Rudolph Großpaul

Rudolph Großpaul (born October 7, 1831 in Breslau , Silesia , † February 11, 1901 in Potsdam , Prussia ) was an entrepreneur and founder of the Großpaul printing company in Potsdam. Despite his bourgeois origins, he is considered a proponent of the aristocracy and was active in several associations and institutions, including the Potsdam Tourist Office from 1886 .

Life

Origin, education and studies

Rudolph Großpaul was born on October 7, 1831, the illegitimate child of the master shoemaker Otto Großpaul and the domestic worker Ingeborg Bartsch in the Silesian town of Breslau . He had no siblings and initially grew up in a middle-class family, before his father had business with Heinrich von Syller, a country nobility in the area of ​​Wroclaw, in early 1845. He became the boy's sponsor and enabled Rudolph, then 13, to attend a private school and, in 1848, to attend the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, where he studied law for four semesters under the name Wilhelm Rudolph Syller . He lived with a relative in Kastel from 1847 to 1856 and also in Munich during his studies .

Training and work as a bookbinder

During his second semester he got to know John Blith, a bookbinding journeyman who worked in a workshop near Großpauls apartment at Dienerstrasse 13. Due to the insight into the bookbinding profession that Blith was able to give him, Rudolph Großpaul decided to finish his studies after completing the fourth semester and to learn the profession of bookbinder. He passed the journeyman's examination in 1853 and received the master's title in 1872 after moving to the bookbindery Raab + Grossmann in Karlsfeld, which was founded in 1869 and which still exists today.

Founding of the Großpaul printing company

After the death of his father in 1875 and the inheritance he received (his father had been able to make good money with orders from important citizens of Wroclaw), he founded the Großpaul & Heinke printing company the following year after moving to Potsdam . There he had leaflets printed for clubs and parties , but also chronicles of local history and books from the Rütten & Loening publishing house in Frankfurt , including one of the first travel guides in Germany entitled “General explanations and explanations for visitors to the city of Potsdam”. After his business partner Friedrich Heinke left the company , he led the company alone from 1892.

Wedding and family

On April 4, 1880, he married Natalie Julia Röhme, who was almost 20 years his junior, the daughter of the Berlin writer Friedrich Röhme, who was a friend of Rudolph Großpaul. Together, the two were active in several foundations and were considered to be supporters of a local welfare organization and the tourist association co-founded by Großpaul in 1886 . Two years later, on August 29, 1882, the family's only son , Fritz Otto Großpaul, was born. Natalie Julia Röhme died of a stroke on September 14, 1900, a few months before her husband, while visiting friends in Frankfurt (Oder) .

Death and testament

After several days of illness, Rudolph Großpaul died on February 11, 1901 of a pulmonary embolism . In his will he decreed that the printing company should be sold and that the proceeds should go to the local tourist office in order to promote the “summer vacation” and to attract guests to the city. Due to doubts about the authenticity of his will , the amount of 12,430 marks was not handed over until July 1903. He is buried in the old cemetery in Potsdam.

Social engagement and political attitude

In bourgeois society in Potsdam, Rudolph Großpaul was considered generous and lenient towards debtors. He was described by the local pastor in his funeral oration as a “grateful and godly person”. He was generally considered to be conservative and a Protestant believer. Presumably because of his sponsorship by Heinrich von Syller, he supported the Prussian Junkers in the question of territorial rights or the Berlin city aristocracy in negotiations with the working class. He was often used as a mediator in urban political problems in Berlin and Potsdam. In 1886, as a co-founder of the Potsdamer Tourismusverein, he contributed a start-up capital of 5000 gold marks for the first local tourism campaigns. Since 1990 tourism has been an important source of income for the city again and the tourist office actually formed the basis for the later boom in this area before 1914. The Berlin welfare association, "Free Democratic Welfare" since 1949, was also supported by Großpaul.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Directory of the teaching staff and all students at the royal. Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich in the winter semester of the academic year 1847/48. , Page 78. Landshut is incorrectly stated there as his hometown.
2. ^ Official register of the staff and students at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Academic year 1849/50 , page 58.
3. ^ Website Wilhelm Leo successor
4. ↑ Alter Friedhof Potsdam ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Free Democratic Welfare Berlin