Wolfgang Küntscher

Wolfgang Bruno Gustav Küntscher (born May 27, 1902 in Zwickau ; † May 21, 1966 in Rostock ) was a German iron and steel engineer and university professor . For a time he held the chair for metallurgy at the Freiberg mining academy , developer of a steel grade and co-author of a standard work on structural steels .

Life

Küntscher was the son of Gustav Hermann Küntscher (director of the Schönherr loom factory in Chemnitz ) and his wife Marie Therese nee. Gottschaldt. The surgeon Gerhard Küntscher was his older brother.

After elementary school and attending a reform high school in Chemnitz, Küntscher did a six-month internship in a Lübeck blast furnace from April to September 1921 . After that, from October 10, 1921, he began studying iron and steel engineering in his Saxon homeland at the Freiberg Bergakademie. Thanks to his high level of commitment, he was able to largely complete this course after just 7 semesters. Testimony to his diligence in studying was, among other things, the processing of a price assignment set by the Bergakademie for the academic year 1922/23 on the solid solutions, their nature and their general significance in metal science . For this elaboration, which is also recognized as a diploma thesis, Küntscher received the predicate excellent and the price 300 gold marks . As early as the 8th semester, he began researching his dissertation , which he submitted in February 1926 on the subject of " The influence of various agents in the annealing of steel ". He passed the required oral examination on November 20, 1926. The doctoral committee recognized his work with the distinction passed with distinction ( summa cum laude )

Küntscher as a practitioner

During his studies, Küntscher worked as a young engineer from 1924, initially at Meier & Weissel in Leipzig , and later, as part of his dissertation research, in the Riesa steelworks. On June 1, 1926, he found employment as an employee of the materials testing facility at Ammoniakwerke Merseburg GmbH, an ammonia synthesis plant of BASF AG. After training at the main Ludwigshafen plant, Küntscher started working at the Leuna plant on October 1, 1926 , where he headed the metallurgical laboratory until 1940 . During this creative phase, Küntscher joined the NSDAP in 1930 . On August 1, 1940, Küntscher was conscripted and transferred with his family to Upper Silesia . In the United Upper Silesian Ironworks, he first worked as a senior engineer and head of the quality department of the Katowice stainless steel works Baildonhütte . Küntscher later moved to the Laband press shop in the same position . After the occupation of Italy in the summer of 1943, Küntscher was entrusted with the management of the Cogne steelworks in the Aosta Valley . This was followed in 1944 two more significant service positions: first was Kiintscher chief metallurgist of the Reich Hermann Göring in Lorraine , later chief metallurgist of Reichswerke in Austrian Linz and Donawitz . He experienced the end of the war in Austria, where he worked until the end of 1945 as deputy head of the research institute of the United Austrian Steelworks AG ( VÖEST ), the successor to the Reichswerke in Linz. Küntscher apparently survived the denazification without any problems.

As a Reich German, Küntscher had to leave Austria at the beginning of 1946, although his employer was very interested in continuing to work. After a time off, he returned to his old job in the Leunawerke at the end of 1946 and participated in the restarting of the heavily destroyed factory facilities. At the same time he was hired by SMAD to work in two Russian technical offices, containers and apparatuses Leuna and iron at his old study site in Freiberg. Even then, the pragmatism of the Soviet authorities was evident, providing Küntscher's specialist knowledge of his Nazi past. In March 1949 Küntscher was selected from among three applicants and with the recommendation of the Presidium of the Chamber of Technology as chief metallurgist and technical director for the Hennigsdorf steel and rolling mill . The reason for this was the failure to achieve goals in the production of crude steel and the manufacture of rolled products , which were partly blamed on Küntscher's predecessor in the discussion of the causes at the time. Küntscher was able to quickly achieve measurable success through elementary changes in the production and repair process and to develop a good reputation. In 1951 the steelworks again reached pre-war values ​​in steel production, which was a great success for the conditions at the time. The National Prize III was also awarded during the Hennigsdorf period . Class for science and technology as an honor for the development of a manufacturing process for a new quality steel, for his scientific standard work on technical structural steels and for his part in the reconstruction of the Hennigsdorf steel and rolling mill.

Professor at the Bergakademie Freiberg

As early as 1951, Küntscher received a teaching position from the Freiberg Mining Academy for special steel studies , which he implemented with lectures from the spring semester of 1952. With effect from June 15, 1953, he finally moved to Freiberg when he was appointed professor for iron science and director of the Eisenhütteninstitut, both of whom succeeded Ernst Diepschlag , who died that same year. Küntscher took over the professorship at a time that was characterized by the build-up of the iron and steel industry and accordingly required sufficient specialists. Right at the beginning of his term as a professor in the winter semester of 1953, 76 students were enrolled, the largest group in terms of numbers, and another 67 students in 1954. However, when Küntscher took office, the Eisenhütteninstitut employed 4 people, including himself, and was in no way able to cope with this onslaught. In addition, the Bergakademie was commissioned by the GDR government to support the development of the coal and steel industry in the GDR by increasing capacity and improving the quality of teaching and research. Under Küntscher, the Eisenhütteninstitut has now developed into an efficient institute. In a relatively short period of time, he managed to expand the institute with a new building with a lecture hall and laboratories, which was handed over in 1956. At this point in time, the Eisenhütteninstitut now had 33 employees. In July 1956, Küntscher wrote a letter to Rector Otto Meißner suggesting the establishment of an institute for special steel engineering and accordingly applied for a professorship with a chair in special steel engineering. A month later, the approval from the responsible minister Steinwand was available and Küntscher took over the management of the new institute and the affiliated steel advice center on September 1, 1956. In 1957, the iron and steel specialist was delegated to the People's Republic of China for two years as a government advisor to help build a modern Chinese steel industry .

Last years at the Iron Research Institute

At the end of April 1959, Küntscher ended his consultancy work and returned to the Hennigsdorf site, where he was initially appointed deputy director Eduard Maurer at the iron research institute there . On November 1, 1959, he officially resigned from the teaching staff of the Bergakademie. With the departure of Maurer, Küntscher took over the management of the iron research institute on January 5, 1960. Under his leadership, the institute developed into a scientific and technical center for metallurgy in the GDR over the next few years. In cooperation with Manfred von Ardenne , for example, the technological basis for the construction of a vacuum steelworks in the Freital stainless steel plant was developed during this time . In 1964 Küntscher had to give up the management of the institute due to illness and died shortly before his 64th birthday in his retirement home in the Rostock district of Warnemünde .

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Küntscher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Wolfgang Küntscher in the Saxon Bibliography

literature

• Marcel Boldorf: Governance in the planned economy. Industrial managers in the steel and textile industries of the Soviet Zone / GDR (1945–1958). de Gruyter / Oldenbourg, 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-035519-2 .
• Heinz-Joachim Spies , W. Krüger: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Küntscher. In: Journal for friends and sponsors of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. 18, 2011, pp. 152-158.