Adolf Bleichert (born 31 May 1845 in Dessau, Anhalt-Dessau; † 29 July 1901 in Davos, Switzerland) was a German engineer and entrepreneur, pioneer of cable transport construction and founder of Adolf Bleichert & Co., factory for , Gohlis, which later became the world's largest cable car factory.
Life
Adolf Bleichert was born as the second child of the Gohlis
miller August Bleichert and his wife Wilhelmine Henriette and grew up in Gohlis, today a neighbourhood of
Leipzig. He studied at the
Gewerbeakademie, a forerunner of Technische Universität Berlin. After initial jobs at a company specialising in mill construction in
Bitterfeld and a machine factory and
iron foundry in
Schkeuditz, he founded the engineering office for cable cars together with his college friend Theodor Otto, whose first success was the construction of a
material ropeway in
Teutschenthal.
[ Illustration in Die Erfindung der Drahtseilbahnen][ Description, Illustration in Die Drahtseilbahnen] Soon after, they built a material cable car for the Sayner Hütte of the
Krupp company. Otto separated from Bleichert in 1876 and worked with the
Siegen cable car pioneer Julius Pohlig, who designed cable cars for use in transporting
coal and
ore in mines.
Bleichert then founded Adolf Bleichert & Co., Fabrik für Drahtseilbahnen, Leipzig-Gohlis, with his brother-in-law, the businessman Peter Heinrich Piel, with which he developed the basis for the construction of and successfully put them into practice.[Elevation to the hereditary nobility on 24 March 1918 by King Frederick Augustus III of Saxony. This was probably the last elevation to the nobility before the abolition of the monarchy in Saxony.]
Adolf Bleichert joined the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (Association of German Engineers, VDI) and the district association of the VDI in 1869.
Memorial
The sculptor Friedrich Walter Kunze created the Adolf Bleichert memorial, which was unveiled in 1908 on the factory premises in Leipzig-Gohlis. It was removed under
East Germany on May 1, 1950.
[Manfred Hötzel: Biographisches zu Adolf Bleichert (1845–1901). In: Manfred Hötzel, Stefan W. Krieg: Adolf Bleichert und sein Werk. Unternehmerbiografie, Industriearchitektur, Firmengeschichte. Sax-Verlag, 2002, S. 17–51, hier S. 48–49.]
See also
Bibliography
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G. Dieterich: Die Erfindung der Drahtseilbahnen. Verlag Hermann Zieger, Leipzig, 1908 ( Digitalisat)
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Manfred Hötzel, Stefan W. Krieg (Hrsg.): Adolf Bleichert und sein Werk. Gohliser Historische Hefte, Sax Verlag Beucha, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 978-3-934544-35-2.
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P. Stephan: Die Drahtseilbahnen. 2. Aufl., Verlag von Julius Springer, Berlin, 1914 ( Digitalisat)
External links
Notes
