Friedrich Bayer: the founder of Bayer AG

Friedrich Bayer (1825-1880) traded natural dyes at least since 1850. Bayer came from a family of silk weavers in Barmen, about twenty-five miles from Cologne. He was born in 1825 near Cologne, he was the only boy among six children and it was fairly obvious that whatever he did in life would have some connection with textiles.

His first job was a chemical merchant’s apprentice, but by the time he was twenty-three he had began his own business trading in natural dyes. Bayer was successful, setting himself up in business and trading dyes across Europe.

On August I, 1863, Friedrich Bayer and master dyer Johann Friedrich Weskott establish a modest dyestuff factory in Wuppertal-Barmen, Germany. The firm was renamed Friedrich Bayer & Co to reflect the new partnership.

Bayer became the general manager while Weskott assumed the role of the technical director. Weskott knew everything about dyeing: he was already running a successful dyeing business evolving twelve men.

Their expertise lay in natural dyes, but the company they founded was set up to exploit the vast potential of the exciting synthetic aniline dyes that were beginning to appear.

The partners managed to produce their own version of fuchsine dye in small premises attached to Bayer’s house but lost much of their initial profit in compensation payments when irate neighbors complained about waste chemicals polluting the local drinking water.

Friedrich Bayer, as a trader, of natural dyes, had sales connections in many German cities as well as in Brussels, Amsterdam, Bradford (England), New York, and St. Petersburg.

Bayer has its headquarters in Leverkusen, North Rhino-Westphalia, Germany. Bayer was one of the important German chemical companies of the late 19th and 20th centuries.

In 1880, died, followed a year later by Weskott and the reins were picked up by Carl Rumpff, Bayer’s son-in-law.
Friedrich Bayer: the founder of Bayer AG

Albert Ballin of HAPAG

Albert Ballin was born on August 15, 1857, the son of Jewish immigrants from Denmark. He was born poor, but through his keen intelligence and flair for business was able to work his way up the ladder and become chairman of the steamship company.

He had gotten onto the shipping business through his family. His father ran a modest shipping agency, Morris & Co., and his business was to ensure that emigrants got from Europe to America to start new lives for themselves.

Albert Ballin took over the business in 1875. In the course of expansion, Ballin joined forces with English Carr Line, which provided new ships to carry the ever-swelling numbers of emigrants that Ballin’s company handled.

Ambitious and erudite, Ballin went to England as a teenager to learn the shipping business from the bottom up. He returned to Germany in 1883, aged 26 and then served three years as general passenger agent in Hamburg for the Carr Line.

His competitive selling ability was so great that he cut deeply into the business of the Hamburg-based lines and in 1886, was lured away to head the passenger service of Germany’s oldest transatlantic steamship company, the Hamburg-Amerika Packetfahrt.

Always elegantly dressed and elegantly mannered, Ballin believed that Hamburg-Amerika ships should be equally elegant and mannered. He traveled frequently on his ships, moving among the passengers, asking their opinions, always keeping an eye opened for flaws and lapses in service, making notes that would be transformed onto memorandums when he returned to his office.

Rising to Director General of HAPAG after 1889, Ballin built that line into the world’s largest shipping company, and with it built the port of Hamburg into Germany’s second largest city. The HAPAG offered competitive prices and efficient service both in a passenger travel and freight and soon took over the lead that British steamship companies had monopolized for decades.

By 1913 there were 175 ships in the line with a combined tonnage of 12.3 million. Ballin brought about the American-German shipping agreement of 1912 and became the Kaiser’s consultant on economic affairs.

Ballin committed suicide in Hamburg in 1918 two days before the end of World War I.
Albert Ballin of HAPAG

Johann Jacobs (1869-1958)

Johann Jacobs was born in a rural community outside Bremen, Germany. In 1895, he established Jacobs Kaffee, which was to become one of Europe's leading coffee companies.

Jacobs had opened a small coffee shop began selling coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate and biscuit.  Then he started roasting his own coffee. The name Jacobs soon became synonymous with coffee throughout most of Europe.

In 1930 his nephew, Walther Jacobs, joined the firm, fresh from the United States, where he had learned the value of advertisement.

With aggressive salesmanship, slick packaging and slogans such as ‘Jacobs Kaffee – satisfaction Down to the Last Bean’ the company expanded during Hitler’s Third Reich.

Jacobs Kaffee merges with Suchard-Tobler for form Jacobs Suchard in Europe in 1982.
Johann Jacobs (1869-1958)