Wilhelm Brügmann

This article deals with the mayor of Dortmund. For his grandson of the same name, mining entrepreneur and member of parliament, (1851–1926) see Wilhelm Brügmann (Hüttendirektor)

Johann Theodor Wilhelm Brügmann (born December 27, 1788 in Dortmund ; † January 16, 1854 ibid) was a German administrative lawyer and entrepreneur who worked as mayor of the city of Dortmund for a long time .

Life

Tomb of the Wilhelm Brügmann family in the Ostenfriedhof in Dortmund

Wilhelm Brügmann was born on December 27, 1788 in Dortmund as the son of the later mayor Johann Arnold Caspar Brügmann and his wife Wilhelmine Brügmann, née. Nies born. The couple had another daughter who died at the age of ten. Wilhelm Brügmann was baptized as a Protestant. The father's family originally came from the Sauerland , the progenitor of the Dortmund line settled in the city in 1588. For four generations, members of the Brügmann family worked in Dortmund as clerks , ex-clerks , clergymen, councilors and mayors. Wilhelm Brügmann studied law at the University of Halle after attending the Dortmund City High School . He interrupted his studies twice to participate in the wars of liberation , in which he rose to become captain of the first Westphalian Landwehr infantry. After completing his studies, he went back to Dortmund and took over the extensive property in and outside the city from his parents. However, his real focus soon turned to local politics. On May 13, 1821, he married Henriette Emilie Loebecke (1798–1822), also from an old Dortmund councilor, who, however, died of childbed fever just a year after the marriage . Brügmann married the second marriage on June 3, 1824, the French-born Catholic Maria Josephine Lemaire (1800-1852), daughter of Ludwig Joseph Lemaire. The couple had nine children together, including Eduard Ludwig, called Louis . Wilhelm Brügmann died on January 16, 1854 in Dortmund. His grave is in the Ostenfriedhof Dortmund .

Services

After returning to Dortmund, Wilhelm Brügmann took an active part in the city's political life. In 1818 he was elected to the local council, a year later, at the age of 31, he became an alderman in the magistrate and in 1829 a district councilor . On March 22, 1832, he was elected mayor of Dortmund as the successor to Franz Mallinckrodt . He initially held this position on a voluntary basis and was only reimbursed for office expenses of 100 thalers per year. After the introduction of the revised Prussian town order of March 17, 1831, which took place in Dortmund in 1834, he received an annual salary of 600 thalers from 1835 onwards . The revised Prussian town order also allowed the citizens to elect their representatives; a change that was hardly taken up in the press and initially did not lead to much political participation. It was not until 1840 that there were disputes between the established, long-established Dortmund families and the newcomers who did not feel adequately represented, where Brügmann was on the side of the long-established families; his opponent was Carl Fechner from Hamm . Brügmann saw Dortmund as an administrative city like in French times and initially did not believe that factories could flourish in an arable city. Nevertheless, he initiated change in the city. For example, he had the roads to Münster and the Ruhr Valley expanded and the city gates demolished. During Brügmann's reign, industrialization increased rapidly in and around Dortmund: The first civil engineering mines ( Crone colliery in Hacheney and Freie Vogel & Unverhofft colliery in Schüren) were sunk , an iron foundry was opened in Hombruch, and the Hermannshütte in Hörde . In Dortmund itself, the Stadtsparkasse was founded in 1841 , an iron foundry and a steam mill were built, Heinrich Wenker and Wilhelm Overbeck introduced the bottom-fermented brewing method and the population rose to almost 10,000 people. During this time, Wilhelm Brügmann campaigned for the connection of Dortmund to the Cologne-Minden Railway , the route of which was initially to be led via Lünen . In the mayoral election of December 10, 1846, Brügmann no longer ran, possibly to avoid defeat. Nevertheless, he still strongly advocated pure class suffrage . On July 1, 1847, he handed over the mayor's office to Karl Zahn , the first Dortmund mayor, who did not come from a long-established council family. At first he thought about moving away from Dortmund, but on December 1, 1848, he founded the timber business W. Brügmann & Sohn together with his son Louis . It was initially located on the family property in the city center, but was then moved in 1852 to an area between Bornstrasse and the railway outside the former city walls. In addition to the timber business, the Company had a Dampfsäge- and Fournier - sawmill . The actual rise of this company to one of the largest timber traders in Germany, however, goes back to Louis Brügmann.

From 1833 to 1837 he was a member of the provincial parliament of the province of Westphalia for the state of the cities and the constituency of Mark for the city of Dortmund . Wilhelm Brügmann was also chairman of the Casino company from 1832 to 1834 .

literature

• Members of the Westphalia Parliament 1826–1978 . In: Josef Häming, Alfred Bruns (Hrsg.): Westphalian source and archive directories . tape 2 . Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, administrative archive, Münster 1978, p. 216 .
• Karin Schambach: Urban bourgeoisie and industrial upheaval. Dortmund 1780-1870 . In: City and Bourgeoisie . tape 5 . Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-56086-7 , pp. 221 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Brügmann in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Barbara Gerstein: Brügmann, Johann Theodor Wilhelm . In: Hans Bohrmann (Ed.): Biographies of important Dortmunders. People in, from and for Dortmund . tape 2 . Klartext, Essen 1998, ISBN 3-88474-677-4 , p. 38 ff .