Wilhelm Berkefeld

Wilhelm Berkefeld

The company's historic buildings are now part of the “Berkefeld residential park” on Wittinger Strasse in Celle

Tomb in the Hehlentorfriedhof in Celle

Wilhelm Berkefeld (born May 29, 1836 in Lüneburg , † April 8, 1897 in Celle ) was a German engineer . In 1891 he invented the Berkefeld filter, named after him, for cleaning drinking water .

Life

Berkefeld came from Lüneburg and initially worked as an accountant . When Alfred Nobel needed large quantities of kieselguhr for his factory in Krümmel after the invention of dynamite (patented in 1867) , Berkefeld acquired the rights to a kieselguhr pit near Celle with financial support from Nobel and delivered it to Nobel at reduced prices.

While walking in the Lüneburg Heath , Berkefeld noticed that the kieselguhr found there acted as a filter for the surface water . He put this observation into practice in a short period of time, developed filter candles made of kieselguhr and created the first Berkefeld filters in porcelain. In 1892 he founded his company "Berkefeld-Filter" in Celle and used the nearby Kieselguhr deposits in Unterlüß for his production. The Berkefeld filters were used successfully during the cholera epidemic in Hamburg in 1892. From then on, this ensured a worldwide distribution of the Berkefeld filter.

To this day, the company develops and manufactures water filter systems for industry, the military and disaster control organizations all over the world at its home site . It was family-owned until 1978, today it belongs to the Veolia Water Technologies Group and operates under the name Veolia Water Technologies Deutschland GmbH .

literature

• Niels Kampmann:  Berkefeld, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 93 ( digitized version ).
• Hermann Moeck: Speech on the anniversary of the Berkefeld-Filter company on September 24, 1992: 100 years of water technology worldwide. In: Museumsverein Celle e. V. (Ed.): Celler Chronik. 7, Contributions to the history and geography of the city and the district of Celle. Celle 1996, ISSN  0177-719X . (contains a biography of Berkefeld)

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Berkefeld  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Niels Kampmann:  Berkefeld, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 93 ( digitized version ).
2. ↑ industriemuseum-geesthacht.de ( Memento from February 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Lecture Industrial Museum Geesthacht
3. ↑ History ( Memento of the original from June 22, 2016 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. on berkefeld.com.