Max Schiemann

Max Schiemann (born 10 September 1866 in Breslau; died 2 February 1933 in Wurzen) was a German electrical engineer and entrepreneur. He was co-owner of the Gesellschaft für gleislose Bahnen Max Schiemann & Co. in Wurzen.

Family

His parents were Albert Karl Schiemann (1837–1897), an insurance merchant originally from Königsberg who later lived in Breslau, and Malvile (Malwine) Luise Emilie née Oloff (1840–1907), daughter of the Königsberg painter Friedrich August Oloff and Wilhelmine Louise Amalie Oloff née Breckenfelder. He had five siblings. His grandfather Carl Gottlieb Schiemann (1801–1872) was a master tailor in Königsberg.

In 1892 he married in Frankfurt (Oder) Elisabeth Bahlmann (1871–1949), daughter of Theodor Bahlmann (1837–1886), a merchant from Kraków living in Bernau. Their children were Erich Schiemann (1897–1956), who later worked as an engineer in Mannheim, and Hildegard Scheidges née Schiemann (1899–1979), who became a music educator in Berlin.

The chemist Günther Schiemann (1899–1967) was his nephew.

Career

After studying electrical engineering at the Technical University (Berlin-)Charlottenburg, he worked at Siemens & Halske in Berlin on electric tramways. He then worked for Herrmann Bachstein, who had founded the Central Administration for Secondary Railways in 1879, and for the Dresden tramway.

In 1900 he founded his own engineering office in Dresden, and in 1901 he and Fritz Momber established the Gesellschaft für gleislose Bahnen Max Schiemann & Co. in Wurzen. In the summer of 1901, the Gleislose Bielathal-Motorbahn with electric overhead line began operations. Additional trolleybus lines were later established in Germany, Austria and Norway.

At the beginning of the First World War, projects in Brixen and in Oran (Algeria) had to be discontinued. After Momber left, production ceased in 1926/1927.

Literature

• Max Schiemann: Bau und Betrieb elektrischer Bahnen: Handbuch zu deren Projektierung, Bau und Betriebsführung: Strassenbahnen. Leipzig 1898.
• Wolfgang H. Gebhardt: Taschenbuch deutscher LKW-Bau. Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-440-05997-9, vol. 1 (1896–1918).
    New edition under the title Die Geschichte des deutschen LKW-Baus. Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-811-2, vol. 1 (1896–1918), pp. 159 f.
• Sächsisches Wirtschaftsarchiv e.V. (ed.), Richard Klinkhardt: Die Wurzener Industrie 1797–2002. Sax-Verlag, Beucha 2005, ISBN 3-934544-48-7, pp. 109 ff.
• Wolfgang Mathis (2005). "Schiemann, Max". Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German). Vol. 22. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. pp. 745–746. (full text online).

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