August Ferdinand Howaldt (23 October 1809 – 4 August 1883) was a German engineer and ship builder. The German sculptor Georg Ferdinand Howaldt was his brother.

Biography

Born in

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...

, the son of the silversmith David Ferdinand Howaldt, with whom he got his first practice working in metal, Howaldt made an apprenticeship in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

and became a ''practical mechanicus''. Bundeswehrmuseum Dresden 8

In 1838 he moved to

Kiel Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021). Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the Jutland ...

, where he married Emma Diederichsen. In Kiel he founded together with the Kiel entrepreneur Johann Schweffel the "Maschinenbauanstalt Schweffel & Howaldt", a company initially building boilers for industry and the new railroad companies in between Hamburg and Kiel and agricultural machinery for the surrounding estates in

Holstein Holstein (; nds, label=Northern Low Saxon, Holsteen; da, Holsten; Latin and historical en, Holsatia, italic=yes) is the region between the rivers Elbe and Eider. It is the southern half of Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state of German ...

. In 1849 Schweffel & Howaldt built its first steam engine for naval purposes for the ''Von der Tann'', a gunboat for the small navy of

Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein (; da, Slesvig-Holsten; nds, Sleswig-Holsteen; frr, Slaswik-Holstiinj) is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Sc ...

, and the ''

Brandtaucher ''Brandtaucher'' ( German for ''Fire-diver'') was a submersible designed by the Bavarian inventor and engineer Wilhelm Bauer and built by Schweffel & Howaldt in Kiel for Schleswig-Holstein's Flotilla (part of the ''Reichsflotte'') in 1850. ...

'', the first German incendiary diver or submarine designed by

Wilhelm Bauer Wilhelm Bauer (23 December 1822 – 20 June 1875) was a German inventor and engineer who built several hand-powered submarines. Biography Wilhelm Bauer was born in Dillingen in the Kingdom of Bavaria. His father was a sergeant of a Bavarian ...

. The ''Brandtaucher ''is today an exhibit of the German Forces Military History Museum in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

. Schweffel & Howaldt also built two tugs in 1860 and 1864. When he passed his company to his sons Georg, Bernhard and Hermann Howaldt, who continued in 1879 under the name Gebrüder Howaldt. The firm merged with Georg's shipyard in Kiel in 1889 to become Howaldtswerke AG, today known as

Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (often abbreviated HDW) is a German shipbuilding company, headquartered in Kiel. It is part of the ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) group, owned by ThyssenKrupp. The Howaldtswerke shipyard was founded in Kiel in 183 ...

(HDW).

References

* Christian Ostersehlte: ''Von Howaldt zu HDW''. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 2004, * ''August Ferdinand Howaldt'' in: Biographisches Lexikon für Schleswig-Holstein und Lübeck, Vol 12 Neumünster 2006, p. 201 ff.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Howaldt, August 1809 births 1883 deaths Scientists from Braunschweig Engineers from Lower Saxony German shipbuilders German company founders German industrialists 19th-century German businesspeople People from the Duchy of Brunswick Businesspeople from Kiel Submarine pioneers