Richard Hartmann

Hartmann was born on 8 November 1809 in Barr, Bas-Rhin, the son of a tawer (Weissgerber, a tanner of white leather).

That same year he left Haubold's factory and bought an engineering shop with his colleague, Karl Illing, in Annaberger Strasse at the foot of the Kassberg.

In the same year Hartmann secured the rights to a slubbing frame (a type of wool spinning machine) for 1000 talers from a penniless inventor.

The Hartmann locomotives proved to be competitive against their English counterparts and were exported worldwide in the decades that followed (especially to Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia).

Hartmann became the main supplier to the Royal Saxon State Railways, but he was far-sighted enough not to concentrate exclusively on locomotive construction.

From 1874-77 he had a summer residence known as Villa Hartmann built on the banks of the Elbe river at Laubegaster Ufer 34 in Dresden-Laubegast by the architects Hübner & Baron in the style of Gottfried Semper.

This villa was used by his son Gustav Hartmann (1842-1910, German engineering manufacturer and CEO of Dresdner Bank) from 1881 as his house.

The Sächsische Maschinenfabrik that he founded was the largest company in Saxony[2] and played a role in Chemnitz becoming one of the greatest industrial centres in Germany after 1870.

The Industrieverein Sachsen 1828 (Industrial Society of Saxony) presents a "Richard Hartmann" award, with €5000 of prize money, for outstanding industry-related, scientific, technical and economic successes with a high degree of innovation.