Walter Boveri

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Walter Boveri (around 1900, i.e. around 35 years old)

Walter Boveri (born February 21, 1865 in Bamberg , Bavaria ; † October 28, 1924 in Baden , Switzerland ) was a Swiss-German industrialist and co-founder of the global electrical engineering group Brown, Boveri & Cie. (now Asea Brown Boveri ).

biography

Boveri's ancestors originally came from Savoy and settled in Iphofen in Lower Franconia at the beginning of the 17th century , and in Bamberg in 1835 . Walter was born in 1865 as the third of four sons of the doctor Theodor Boveri. The second oldest son Theodor Boveri jun. became a well-known biologist. At the age of 17, Walter Boveri entered the royal mechanical engineering school in Nuremberg . He completed this in 1885 and then moved to Switzerland . There he was initially a volunteer and a little later as an assembly manager for electrical systems at Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon (MFO).

In 1887, Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown , MFO's technical director, considered starting his own company. Boveri teamed up with him and began looking for investors, but remained unsuccessful for several years. In 1891 he married Victoire Baumann; a year earlier he had received a generous loan from his future father-in-law, the Zurich silk industrialist Conrad Baumann. In December 1890, Brown and Boveri signed an association agreement, three months later they chose Baden as the company location. The founding of Brown, Boveri & Cie. (BBC) took place on October 2, 1891. Two years later, Boveri received Swiss citizenship. In 1895 he had the Villa Boveri built for himself and his family .

Brown took care of the company's technical issues, while Boveri, although also technically gifted, increasingly assumed the role of visionary commercial director. He was supported in this by his cousin Fritz Funk , whom he had taken into the company as a limited partner . Boveri's merit is the expansion of the BBC into a large international corporation that began in 1900. In connection with the construction of the Ruppoldingen power plant , Boveri founded Elektrizitätswerke Olten-Aarburg AG in 1894 , which was merged into Aare-Tessin AG for electricity (Atel) in 1936 . He came to the conclusion that another company was needed to plan, finance and build power plants. That is why in 1895 he founded Motor AG for applied electricity , later Motor-Columbus .

After Brown's retirement, Boveri was president of the BBC from 1911 to 1924. He presided over various electricity companies and during the First World War the Société suisse de surveillance économique . His efforts to electrify the railways earned him a seat on the board of the Swiss Federal Railways . As the president of various municipal commissions, he was also active in Baden's local politics.

Boveri's sons Theodor and Walter jun. later also worked in the company in various functions. His brother Robert (1873–1934) managed the subsidiary BBC Mannheim for several years until his death; his son William Boveri was employed there as a director until the 1970s.

Awards

  • 1916 honorary doctorate from ETH Zurich
  • 1916 honorary citizen of Baden

literature

Web links

notes

  1. ↑ This son played a role during World War II when he briefed the OSS representatives in Switzerland around Allen Dulles about German secret weapons that were being planned. He is sometimes mistakenly called Bovari and called a "German" industrialist, which he was not.
personal data
SURNAME Boveri, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss-German industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Bamberg
DATE OF DEATH October 28, 1924
Place of death to bathe