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| Dr. phil. Friedrich Linde, Chairman of the Executive Board from 1924 to 1946. |
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| The elder of Carl von Linde’s two sons built Department B (gas liquefaction and separation) into a major pillar of the company and, from 1924, as Chairman of the Executive Board, determinedly led the entire company through the turbulent times of the 1920s, the Nazi era, the Second World War and the reconstruction after 1945.
Friedrich Linde studied physics in Strasbourg and Berlin and received his Doctorate in 1895. That same year he went to Munich and began the groundbreaking trials on air liquefaction with his father in the Linde testing station. |
Together with his father, Friedrich Linde headed Department B starting in 1897 in Höllriegelskreuth and first developed equipment for the production of small air liquefaction machines for scientific laboratories. At the same Friedrich Linde worked on separating liquid air. He was the first scientist to succeed in producing pure oxygen by means of rectification. In 1903 he was given power of attorney for the "Gesellschaft für Linde’s Eismaschinen" and in 1908 he took over the management of Department B as a member of the Executive Board of the Linde Company. In 1924 he became chairman and in 1929 received the title of general director.
Friedrich Linde achieved decisive commercial successes. He brought about a cartel with the powerful IG Farben in the field of technical gases (1932), in which the Linde Company functioned as an equal partner. Above all, however, he steered the company through the economic and financial crises of the time between the wars, through the war and through the years of reconstruction after the Second World War. In 1952, at the age of 81, he gave up the Executive Board chairmanship to his brother-in-law Rudolf Wucherer, remaining on the Supervisory Board until 1961. Friedrich Linde died in 1965.