Carl von Linde - gifted engineer and entrepreneur

Carl von Linde at the age of 83 (1925).

However, the family’s move to Kempten, where his father was assigned a parish, and his later attendance at the local high school put Carl von Linde in close contact with the family of the director of the Kempten cotton spinning mill. His frequent visits to the factory, with its impressive power machines stimulated in the youth an interest in technology and a desire to study engineering.

Despite the tight financial situation in the parson’s large household, von Linde was able to convince his father to allow him to study mechanical engineering at the leading technical university of the time, the Polytechnikum in Zurich, Switzerland. There, his most important teachers were Dr. Zeuner (mechanics and theoretical machine studies), Dr. Reuleaux (mechanical engineering) and Dr. Clausius (physics), he reported in his memoir "Aus meiner Arbeit und von meiner Arbeit (My Life and Work)." It was also Zeuner and Reuleaux who wrote personal letters of recommendation for Linde when he had to leave the Polytechnikum without officially graduating as a result of a student protest.

Von Linde received his first practical training as an intern in the mechanical workshop of the Kottern cotton spinning plant near Kempten, then at Borsig in Berlin. He started work as an engineer in the Borsig drawing office in August 1865.

At the end of 1865, Carl von Linde applied to become the head of the technical office upon the founding of the Krauss & Co. locomotive factory in Munich. On February 20 or the following year he received this position and celebrated by becoming engaged to Helene Grimm on February 26 before leaving Berlin. The wedding was held September 17 in Kempten. During their 53-year marriage, the Lindes had six children: Maria (1867- 1954), Franziska (1868-1966), Friedrich (1870-1965), Anna (1873-1949), Richard (1876-1961) and Elisabeth (1880-1959).

Carl von Linde (seated, 2nd from right) with his sons and daughters and their spouses.

Still, the young Linde, not yet 25 years old, had aspirations beyond the drawing office into science and teaching. On the recommendation of the founding rector of the Polytechnic School in Munich (later Technical University) he was hired as an associate professor on August 24, 1868 and on December 24, 1872 was promoted to full professor of mechanical engineering. He included the theory of refrigeration machines in his teaching syllabus.

So that he could also give his students practical instruction, the Bavarian government approved 70,000 florins to set up a machine laboratory - 8211; the first of its kind in Germany. It would become the starting point for his groundbreaking developments in refrigeration technology.

During his first teaching period from 1868 to 1879, the restless von Linde was already involved in various technical associations - an activity that would take a considerable amount of his time during his term as head of the "Gesellschaft für Linde’s Eismaschinen" in 1890 after his return to Munich.

Professor von Linde is thus one of the founding fathers of the Bavarian Boiler Review Association and the Munich Thermal Testing Station. In the Polytechnic Association he examined applications for a Bavarian patent and served as part of the Berlin commission that reformed German patent law.

Back in Munich and armed with an honorary professorship (it was converted into a full professorship without teaching duties in 1900), von Linde took the position of Bavarian district chairman of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) in 1892 and was elected chairman of the Bavarian Boiler Association. In 1895 he was appointed to the board of trustees at the German Physical-Technical Institute, one year later to the Bavarian Academy of Science. In 1898 he joined the Göttingen Association for Applied Physics and Mathematics, from which the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and ultimately the Max Planck Society emerged.

In 1904 and 1905 he served as president of the VDI, and in 1903 he immersed himself with Oskar von Miller in the founding of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Carl von Linde remained on the museum’s board until he was 80 years old.

Carl von Linde (front left) appraises the building site for the Deutsches Museum in Munich together with the architects and the members of the building committee (ca. 1910).

As always, however, his main attention was focused on the Linde Company and its subsidiaries. His practical work in the area of refrigeration and later in air liquefaction and air separation shows the entrepreneur-engineer side of von Linde - and thus his true calling.

His entrepreneurial side was often in demand on many supervisory boards - of a few subsidiaries as well as of the locomotive manufacturer Krauss & Co., the Mainz Aktienbrauerei, the Trieberg Electricity Company, The Güldner engine company and Maschinenfabrik Sürth. This multifaceted and diverse range of commitments required an active travel schedule. Since his head engineers were very often also on the road starting up equipment at customer facilities, a unique correspondence culture developed within the Linde Company. A total of 3,010 business letters written personally by Linde alone during the years 1876 to 1929 are preserved in eleven copy books.

Although von Linde withdrew more and more from his active working life starting in 1910, he held on to some of his supervisory and advisory activities until the end of his life. His two sons Friedrich and Richard and his son-in-law Rudolf Wucherer (who was married to Linde’s youngest daughter Elisabeth) carried on his life’s work. Two of his four daughters married pastors and the eldest married psychiatrist Dr. Karl Ranke, who also sometimes served on the company’s Supervisory Board.

Carl von Linde died in 1934 at the age of 92. Over the course of his life he was awarded three honorary Doctorates, the Bavarian crown achievement medal, and was honored with elevation to personal nobility status among many other distinguishing honors.