Ernst Karl (sometimes also Carl) Erdmann Heine (January 10, 1819 – August 25, 1888) was a
lawyer
A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...
in Leipzig and a major
entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
and industrial pioneer who shaped the face of the western suburbs of Leipzig.
Life
Karl Heine was born in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, to the owner of Neuscherbitz Estate, Johann Carl Friedrich Heine, and his wife Christiana Dorothea, née Reichel (1781–1857). He attended the ''
Thomasschule zu Leipzig
St. Thomas School, Leipzig (german: Thomasschule zu Leipzig; la, Schola Thomana Lipsiensis) is a co-educational and public boarding school in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany. It was founded by the Augustinians in 1212 and is one of the oldest schools i ...
'', a public boarding school in Leipzig. Later he studied law at the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
doctorate
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...
on the economic use of waterways and shores according to Saxon state law. Later, he established himself as a barrister in Leipzig .
After the death of his grandfather E.T. Reichel (1748–1832), Karl Heine bought the shares of Reichel's Garden from another heir, took these pieces of land and from the medial of the 19th century on, he gradually built what is today the inner western suburb of Leipzig.
In 1854, Heine also expanded his estate in the ''Gemeinde Plagwitz'' district of Leipzig; in 1856, he began the construction of the first section of a navigable canal connecting the rivers
White Elster
The White Elster Accessed on 16 Jan 2011. (, ) is a long river in central
Saale
The Saale (), also known as the Saxon Saale (german: Sächsische Saale) and Thuringian Saale (german: Thüringische Saale), is a river in Germany and a left-bank tributary of the Elbe. It is not to be confused with the smaller Fränkische Saale, ...
, which today bears his name (''Karl-Heine-Kanal''). The excavation of the canal reclaimed which was later to become the western suburb of Leipzig. To institute his plans for construction and industrialization, Heine established an "economy" in Plagwitz.
When the western suburb was connected to ''Gemeinde Plagwitz'', Heine constructed the ''Plagwitzer Straße'' (today named ''Käthe-Kollwitz-Straße''), a street to the south of the old highway from Leipzig to Lindenau, which ran parallel to the new street. Against the opposition of the Leipzig council, he also built the Plagwitz bridge, which connected to the ''Leipziger Straße'' in Plagwitz (today: ''Karl-Heine-Straße'').
Karl Heine was a member of the Saxon Diet from 1870 to his death. He was also a representative in the Leipzig city council.
In 1874, he moved into his newly built villa in Neuschleußig ( Karl-Heine-Villa, ''Könneritzstraße 1''), where he resided until his death.
In 1876, a construction scheme was approved which encompassed merging Karl Heine's meadows and fields in the northern part of Schleußig (''Neuschleußig'') with Bernhard Hüffer's (1824–1904) estate and extensive undeveloped forest land. These areas would be designated as new residential areas.
On May 24, 1888, Heine founded the ''Westend-Baugesellschaft'', a construction company, to continue his work in developing the Leipzig economy after his death.
Since 1854, Karl Heine had also been a member of the Leipzig
masonic lodge
A Masonic lodge, often termed a private lodge or constituent lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also commonly used as a term for a building in which such a unit meets. Every new lodge must be warranted or chartered ...
''Apollo''. He died on August 25, 1888, aged 69, in Leipzig.
Honours
In 1897, the city of Leipzig honoured Karl Heine with a monument. The monument was melted down in the Second World War but was renewed in 2001. Many streets and one plaza are named after him. (''Erdmannstraße'', 1891; ''Karl-Heine-Straße'', 1904; ''Karl-Heine-Platz'', et al.)
In 2003, a Leipzig vocational school adopted the name of ''Karl-Heine-Schule''.