Theodor von Cramer-Klett

This article deals with the German merchant and industrialist. For his son of the same name see Theodor von Cramer-Klett junior .

Franz von Lenbach : Theodor von Cramer-Klett, 1883

Cramer-Klett memorial (until December 6, 2011) in Nuremberg's Frankenstrasse

The Cramer-Klett memorial on the MAN factory premises in Nuremberg

Theodor Cramer , from 1847 Cramer-Klett , from 1855 from Cramer-Klett , from 1876 Baron von Cramer-Klett , (born September 27, 1817 in Nuremberg , † April 5, 1884 in Aschau im Chiemgau ) was a German businessman and industrialist . In addition to Joseph von Baader (1763-1835) and Joseph Anton von Maffei (1790-1870), Cramer-Klett, in his capacity as the owner of the Maschinenbau Actiengesellschaft Nürnberg, is one of the three important pioneers of the railway in Bavaria. As a major financier, he was the founder of Süddeutsche Bodencreditbank AG and co-founder of the private bank Merck, Christian & Co. (later Merck Finck & Co ) and the Munich reinsurance company .

Life

Origin, education and career beginnings

His father, Albert Johann Cramer, ran an import trade with colonial and textile goods in Amsterdam and later in Nuremberg, which he had to liquidate in 1834 in order to move to Vienna . There he successfully participated in a soap factory. His mother, Felicitas Falcke, was the daughter of the Nuremberg merchant Johann Caspar Falcke. From February 1794 Valentin Pfeifer , who came from Sommerau in Spessart , was a partner in the Albert Johann Cramer company in Amsterdam. From July 1, 1798, Valentin Pfeifer took over the business and continued to run it under his name. Albert Johann Cramer's relationship with Valentin Pfeifer was very personal. So Cramer became the godfather of Valentin and Maria Agnes Pfeifer's son, Albert Johann P. (born October 18, 1802 in Amsterdam).

Theodor Cramer first acquired commercial knowledge in his father's business. In 1837/38 he completed a year of training in the large Prague trading and banking house Lämel and then attended lectures in philosophy ( Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling ) and natural sciences ( Justus Liebig ) in Munich for a year .

At the end of 1839 he had to return to Vienna to support his ailing father in the soap factory. However, in 1840 he moved to Geneva, where he deepened his knowledge of finance in a bank. In Switzerland and on trips to France and Italy, he came into close contact with liberal-democratic and early socialist ideas.

In 1843 he decided to set up his own business with the small fortune he had acquired in Geneva by acquiring the Bäumler publishing house. In 1844 he incorporated this into the Peace and War Couriers , later the Frankish Couriers , in which he himself published political articles. It was not until 1849 that he gave up the publishing company under pressure from the city council.

Takeover of the Nuremberg machine factory and iron foundry JF Klett

The decisive change in his life came in 1847 when he married Emilie Klett, the daughter of Johann Friedrich Klett. Johann Friedrich Klett was the founder of a machine factory that had been producing railway material, especially steam engines and boilers, since 1838 (initially with the help of English technicians).

After Klett's death in 1847, Theodor Cramer took over the machine factory and iron foundry JF Klett , which he converted into the open trading company Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Nürnberg Klett & Co. in 1865 and finally into Maschinenbau-Actiengesellschaft Nürnberg in 1873 . With the excellent railway specialist and ingenious inventor Johann Ludwig Werder , whom Cramer-Klett lured away from the competition in 1848 and made technical director, he quickly expanded the company into one of the leading machine manufacturers in Germany. In addition to the iron foundry and the production of railway material, railway wagons and rifles - everything in mass production if possible - the main areas of work were the construction of steam engines and bridges (including the Isar high bridge near Großhesselohe 1857; Rhine bridge from Mainz to Gustavsburg 1860–1862, the so-called Mainz south bridge ) .

In addition, Cramer-Klett gained great recognition early on through high-rise buildings made of glass and iron such as the Schrannenhalle in Munich 1851/52, the winter garden at the royal residence in Munich in 1853 and the Würzburg station hall in 1856. In recognition of the special achievement in the only 100 days demanding construction of the glass palace for the general Munich trade fair in 1854 (based on the model of the London crystal palace ) he was raised to the personal nobility in the same year.

Financing and bank formation

Cramer-Klett's great organizational and leadership skills were complemented by a passion for finance. From the mid-1850s onwards, he participated in numerous railway companies by joining their boards of directors, but did not pay the capital contributions in cash, but through material deliveries from his companies, thus securing orders and liquidity at the same time. Gradually, he turned the trading company Klett & Co. , through which he conducted his financial business, into a holding company that “had the characteristics of a commercial and industrial bank”.

In his financial transactions, especially in the 1860s and 1870s, he almost always cooperated with the first private bank for industrial financing on a share basis in Germany, the Bank for Trade and Industry founded in 1853 by Rhenish industrialists and bankers, headed by Gustav von Mevissen , also called Darmstädter Bank because of its location . Together with the Darmstädter Bank , Cramer-Klett founded private banks in the form of limited partners in Vienna (1867), Stuttgart (1869), Munich (1870), Kassel (1873) and Milan (1873), as well as Süddeutsche Bodencreditbank AG in Munich in 1871 . He sent his legal advisor Dr. Heinrich Merck, whose position in Nuremberg he presented to the young lawyer Dr. Hermann Pemsel transferred, since 1872 with general power of attorney. The Munich limited company Merck, Christian & Co. soon developed into one of the leading German private banks under the extremely capable authorized signatory Wilhelm Finck . The Kommanditen in Kassel and Milan, however , did not survive the economic crisis of the 1870s.

Foundation of the Munich Reinsurance Company

His most important financial initiative was undoubtedly the establishment of the Munich Reinsurance Company in 1880. The bustling general agent of the Thuringia insurance company , Carl Thieme , had brought the idea of ​​establishing a hail insurance company to Cramer-Klett in 1879, which Cramer-Klett rejected. The reinsurance project that was subsequently submitted in the winter of 1879/80 convinced him and his advisors because the insurance needs of German primary insurers at that time, as Thieme was able to prove, were almost exclusively covered by English, French and Swiss companies.

A short time later, Hermann Pemsel had drawn up the statutes of the company to be founded and on March 6, 1880, together with Wilhelm Finck, applied for a license from the Bavarian government . The start-up capital of 3 million marks, 40% paid in immediately, was brought by the banks that have long been allied with Cramer-Klett ( Bank for Trade and Industry and Merck Finck & Co ), the financial holding Klett & Co. , the personal confidants (Wilhelm Finck , Philipp Schmidt-Polex, Friedrich von Schauss, Hermann Pemsel) and the future board member Carl Thieme. Wilhelm Finck and Hermann Pemsel as his representative took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board, which was also intensively involved in day-to-day business from the start.

The company grew rapidly, was only 10 years later world market leader and created a strong mainstay in the primary insurance business with the establishment of Allianz Versicherungs-Aktiengesellschaft in Berlin in 1890 .

Acquisition of the Hohenaschau rule

Cramer-Klett's first marriage had remained childless until Emilie Klett's death in 1866. It was a pleasant surprise for him when his second wife, the pharmacist's daughter Elisabeth Curtze from Worms, gave birth to a son in 1874 in the eighth year of their marriage. Wife and son should be financially secure; therefore Cramer-Klett strove for a solid legacy in the following years. In view of the current economic and financial crisis, this did not seem sufficient to him due to the industrial and bank holdings, which were sometimes struggling with problems, while real estate seemed more secure and at the same time possessed much higher prestige.

Therefore, in 1875, he acquired the extensive Hohenaschau rule (former property of the Counts of Preysing ) in Chiemgau from the Achthal-Hammerau trade union, which had got into financial difficulties with its hammer mill , and had it expanded into a model estate . He never lived in the badly dilapidated Hohenaschau Castle that belonged to it, rather he spent his frequent stays in the manor house in Aschau, which lasted for many months towards the end of his life. One of the most important tasks of his legal representative, Pemsel, was to round off the rule during the following years through additional purchases and, above all, numerous replacements of alpine and pasture rights.

In recognition of his economic achievements and the efforts for the welfare of his workers, so the official reason, not least because the Hohenaschau rulership was of the required size, the Bavarian King Cramer-Klett conferred the hereditary baron dignity in 1876 and allowed him to Hohenaschau transferred to the legal status of a family entrepre- neurship.

Death and legacy

Kramer-Klett grave at the Johannisfriedhof

Theodor von Cramer-Klett died after a long illness on April 5, 1884 in Aschau. On his deathbed stood next to his family Wilhelm von Finck, to whom the deceased was a fatherly friend . Wilhelm Finck continued to run Cramer-Klett's business together with Hermann Pemsel, Friedrich Hensolt and Jean Kempf (the leading men in the Nuremberg machine works ), Gustav von Schlör (old friend and partner in Klett & Co. ) and the widow. Cramer-Klett had also assigned guardianship to these people for their son "Theodor II" , who was only ten years old when he died .

In 1898, 15 years after Cramer-Klett's death, the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG (MAN) was founded by merging with the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg AG, which was founded in 1840 .

His grave is in the Johannisfriedhof in Nuremberg .

social commitment

Cramer-Klett represented the type of patriarchal entrepreneur who wanted to be “master of his house”, but who created or supported numerous social institutions in his companies (e.g. building workers' apartments and building a factory school) and in public spaces (e.g. B. the Künstlerhaus and the Albrecht Dürer House Foundation in Nuremberg).

His financial as well as personal strong commitment to the establishment of a trade museum in Nuremberg based on the model of the Paris Conservatoire des arts et des métiers and the London Kensington Museum , which the Nuremberg magistrate only half-heartedly supported, should be emphasized . Cramer-Klett pursued this project for a long time since the late 1860s, not only through large donations, but above all through the appointment of Hermann Pemsel, at that time still a trainee in his father's office in Erlangen, as managing director of the founding committee in the spring of 1869 outstanding personalities from all over Bavaria and powerful donors had to be won. The initiative finally supported by the Bavarian government - not least thanks to Pemsel's negotiating skills - was successful; at the beginning of 1872 the museum was able to start its activity.

Honors

• 1854 personal nobility
• 1876 ​​hereditary baron status
• The workers' settlement in Gustavsburg bears his name Cramer-Klett-Siedlung .
• In the Nuremberg district of Wöhrd , where the Nuremberg machine factory was built, a street and a park are named after Cramer-Klett.
• From 1940 to December 6, 2011, the larger than life statue of Cramer-Kletts, by Richard Knecht , cast by the art foundry Hermann Noack , was located on Frankenstrasse in Nuremberg . The monumental seated figure made of cast aluminum on a high limestone plinth with a wall has been on the premises of the MAN engine plant in Nuremberg since the beginning of 2012 .

literature

• Bernhard Hoffmann:  Cramer-Klett, Theodor von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 394 ( digitized version ).
• J. Biensfeldt: Baron Dr. Theodor von Cramer-Klett hereditary Imperial Councilor of the Crown of Bavaria. His life and work, a contribution to the Bavarian economic history of the 19th century . Leipzig u. Erlangen [1922].
• G. Eibert: Company policy of Nuremberg mechanical engineers (1835–1914) . Stuttgart 1979.
• H. Kluge: founder and heir. The Munich Reinsurance Company (1880–2007) . Munich 2009 (unpublished manuscript).
• H. Kluge: The influence of the "Allianz" business on the development of the "Munich Reinsurance Company" in its first fifty years (1880–1930) . In: Yearbook for Economic History - Economic History Yearbook 2006/2.
• H.-J. Rupees: workers and employees in the age of industrialization. A socio-historical study using the example of the Augsburg and Nuremberg machine works (MAN) 1837–1914 . Frankfurt / M. u. New York 1982.
• M. Siegl: The Cramer-Klett's, a family of industrialists and their importance for the Priental . (Chronik Aschau i. Ch., Source volume III), Aschau 1998.
• Reinhard Spree: Two Chapters on early history of the Munich Reinsurance Company: The Foundation / The San Francisco Earthquake . Department of Economics, University of Munich, Munich Discussion Paper No. 2010–11, Munich 2010 ( online ).
• R. Spree: A bourgeois career in the German Empire. The rise of the lawyer Dr. jur. Hermann Ritter von Pemsel in the business elite and nobility of Bavaria . Aachen 2007.

Web links

Commons : Theodor von Cramer-Klett  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Theodor von Cramer-Klett in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History

Individual evidence

1. ↑ (accessed on February 26, 2010)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Chronicle of the Pfeifer family, Cologne (around 1975, only published in the family circle)
3. ↑ See above all Biensfeldt, J .: Freiherr Dr. Th. Von Cramer-Klett hereditary Imperial Councilor of the Crown of Bavaria. His life and work (...). Leipzig u. Erlangen n.d. (1922).
4. ↑ On the following especially Spree, R .: A bourgeois career in the German Empire. The rise of the lawyer Dr. jur. Hermann Ritter von Pemsel in the business elite and nobility of Bavaria. Aachen 2007, pp. 173-189, 251-263.
5. ↑ Sunday newspaper issue 19/2008 of May 11, 2008
6. ↑ Biensfeldt, p. 97.
7. ↑ See an overview of the holdings of Holding Klett & Co. in Eibert, G .: Unternehmenspolitik Nürnberger Maschinenbauer (1835–1914). Stuttgart 1979, p. 78.
8. ↑ The limited partnership with Cramer-Klett was ended in 1897 by mutual agreement. Since then, Wilhelm Finck and his brother August have been open partners and majority owners of the bank, which has been called Merck Finck & Co since 1879 ; Merck and Christian remained silent partners with minorities.
9. ↑ For details of the establishment cf. Spree, R .: Two Chapters on early history of the Munich Reinsurance Company: The Foundation / The San Francisco Earthquake. Department of Economics, University of Munich, Munich Discussion Paper No. 2010-11, Munich 2010 ( online ).
10. ↑ On the management and further development of Munich Reinsurance, cf. Kluge, H .: Founders and Heirs. The Munich Reinsurance Company (1880–2007). Munich 2009 (unpublished manuscript), pp. 32–60.
11. ↑ See especially Kluge, H .: The influence of the business of "Allianz" on the development of the "Munich Reinsurance Company" in its first fifty years (1880–1930) . In: Yearbook for Economic History - Economic History Yearbook 2006/2, pp. 217–246.
12. ↑ Cf. on the difficulties of the Cramer-Klett companies in the crisis 1873–1879 Eibert, p. 77 ff., And H.-J. Rupees: workers and employees in the age of industrialization. A socio-historical study using the example of the Augsburg and Nuremberg machine works (MAN) 1837–1914. Frankfurt / M. and New York 1982, p. 24.
13. ↑ See on Cramer-Klett in Aschau Siegl, M .: The Cramer-Klett's, a family of industrialists and their importance for the Priental. (Chronik Aschau i. Ch., Source volume III), Aschau 1998.
14. ↑ It was only his son who renovated and expanded the castle at considerable expense in order to be able to live in it. For details and motifs, see Spree: Eine bürgerliche Karriere, p. 261 ff.
15. ↑ For details and the difficulties that arose in exercising guardianship, Spree: Eine bürgerliche Karriere, pp. 251–263.
16. ↑ In detail on the social commitment Cramer-Kletts Biensfeldt, pp. 182–218, as well as Rupieper, pp. 82–138, but here also presentation of the conflicts with the workers, pp. 155 ff.
17. ↑ See in more detail on this Spree: Ein bürgerliche Karriere, p. 167f.