Wilhelm Trimborn

Wilhelm Trimborn (born July 12, 1843 in Düsseldorf , † June 7, 1930 in Bonn ) was a German entrepreneur in the energy supply . In May 1867 he built the first gasworks for street lighting in Grevenbroich .

Parental home and education

His father Wilhelm Trimborn sen. (* April 15, 1804 in Bergheim) had already been involved in the city gas production in Düsseldorf in the early 1840s and worked as a partner or managing director in the gas factory founded in 1841 by the copper hammer master Johann Franz Sinzig. At this time, the gas factories produced gas mainly for street lighting through gas lamps; the gas had not yet penetrated private households, trade and industry as a product. Through his father, Wilhelm Trimborn had the opportunity at the gas factory to gain experience and acquire the necessary know-how.

Founding of the gas works in Grevenbroich

After moving to Grevenbroich, he founded his own gas factory in 1867 on Herkenbuscher Weg, today's Zedernstraße. In the first few years he still lived on the factory premises. In 1871 he married Johanna Wilhelmine Uhlhorn . He and his family later moved into a villa on Lindenstrasse, which was used as a post office from 1926.

History of the Grevenbroich gas works

The Grevenbroich gas factory initially only supplied 12 to 15 street lamps and around 600 other lighting fixtures in the city, which were connected to each other by a 3 km underground pipe network. Grevenbroich had about 1,259 inhabitants at that time. The Grevenbroich gasworks remained in family ownership from 1867 to 1925 as a private company, when it was converted into a limited liability company. In addition to Wilhelm Trimborn, shareholders at this time were also his son Max Trimborn († 1956) and the gas works director Zielinsky. In 1927 it came into the ownership of the city of Grevenbroich as a municipal gas works. The plant was almost completely destroyed in bombing raids at the beginning of 1945, with the result that the history of Grevenbroich city gas production became extinct. After the war, remote gas supply was technically possible and economically sensible, which is why the Grevenbroich gasworks was not rebuilt.

Social Commitment

Wilhelm Trimborn became co-founder and honorary member of the Association of Gas, Electricity and Water Experts in Rhineland and Westphalia , member of the city council and first alderman of the city of Grevenbroich. He was also a member of the board of trustees of the Progymnasium in Grevenbroich (today's Erasmus-Gymnasium). Josef Decker also assumed that he was a partner in Uhlhorn'schen Kratzenfabrik , which was relocated to Konstanz in 1927 and later to Budapest .

Sources

Documents from the time the gasworks was founded have not been preserved; more recent archival documents are not yet known.

literature

• Hans Seeling: The Trimborn gas works in Düsseldorf and Grevenbroich . In: Contributions to the history of the city of Grevenbroich , Volume 3 (1981), pp. 59–64.
• Hans Georg Kirchhoff: Home chronicle of the Grevenbroich district . (= Home chronicles of the cities and districts of the federal territory , volume 40.) Archive for German home care, Cologne 1971, pp. 334–335.