Sigmund Bergmann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sigmund Bergmann , complete: Leonhard Sigmund Ludwig Bergmann, (born June 9, 1851 in Tennstedt ; † July 7, 1927 in Berlin ) was a German and American entrepreneur and inventor .

The American Years (1870 to 1890)

At the age of 18, Bergmann emigrated from his home in Thuringia to the USA and settled in New York . There he initially got by with auxiliary work before Thomas Alva Edison became aware of him around 1875 because of his diligence and skill in performing tasks assigned to him.

With various instruments developed by Bergmann, he quickly managed to earn an above-average amount of money. In 1876 he had so much money together that he was able to set up his first own workshop on Wooster Street in New York, in which the first phonographs intended for sale were manufactured on behalf of Edison .

Telephone transmission equipment , which he manufactured for Western Union, soon followed . At the same time, he set up a test laboratory for the light bulbs developed by Edison for commercial use . For this purpose, a generator was installed in his workshop to generate electricity. Edison's laboratories were still in Menlo Park , New Jersey at the time . In 1879 the first incandescent lamps, which Edison had developed together with Bergmann, were presented to the public.

At the Paris Electricity Exhibition in 1881 , incandescent lamps were the "epochal sensation". In connection with this exhibition, Bergmann, who had meanwhile become a US citizen and whose workshop already had 50 employees, visited Germany again for the first time in 16 years. In the meantime the German Empire had been founded , and industry and trade experienced a strong boom. During his first visit to Berlin, Bergmann recognized the importance of this city for the still young but, thanks to Werner von Siemens, already rapidly developing electrical industry.

With the strong growth of Bergmann's business, Edward H. Johnson joined the company in April 1881 and Edison in September 1882, which was now called S. Bergmann & Company . They built new factory building in New York City at the corner of Avenue B and East 17th Street. The company concentrated on the production of the screw bases and other parts for the new electrical lighting developed by Edison and Bergmann. The range of products was later significantly expanded, for example to include telephone switching equipment, installation material, switches and typewriters . According to Edison, the company has been extremely successful both commercially and scientifically.

When the company had grown to 1,500 employees in 1889, Edison decided to combine all of the companies in his now dispersed empire into the Edison General Electric Company . Bergmann sold his shares and went back to Germany .

The creation of an industrial empire in Berlin (1890 to 1927)

Osramhöfe in the former Osram -Werk B , the former B ergmann-Elektricitäts plants, Seestraße 64 ( Berlin-Wedding )

With the proceeds from the shares of the Edison sale, he founded the open trading company (oHG) Sigmund Bergmann & Co. on Fennstrasse in Berlin-Moabit in 1891 , where he initially manufactured items similar to those last seen in New York. As early as 1893 the company was converted into a stock corporation and was then named Bergmann Electricitäts-Werke Aktien-Gesellschaft . After some of the patents Bergmann owned had expired in the late 1890s, he had to expand his production range. Dynamos , electric motors and electrical control devices were now also manufactured.

After Bergmann initially moved regularly between New York and Berlin, he finally relocated to Berlin in 1899. From 1904 he manufactured the Bergmann metal filament lamp . In 1906 he initiated the founding of Concordia Elektrizitäts AG in Cologne as a sales company. Since the previous company premises in Moabit had become too small, in the same year he began building new facilities in the area between Seestrasse , Oudenarder Strasse, Groninger Strasse and Liebenwalder Strasse in Berlin-Wedding . But this site too soon proved to be too small, and he acquired a 76,000 m² site in the Wilhelmsruh district of the village of Rosenthal, which was then still outside Berlin . While in Wedding the focus was on the production of incandescent lamps (in 1910 this achieved a daily output of 16,000 metal filament lamps), Bergmann began in Wilhelmsruh with the production of steam turbines , and later also of electric locomotives and automobiles . The largest buyers of the turbines were shipyards that built ships for the Imperial Navy .

The rapid expansion soon took its toll. Due to a lack of reserves and a crisis-prone financial structure, Siemens-Schuckertwerke GmbH had to participate in Bergmann-Werke in 1912 . Bergmann kept the technical management, but the commercial management was with Siemens-Schuckert. 1912 Sigmund Bergmann of the Technical University of Darmstadt , the honorary doctorate ( Dr.-Ing. E. h.) Awarded he praised as "far-sighted engineers and successful organizer" in the grounds and. From 1913 Bergmann AG increased its involvement in automobile production. With the outbreak of the First World War , large parts of the Bergmann works were converted to armaments production.

Bergmann bought Hohenfels Castle in Coburg in 1918 as a retirement home and had it adapted to his needs by the Berlin architect Otto Rehnig .

After the end of the war, the company concentrated again on the production of power plant equipment and electrical goods.

Sigmund Bergmann died in Berlin on July 7, 1927. He was buried in the forest cemetery in Munich . The grave is located in burial ground 127-W-49 in the old part of the cemetery.

The plant in Berlin-Wilhelmsruh continued to produce under his name. In 1949 it became the VEB Bergmann-Borsig .

Automobile production

Post electric truck from Bergmann

In 1909, Sigmund Bergmann built a separate automobile factory on the factory premises. Cars were manufactured under licenses from the Belgian company Métallurgique . In 1910 the car factory was combined with the other plant.

From 1911 commercial vehicles were built as electric trucks with wheel hub motors . Trucks with central motors (electric underfloor central motor) and cardan drive were also manufactured. In 1912 2 ton trucks with 24 HP and 4 ton trucks with 32 HP were manufactured. During the First World War, army trucks were built with 3.5 and 4.5 tons, which had 38 and 40 hp. As a special feature of the time, trucks were built with two-block engines that had cylinders offset to the side of the crankshaft . 1.5-ton trucks and other special truck types were also produced.

When the war was over, commercial vehicle production was cut back and equipped with gasoline engines. At that time only electric vehicles were manufactured.

Honors

In 1997 a street was named after Sigmund Bergmann in the course of the construction of the water town Spandau in the Berlin district of Hakenfelde .

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bergmann, Sigmund
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bergmann, Leonhard Sigmund Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German and American entrepreneur and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Tennstedt
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1927
Place of death Berlin