George Krauss
Encyclopedia
George, Baron von Krauss (Georg, Ritter von Krauss, 25 December 1826 – 5 November 1906) was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 industrialist and the founder of the Krauss
Krauss-Maffei
The Krauss-Maffei Wegmann GmbH & Co KG or simply Krauss-Maffei is an injection molding machine manufacturer and defence company based in Munich, Germany...

 Locomotive Works (Locomotivfabrik Krauß & Comp.) in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...

, Upper Austria
Upper Austria
Upper Austria is one of the nine states or Bundesländer of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders on Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as on the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg...

. He changed the spelling of his name from Krauß to Krauss, later on once the form of his name in capital letters on the company's emblems had become established.

Early Beginnings

George Krauss was born in Augsburg
Augsburg
Augsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...

 as the eldest child of four, to the master weaver, Johann George Friedrich Krauss and his wife Anna Margarethe, née Stahl. After attending primary school, he went to the Royal Polytechnic School, founded in 1833 (today Augsburg
Augsburg
Augsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...

 High School). After completing his education he worked temporarily in the Maffei Locomotive Works in Munich, then for the Royal Bavarian State Railways
Royal Bavarian State Railways
As a nation-state, Germany did not come into being until the creation of the German Empire in 1871 from the various German-speaking states such as Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Baden and Württemberg. By then each of the major states had formed its own state railway and these continued to remain...

 (Königlich Bayerische Staatsbahn) in Hof, Germany
Hof, Germany
Hof is a city located on the banks of the Saale in the northeastern corner of the German state of Bavaria, in the Franconia region, at the Czech border and the forested Fichtelgebirge and Frankenwald upland regions....

, Kempten
Kempten
Kempten can refer to:* Kempten im Allgäu, a town in Bavaria, Germany* Kempten ZH, a district of the town of Wetzikon in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland* Kempton Park, Gauteng, a city in South Africa which was named after Kempten in Bavaria...

 and Lindau
Lindau
Lindau is a Bavarian town and an island on the eastern side of Lake Constance, the Bodensee. It is the capital of the Landkreis or rural district of Lindau. The historic city of Lindau is located on an island which is connected with the mainland by bridge and railway.- History :The name Lindau was...

. A decisive step in his development was his job as a master machinist with the Northeast Railway (Nordostbahn) in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, where he built his first four locomotives. From then on he was already preparing for the founding of his factory in Munich. In spite of strong opposition from the already established Joseph Anton von Maffei
Joseph Anton von Maffei
Joseph Anton von Maffei was a German industrialist. Together with Joseph von Baader and Baron Theodor Freiherr von Cramer-Klett , Maffei was one of the three most important railway pioneers in Bavaria.-Early life:Joseph Anton Maffei was born in Munich, the son of an Italian tradesman from Verona...

 he obtained the necessary capital to found the factory on the Marsfeld in Munich-Neuhausen on 17 July 1866, a satellite factory at Munich South station in 1872 and another works in 1880 in Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...

 (Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

) in order to avoid the high import taxes of the Danube monarchy.

Further Successes

But Krauss was not just a successful locomotive manufacturer, but also supported other technological developments, like the first refrigerators by Linde
Carl von Linde
Professor Doctor Carl Paul Gottfried von Linde was a German engineer who developed refrigeration and gas separation technologies...

. He took part in the expansion of railway lines in the Saxony
Kingdom of Saxony
The Kingdom of Saxony , lasting between 1806 and 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. From 1871 it was part of the German Empire. It became a Free state in the era of Weimar Republic in 1918 after the end of World War...

, Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

 and Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...

, in the conversion of the horse-drawn tramways to steam operations in Munich and Vienna, the building of the Chiemsee
Chiemsee
Chiemsee is a freshwater lake in Bavaria, Germany, between Rosenheim, Germany, and Salzburg, Austria. It is often called the Bavarian Sea. The rivers Tiroler Achen and Prien flow into the lake; the river Alz, out of it...

 Railway and the establishment of the Lokalbahn AG
Lokalbahn AG
The Lokalbahn AG company , or 'LAG' for short, was a private company based in Munich, Bavaria, whose lines of business was the construction and operation of branch lines in Germany and Austria-Hungary...

. In addition in 1876 he was one of the founders of the present day Institute of German Engineers, the VDI, (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure) and in 1903 generously supported the creation of the Deutsches Museum
Deutsches Museum
The Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of technology and science, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association...

 with 100,000 marks and the repurchase of his first lokomotive "Landwührden".

Twists of Fate

In 1876 his first wife Lydia died and so too did his only son, Conrad, after an accident in 1885, whereupon Krauss converted his firm into public limited company and drew back from active business leadership. He remained chairman of the board until his death, however.

Honours

As early as 1880 he was awarded the Knight's Cross 1st Class of the Grand Duchy of Saxony-Weimar, as well as the title of Royal Bavarian Industrialist (Königlich bayerischer Kommerzienrat) from King Ludwig II of Bavaria for his services. In 1903 followed the Order of Merit of Holy Michael 3rd Class, and with the conferral of the Knights Cross of the Royal Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown he rose on 6 March 1905 to ranks of the nobility. The Technical University of Munich
Technical University of Munich
The Technische Universität München is a research university with campuses in Munich, Garching, and Weihenstephan...

 awarded him the title of Doctor of Engineering
Doctor of Engineering
The Doctor of Engineering is an academic degree awarded on the basis of advanced study and research in engineering or applied sciences...

 honoris causa and the VDI gave him the Grashof
Franz Grashof
Franz Grashof was a German engineer. He was a professor of Applied Mechanics at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe. He is one of the founding directors of Verein Deutscher Ingenieure in 1855. He developed some early steam-flow formulas but made no significant contribution to free convection.The...

 commemorative coin.

A Life with Foresight

In 1905 Krauss decided to move the location of the factory from the crowded town centre out to Allach, from where its successor organisation still operates today. Sadly he did not live to see either the completion of the Deutsches Museum
Deutsches Museum
The Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of technology and science, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association...

 or the move to Allach. On 5 November 1906 the manufacturer George von Krauss died shortly before his 80th birthday in Munich. His friend and one of his first co-workers, Carl von Linde, took over the chair of the board. His factory made 7,186 locomotives from 1866 until its merger with the bankrupt Maffei locomotive works in 1931.

Sources

  • Siegfried Baum: Die Augsburger Localbahn, EK Reihe Regionale Verkehrsgeschichte Band 30; Freiburg: Eisenbahn Kurier 2000, ISBN 3-88255-444-4
  • Dr. Ing. Georg R. v. Krauss +, in: Die Lokomotive (Wien), Jahrgang 1906, Seite 213
  • Alois Auer (Hrsg.): Krauss-Maffei. Lebenslauf einer Münchner Fabrik und ihrer Belegschaft. 3K-Verlag, Kösching 1988.

External links

  • http://www.verein-der-ingenieure.de/ueber_uns/geschichte.html
  • http://www.werkbahn.de/eisenbahn/lokbau/museum/pres_krauss.htm
  • http://www.dampflokomotiven.net/Html/Krauss.html
  • Karl Schmidt, Krauss-Maffei, in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/artikel/artikel_44907> (20.02.2007)
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