as an alternative to Henry Ford's flywheel magneto ignition .

Even before the turn of the century, Bosch was expanding its business abroad, initially to Great Britain and other European countries in 1898 . The first agency was opened in 1906 and the first factory opened in 1910 in the USA. In 1913 the company had branches in America , Asia , Africa and Australia and generated 88% of sales outside Germany. At the beginning of the First World War, a large part of the mobile military equipment was equipped with Bosch spark plugs. Bosch brought innovations for motor vehicles onto the market in quick succession after the First World War, including diesel injection in 1927 . Under the influence of the crises of the 1920s ( hyperinflation in 1923 , global economic crisis in the early 1930s), Robert Bosch carried out a modernization and diversification process in his company. In just a few years, the company succeeded in transforming it from a handcrafted automotive supplier to a global electrical engineering group. In the Second World War, the company was able to achieve high profits again, primarily through the Luftwaffe , which bought injection pumps (e.g. for the Daimler-Benz DB 605 aircraft engine ). Robert Bosch withdrew from day-to-day business towards the end of the 1930s; Nevertheless, he continued to work on innovations for his company.

In 1918, Bosch described the structure and its business model in a letter to the Prussian State Library in Berlin .

social commitment

Memorial in honor of Robert Bosch in his place of birth Albeck

In the 1880s, Robert Bosch became a member of the American organization Knights of Labor , which was a mixture of a secret box and a union. In 1907 he joined the Association of Württemberg Entrepreneurs and in 1913 the Association of Württemberg Metal Industrialists . During the First World War , Bosch was able to profit greatly from the sale of its products and used 20 million marks of the profit to build the Neckar Canal and to establish technical, educational, and social foundations . Furthermore, during the First World War, he had some factories converted into hospitals and donated artificial limbs for the wounded workers returning home. Although he had never studied himself, Robert Bosch became an honorary member of the old gentlemen's association of the Stuttgart student union, Akademischer Verein Hütte Stuttgart, and through his foundations he made a significant contribution to the building of a handsome fraternity house with accommodation for foreign students from 1907–1912.

Right from the start, Bosch was committed to training its employees. Aware of the company's social responsibility, he was one of the first in Germany to introduce eight-hour working hours as early as 1906. This earned him the nickname “The Red Bosch”. Further exemplary social services for the employees followed, e.g. B. always fair pay. In 1940 he handed over a hospital he had donated in Stuttgart to its destination. The new building that was built in 1969 is still called the Robert Bosch Hospital today .

Political commitment

Bosch saw himself as a social democrat and maintained a stable social partnership . A workforce strike in June / July 1913 organized by the German Metalworkers Association (DMV) at Bosch-Metallwerk AG in Feuerbach led to a deep estrangement between Bosch and social democracy. Bosch responded to the strike by shutting down the plant. It was a largely politically motivated strike. The pressure to rationalize grew, but so did the wage level. The decisive factor, however, was that there were wing battles in the Stuttgart social democracy between the reform-oriented and the radical wing, which saw the example of the Bosch company with its high level of organization in the DMV as a suitable starting point for a mass strike. In addition, the DMV turned to the radical wing , closely oriented towards Marx , which saw itself further incited by Bosch's reformist stance. Ultimately, within a few months, a long-term stable, at the time very progressive social partnership broke up.

Robert Bosch was also politically active in the 1920s and 1930s. He welcomed the democratic spirit of the Weimar Republic and also introduced democratic conditions in-house, such as the establishment of a company newspaper , the Bosch-Zünder . As a liberal entrepreneur, he was a member of various economic committees. He invested a lot of energy and financial resources in the reconciliation between Germany and France . From this he hoped for a lasting peace in Europe and the creation of a European economic area without customs barriers. He tried several times in personal talks to win Adolf Hitler over to this plan. Between 1922 and 1933 he was a member of the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society . From 1923 to 1926, Bosch was on the board of the Association of German Engineers (VDI).

After the seizure of power , the National Socialist regime quickly put an end to these efforts by Bosch. The company soon took on arms contracts and employed slave labor during the war . On the site of the Bosch subsidiary Dreilinden Maschinenbau GmbH was the to Sachsenhausen concentration camp belonging satellite camp Kleinmachnow . At the same time, however, Robert Bosch actively supported the resistance against National Socialism . He had connections with Carl Goerdeler and other men on July 20, 1944 . He saved with his closest associates Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis before the deportation . Goerdeler traveled across the country with the help of a Bosch ID in order to win allies in the fight against the Hitler regime. To confidants, Bosch frankly formulated what he thought of Hitler: "My Lord, the guy is a criminal." The historian Arno Lustiger counts Bosch as one of the industrialists "who did everything to save Jewish employees and their families," such as also Ernst Leitz or Berthold Beitz .

Private

Built in 1910 Bosch Villa in the district Gänsheide in Stuttgart-Ost
Bosch's grave

On October 10, 1887, Robert Bosch married Anna Kayser (1864–1949), the sister of his friend Eugen Kayser († 1918), who in 1909 became head of Bosch-Metallwerk AG in Feuerbach. The daughter Margarete was born in 1888, the daughter Paula in 1889 and the son Robert in 1891, who died of multiple sclerosis in 1921 . The daughter Elisabeth, born in 1893, died early. After his divorce from Anna Kayser in 1927, he married Margarete Wörz (1888–1979) in Berlin in November of the same year. This second marriage comes from the son Robert jun. (1928–2004) and daughter Eva (* 1931, later wife of aeronautical engineer Gero Madelung ).

After returning from exile in London, Karl Kautsky lived in the Bosch family home. Robert and Anna Bosch enjoyed a friendly relationship with their neighbor Clara Zetkin and later also with her husband Friedrich Zundel , who married Bosch's daughter Paula after his divorce in 1927. The physicist and peace researcher Georg Zundel was a grandson of Robert Bosch.

Robert Bosch was very interested in agricultural issues and owned an agricultural property ("Boschhof") in Mooseurach south of Munich, which is now managed by a grandson. He was also an avid hunter and collector of firearms. He was one of the early followers of Gustav Jäger , whose woolen "normal clothes" he wore for decades. He was a supporter of homeopathy and financed the establishment of the Robert Bosch Hospital, which offered appropriate care services.

Robert Bosch died in 1942 in the Marienhospital in Stuttgart of an ear infection . The Nazi state Uncollected Bosch through a staged, the interests of their propaganda serving the state funeral . His grave is in the forest cemetery in Degerloch .

Aftermath and reception

In 1937 Robert Bosch converted his company into a GmbH ( Robert Bosch GmbH ) and wrote a will in which he decreed that the company's earnings should be used for charitable purposes. At the same time he drafted the main features of the corporate constitution implemented by his successors in 1964 and still valid today. In this context, the non-profit asset management company Bosch GmbH, founded in 1921, was given further shares by the descendants, from which the Robert Bosch Foundation emerged in 1969 . Bosch's descendants are also committed to social issues.

The company that bears his name is now a global corporation with more than 400,000 employees that is committed to the ideals of its founder. The company does not participate in the development of weapons technology and the foreign branches also have high social standards in dealing with their employees.

Bosch's motto in life can be described as saying that he was convinced that he could achieve his goals with honest commitment and iron discipline, even when crises get in the way.

A television documentary about Robert Bosch broadcast in Germany in August 2011 portrays him as a tragic figure who unintentionally benefited from the armament of the Wehrmacht and the war and who, through the chosen path of cooperation with the National Socialists, while resisting at the same time, inevitably came into conflict with his own ideals was standing.

Fonts

  • Robert Bosch: Preventing future crises in the global economy. Private print 1932 (English: London 1937).
  • Robert Bosch: Essays, Speeches and Thoughts. 3. Edition. Fink, Stuttgart 1957.

In the company magazine " Bosch-Zünder " first published in 1919 , Robert Bosch published the following articles, among others:

  • Preventing future crises in the world economy
  • About the eight hour day
  • About popular education
  • To social peace
  • About German-French understanding

literature

Movie

  • Robert Bosch - legacy of a major industrialist. Documentary, Germany, 2011, 80 min., Script and direction: Birgit Schulz and Angela Linders, production: SWR , first broadcast: August 16, 2011 on ARD , summary from SWR.

Web links

Commons : Robert Bosch  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J. Bähr, P. Erker: Bosch: History of a global company. 1st edition. CH Beck Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-63983-8 , p. 1.
  2. ↑ Bosch archive.
  3. ^ Hanau address book from 1878/79.
  4. ^ Theodor Heuss: Robert Bosch. Life and achievement. Wunderlich, Stuttgart / Tübingen 1946. (DVA, Stuttgart 2002, p. 26).
  5. ^ Chronicle of the Bury Hanau family .
  6. ^ Saur: General Artist Lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples Vol. 15 Munich, Leipzig 1997, p 292-293
  7. ↑ Hans-Erhard Lessing: Robert Bosch . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-499-50594-2 , p. 21 f.
  8. ↑ Better to lose money than trust ( Memento from December 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), Robert Bosch, 1918, handwritten letter for the autograph collection of the Prussian State Library in Berlin.
  9. ↑ Joachim Scholtyseck : Robert Bosch and the liberal resistance against Hitler 1933 to 1945. P. 24.
  10. ↑ Joachim Scholtyseck: Robert Bosch and the liberal resistance against Hitler 1933 to 1945. P. 28.
  11. ↑ a b Joachim Scholtyseck: Robert Bosch and the liberal resistance against Hitler 1933 to 1945. P. 35.
  12. ↑ Joachim Scholtyseck: Robert Bosch and the liberal resistance against Hitler 1933 to 1945. P. 38.
  13. ^ Marlis Prinzing: The strike at Bosch in 1913. (= Journal for Company History. Supplement. 61). Steiner, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-515-05379-4 , p. 128 ff.
  14. ^ Marie-Luise Heuser , Wolfgang König : Tabular compilations on the history of the VDI . In: Karl-Heinz Ludwig (Ed.): Technology, Engineers and Society - History of the Association of German Engineers 1856–1981 . VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981, ISBN 3-18-400510-0 , p. 583-584 .
  15. ^ Eva Madelung, Joachim Scholtyseck: Heldenkinder - Traitorkinder.
  16. ↑ Quoted from Johannes Bähr: Robert Bosch - Paul Reusch - Jürgen Ponto . In: Werner Plumpe (Hrsg.): Entrepreneurs - facts and fictions. Historical-biographical studies (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, 88), De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Munich 2014, pp. 197–225, here p. 205, ISBN 978-3-486-71352-7 .
  17. ↑ Interview with Arno Lustiger about saving Jews in the Third Reich, part 2 . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. November 12, 2011.
  18. ^ Götz Adriani on Georg Friedrich Zundel (from an exhibition catalog from 1975).
  19. ↑ History of the manor Mooseurach www.mooseurach.de,
  20. ^ "Stuttgarter Nachrichten", December 12, 1959: The great entrepreneurs in Cannstatt and Stuttgart with treatises on Jäger and Bosch.
  21. ^ Johannes Bähr: Robert Bosch - Paul Reusch - Jürgen Ponto . In: Werner Plumpe (Hrsg.): Entrepreneurs - facts and fictions. Historical-biographical studies , De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-71352-7 , pp. 197–225, here p. 204 (Schriften des Historischen Kolleg, 88).
  22. ↑ At the beginning of the weekly newsreel no. 603 you can see Reich Minister Walther Funk and Reichsleiter Robert Ley expressing Hitler's condolences to the bereaved.
  23. ↑ Bosch will carried out . In: The time . July 10, 1964, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed on September 23, 2016]).
  24. ↑ Stefanie Koller (business editor, dpa): The legacy of Robert Bosch. ( Memento from July 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ↑ Birgit Schulz, Angela Linders: Robert Bosch - Legacy of a large industrialist . Documentation by ARD, broadcast on August 16, 2011.
  26. ↑ Review by Susanne Preuss: Robert Bosch: Why doesn't anyone kill these guys? faz.net, August 16, 2011.
  27. ↑ Review by Hans-Jörg Rother: Liberal, not neoliberal. tagesspiegel.de, August 15, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Bosch, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Albeck
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1942
Place of death Stuttgart