Willy Bleissem

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Business advertisement 1912/1913

Wilhelm Bleissem (born January 22, 1885 in Cologne , † September 22, 1964 in Westum ) was a German businessman and a pioneer in Germany as a car dealer . In the 1920s he also successfully participated in hill and flat races as well as reliability drives on automobiles from the Adler works .

Life

As a descendant of a family that has been living in Cologne for more than 600 years, his father was the copper beater Dionis Bleissem, Willy Bleissem completed a commercial apprenticeship at the local installation office of AEG after graduating from school . Subsequently, at the age of 18, he became an employee of the neighboring branch of Adler-Werke. In possession of a driver's license since 1905 , Willy Bleissem had been the general agent for the Cologne area of ​​automobiles under the Adler brand since 1910 . In 1913 the premises of the “Adler Automobil-Vertriebs-Gesellschaft Voigt und Bleissem mbH” founded in 1908 - whose sole managing director was Bleissem - were still cramped in Cologne's Neustadt district . But Bleissem was among the first in his branch with his idea of ​​the car presentation, namely to display it to interested parties in spacious modern rooms. With the completion of the Hansa high-rise, planned by Jacob Koerfer and built by himself, on Hansaring in Cologne, Bleissem moved into the ground floor of the building in 1925 and had a salon set up there for the automobiles of the Adler works. The  company workshop, now located in Ehrenfeld at Venloer Straße 217, was supplemented by a large garage around 1927, which, according to an advertisement from 1929, was the “largest garage in West Germany”. The Cologne architect Georg Falck had worked out the design for this facility , the execution was in the hands of his own company, the “Rheinische Bauunternehmung GmbH”. In 1929, after a previous renovation of the existing Wilhelminian style house, a car salon was set up at Hohenzollernring 90, also in Neustadt-Nord. At that time the company had branches in five cities and achieved an annual turnover of 5 million marks. The economic crisis and the subsequent heavy destruction during the Second World War were not without consequences for the Bleissem dealership. In the 1950s the brands Magirus , Hanomag and DKW - Auto Union were represented. In 1959/60 a new commercial building was built on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring , not far from the former car showroom on Hohenzollernring. At the time of Bleissem's 75th birthday, what is now the “Automobil-Vertriebs-Gesellschaft Willy Bleissem mbH” - as Cologne's oldest specialist company - employed around 400 people and was one of the largest automobile dealers in Germany. In 1967 the company traded under the name “Automobil-Vertriebsgesellschaft Willy & Hubert Bleissem mbH” with exhibition space in the “Bleissem-Haus” on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring 6–8 and the workshop in Ehrenfeld. Simca was added to the distribution as a further brand . In 2000, plans to rebuild the now unused area of ​​the Bleissem car dealership in Ehrenfeld (Piusstraße 22/24 - Venloer Straße 217) became known. After a previous architectural competition, a new residential area, the “Pius-Carré”, was built on the site.

Trivia

Willy Bleissem was a co-founder, chairman, board member and advisory board member on a wide variety of committees. In 1955 he received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon as an award for his services to the automotive industry .

In 1924/1925 Bleissem had a villa ( Parkstrasse 20 ) built vis-á-vis the Marienburg in Cologne's Marienburg district based on a design by the architect Paul Pott , with the sculptor Willy Meller and the painters Josef Mangold and Heinrich Kron actively involved in the interior design .

Web links

literature

  • Wolfram Hagspiel : Cologne. Marienburg. Buildings and architects of a villa suburb. (= Stadtspuren, Denkmäler in Köln , Volume 8.) 2 volumes, JP Bachem Verlag , Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7616-1147-1 , Volume 2.
  • Wolfram Hagspiel: Marienburg. A Cologne villa district and its architectural development. (with photographs by Hans-Georg Esch) JP Bachem Verlag, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-7616-2012-0 .
  • Wolfram Hagspiel: Cologne and its Jewish architects. JP Bachem Verlag, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-7616-2294-0 , p. 166.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ State archive North Rhine-Westphalia, person status archive Rhineland, civil status register, registry office Cologne, births, 1885, document no. 364.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g The oldest Cologne car dealership. Willy Bleissem is 75 years old and is celebrating a golden business anniversary. In: Kölnische Rundschau No. 17 of January 21, 1960.
  3. ^ Automobile sales company. Willy Bleissem mbH on ebn24.com, accessed on March 11, 2013.
  4. ^ Address book of Cologne and the surrounding area 1913. Greven's Adressbuch-Verlag, Cologne 1913, Part IV, p. 141.
  5. ↑ Klemens Klemmer: Jacob Koerfer (1875-1930). An architect between tradition and modernity. ( Contributions to art history. Volume 23) scaneg Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-89235-013-2 , p. 130.
  6. ^ Wolfram Hagspiel: Cologne and its Jewish architects.
  7. ^ Greven's Cologne address book 1967. 106th edition, Greven's address book publishing house Cologne, Cologne 1967, Part II, p. 19.
  8. ↑ Agenda of the district council of the city district 4 (Ehrenfeld) from September 4, 2000 on bv-4.de, accessed on March 11, 2013.
  9. ^ Pius-Carré uf kulturkoeln30.de accessed on March 13, 2013.
  10. ^ Urban development Cologne. Ehrenfeld-Ost redevelopment area. Final documentation. City of Cologne, Cologne 2009, p. 18 f (PDF; 2.2 MB), accessed on March 13, 2013.
  11. ^ Wolfram Hagspiel: Cologne. Marienburg. Buildings and architects of a villa suburb. Pp. 606-611
  12. ^ Wolfram Hagspiel: Marienburg. A Cologne villa district and its architectural development. Pp. 73-76
personal data
SURNAME Bleissem, Willy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bleissem, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman and a pioneer in Germany as a car dealer
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 1964
Place of death Westum