Heinrich Wohlwill (7 February 1874 – 31 January 1943) was a German-Jewish engineer of electrochemistry.

Early life

Wohlwill was born in Hamburg, in the German Empire, on 7 February 1874, the third of five children of well-known engineer of electrochemistry, Emil Wohlwill.
Stolperstein Hamburg, Heinrich Wohlwill. Retrieved 29 November 2018. Heinrich Wohlwill had two older siblings: Marie Wohlwill and Sophie Wohlwill, and two younger siblings: Gretchen Wohlwill and Joachim Friedrich Wohlwill. Heinrich Wohlwill served as the technical director of

Norddeutsche Affinerie Aurubis AG (formerly Norddeutsche Affinerie AG) is listed on the stock exchange and is the largest copper producer in Europe (the second largest in the world) and the largest copper recycler worldwide. Its headquarters is in Hamburg, German ...

and as a member of the board until he was removed from the company, due to the Jewish discrimination in Germany.

Patent

Wohlwill invented an industrial process for recovering copper, which was in used until WWII. The patent resulted in the formation of Norddeutsche Affinerie, presently Aurubis AG. He improved upon the

Wohlwill process The Wohlwill process is an industrial-scale chemical procedure used to refine gold to the highest degree of purity (99.999%). The process was invented in 1874 by Emil Wohlwill. This electrochemical process involves using a cast gold ingot, often c ...

(having previously been invented by his father in 1910), which is the method for extracting pure gold and silver throughout industry with the use of electrochemical electrolysis
Patents, Wohlwill Process Patent. Retrieved 29 November 2018.

Death

Wohlwill received the deportation letter in Hamburg on 17 July 1942, during the widespread Jewish discrimination in Germany during

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

.
Holocaust.cz, Dr. Heinrich Wohlwill. Retrieved 29 November 2018. Three days later, on 20 July 1942, Wohlwill and his wife Henriette Wohlwill were deported to the

Theresienstadt concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the Schutzstaffel, SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German occupation of Czechoslovakia, German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstad ...

Terezín Terezín (; german: Theresienstadt) is a town in Litoměřice District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,800 inhabitants. It is a former military fortress composed of the citadel and adjacent walled garrison town ...

. On 31 January 1943, Wohlwill died during his placement in Theresienstadt camp.

References

External links

Death certificate in the holocaust

Photocopy of patent for improving Wohlwill process

Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wohlwill, Heinrich Engineers from Hamburg 1874 births 1943 deaths German chemical engineers Jewish engineers German people who died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto