Heinrich Ehrhardt (17 November 1840 in
Zella St. Blasius – 20 November 1928 in
Zella-Mehlis) was a German inventor, industrialist and entrepreneur.
Family
Ehrhardt's uncle was the successful locomotive manufacturer and inventor
Johann Heinrich Ehrhardt.
Career
Around 1864, he studied and worked at the company
Richard Hartmann
Richard Hartmann (8 November 1809 – 16 December 1878) was a German engineering manufacturer.
Life
Hartmann was born on 8 November 1809 in Barr, Bas-Rhin, the son of a tawer (''Weissgerber'', a tanner of white leather). In his Alsace home ...
in
Chemnitz
Chemnitz (; from 1953 to 1990: Karl-Marx-Stadt , ) is the third-largest city in the German state of Saxony after Leipzig and Dresden. It is the 28th largest city of Germany as well as the fourth largest city in the area of former East Germany a ...
, which was the largest Saxon company.
Patents and start-ups
He registered 128 patents in the
German Empire
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
. In 1891 he patented the process that became known as the "Ehrhardt's pressing and drawing method" for the manufacture of seamless tubes and used the process to manufacture shrapnel and shell casings from steel instead of cast iron, an innovative at the time.
He founded in 1878, among other things, a metal and arms factory in Zella St. Blasius, in 1889, the
Rheinische Metallwaren- und Maschinenfabrik AG in Düsseldorf, in 1896, the
Automobilwerk Eisenach
The Automobilwerk Eisenach (AWE) was an automobile manufacturer in Eisenach, Germany.
History
Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach
Heinrich Ehrhardt founded the Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach (FFE) in Eisenach on 3 December 1896 as a stock company. Init ...
and the Blasius 1903 Ehrhardt Automobil AG. He tended to conduct
R&D at a small factory in Zella fully controlled by him, personally own the patents and license them to public companies he managed/co-owned, and the firms he was affiliated with made a very loose conglomerate; this fact negated the consequences of a
hostile takeover
In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to ...
of Rheinmetall by Krupp in 1913.
In 1895, he was contacted former Krupp engineer Konrad Haussner, who patented the idea of an innovative
quick-firing gun
A quick-firing or rapid-firing gun is an artillery piece, typically a gun or howitzer, which has several characteristics which taken together mean the weapon can fire at a fast rate. Quick-firing was introduced worldwide in the 1880s and 1890s and ...
and wanted to continue designing a real one. Ehrhardt recognized the prospectives of the design, and Haussner's far-reaching hiring in 1896 turned Rheinmetall from an unexceptional ammunition manufacturer (which did not even make the fuses for shell) to a leading European arms manufacturer in a decade.
Despite the fact that the 1896 prototype was turned down by the German Artillery Testing Commission as not yet usable in the war (a simpler
7.7 cm FK 96
The 7.7 cm Feldkanone 96 (7.7 cm FK 96) was a field gun used by Germany before World War I.
History
It was a thoroughly conventional gun, being a modernized version of Krupp's FK 73 gun, but failed to incorporate any recoil system othe ...
was adopted instead), in 1900 Great Britain adopted Haussner's design as the
QF 15-pounder gun (even though just as a
stopgap measure), to be followed by Norway a year later
with a gun which will participate in WWII. Later the
United States Army Ordnance Department
The United States Army Ordnance Corps, formerly the United States Army Ordnance Department, is a sustainment branch of the United States Army, headquartered at Fort Lee, Virginia. The broad mission of the Ordnance Corps is to supply Army comb ...
decided to buy the rights from Ehrhardt in order to combine them with an indigenous design by Captain Charles B. Wheeler in the
3-inch M1902 field gun
The 3-inch Gun, Model of 1902 was the U.S. Army’s first nickel steel, quick-firing field gun with a recoil mechanism. Like its predecessor the 3.2-inch gun M1897, it was a rifled breechloader.
Design
During the second half of 1890s the so-call ...
, and the
Austro-Hungarian Army
The Austro-Hungarian Army (, literally "Ground Forces of the Austro-Hungarians"; , literally "Imperial and Royal Army") was the ground force of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy from 1867 to 1918. It was composed of three parts: the joint arm ...
followed suit with their
8 cm FK M. 5. The Artillery Construction Bureau of the
Imperial German Army
The Imperial German Army (1871–1919), officially referred to as the German Army (german: Deutsches Heer), was the unified ground and air force of the German Empire. It was established in 1871 with the political unification of Germany under the l ...
in
Spandau
Spandau () is the westernmost of the 12 boroughs () of Berlin, situated at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers and extending along the western bank of the Havel. It is the smallest borough by population, but the fourth largest by land ...
did the same to develop the
7.7 cm FK 96 n.A. in 1904 with the only difference that Ehrhardt gave the patents for free in return for "favorable consideration when placing orders" for manufacturing the guns.
In 1920, at the age of about 80, Ehrhardt resigned from the leadership of Rheinmetall.
Commercial vehicle
Heinrich Ehrhardt taught in 1903 in his hometown of Zella St. Blasius. He created the Gustav Ehrhardt Automobile AG for passenger utility vehicles. This automobile factory, which was housed in the Maschinenfabrik has existed since 1878. Since 1903 trucks were built for the imperial army administration. From 1906, subsidized by the German Reich, only trucks were built. Purchasers had to establish that the army would have access to them in case of war. The Ehrhardt truck years had eleven types. Its gross vehicle weight ranged from 2.5 to 6 tons. A balloon defense special vehicle was built with eight tons dead weight at the start of the war. In 1924 two types of trucks were built with 35 hp and 80 hp. In 1925 the commercial vehicle industry was shut down.
Passenger cars
Ehrhardt initially had 31.2 percent ownership in the joint-stock company vehicle factory Eisenach (FFE). This was the vehicle factory that became Germany's third auto maker. Guns and bicycles were manufactured under the "Wartburg" brand, and by the end of 1898 car production had begun under the same name. The Wartburg motor car was modeled after the French two-cylinder engine "Decauville". Ehrhardt's son Gustav led the plant in Eisenach. Its 1,300 workers made the firm one of Thuringia's largest.
In order to convince the public and shareholders of the quality of the "Wartburg"-Motorwagens, Heinrich Ehrhardt and a companion drove up a steep road to show that the car could handle the climb.
In 1903, Ehrhardt withdrew after losses and disagreements other shareholders. The Decauville license was taken away. He founded Ehrhardt Automobil AG, making luxury cars, such as the "Emperor class" limousine. A brochure from 1911 shows an output of 50 hp from 8 liters capacity. The price was 26,000 marks.
Writings
*
References
Sources
*George W. Oesterdiekhoff; Hermann Strasser : heads of the Ruhr. 200 years of industrial history and structural change in the light of biographies . Plaintext Verlag, Essen 2009, , pages 91-98.
* Hugo Racine: Ehrhardt, Henry. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959. , page 579 f.
*Joseph Wilder: Heinrich Ehrhardt (1840-1928). In: RWTH Economics Biographies, Volume IV Aschendorff, Münster 1941, pages 172–186..
*"Chronicle of the city Zella-Mehlis - Volume 2", Heinrich Jung-Verlag
*"History of the German truck construction", Volume 1 Pages 68 + 2a. S. 126. worldview Verlag 1994
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ehrhardt, Heinrich
1840 births
1928 deaths
People from Zella-Mehlis
People from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
19th-century German inventors