William Ralph Merton
Wilhelm Merton ( until 1856: William Moses, 1856-1899: William Merton ) ( born May 14, 1848 in Frankfurt am Main, † December 15, 1916 in Berlin ) was an important, influential German businessman, social politician and philanthropist. The Merton Center at Frankfurt's Johann Wolfgang Goethe University was named after him.
Life and work
He was the eighth of nine children of 1837 from England immigrated to Frankfurt Ralph Merton ( until 1856: Raphael Lyon Moses ) and his wife Sara Amelie Cohen. On November 5, 1855 Ralph Moses received along with his family, the citizenship of the Free City of Frankfurt. On November 27, 1856, he was granted permission to the name of his home town of Merton, now a district of London, to be able to accept as their surname. This name change was requested on 22 October 1856 on the grounds that his brother Benjamin had already adopted this surname in Manchester and the first name Moses is not an appropriate name as Ralph.
William Merton visited the Municipal Gymnasium in Frankfurt, then studied in Munich and completed a traineeship at Deutsche Bank in Berlin.
In 1877 he married Emma Ladenburg (* 1859 in Frankfurt am Main, † 1939), a daughter of the businessman Emil Ladenburg ( 1822-1902 ), co-owner of the famous banking house of Ladenburg, and Eugénie Halphen ( 1829-1866 ). The couple had five children, Alfred, Richard and Adolf, Walter Henry and Gerda.
In 1881 he founded together with Leo Ellinger and Zacharias Hochschild ( 1854-1912 ) Metallgesellschaft.
1899 converted Merton and his children to the Protestant faith. In the same year, the naturalization of Merton as a German, who still had British citizenship by then. Since then, he bore the name of Wilhelm Merton.
Wilhelm Merton died on 15 December 1916 in Berlin suddenly of a heart attack after he had been for some time before a heart condition. He was buried in the General Cemetery Frankfurt. His sons took over the leadership of the Metallgesellschaft: Merton's eldest son Alfred was Chairman of Metallgesellschaft, the second son Richard was later temporarily CEO.
Wilhelm Merton is especially true because of its social commitment as one of the most important German -founder of the Wilhelmine era. To the same extent as in the economic field Merton did in the period up to the First World War as an initiator and founder of important socio-political institutions forth whose aim should be to contribute to a scientific basis for the humanization of modern economic society.
He founded in 1890 in Frankfurt am Main, the Institute of Welfare and 1901, the Academy of Social and Commercial Sciences. Together with the then Lord Mayor of Frankfurt, Franz Adickes, he was the driving force behind the foundation of the University of Frankfurt in the form of a foundation university 1912/1914. Out of his own fortune, he donated 2.3 million Reichsmarks in 1914 to a chair of pedagogy, in memory of his fallen in World War youngest son, the art historian Adolf Merton (* 1886, † 1914).
By incorporating the ideas of Merton, to create a scientific institution that met the requirements of modern economic society in education and research, which later called Johann Wolfgang Goethe University became one of the most advanced at that time in Germany.
At the Merton today reminds the Wilhelm Merton Foundation Professorship and the Wilhelm Merton Centre for European Integration and International Economic Order on the Frankfurt Goethe University, Wilhelm- Merton Foundation and the Mertonviertel in Frankfurt Niederursel on the former site of the United German Metal Works, a subsidiary of Metallgesellschaft. After Merton also a commercial vocational school and a street in Bockenheim are named. 2004; Walter Boehlich: Bernd Schwibs; 2007: Eva Moldenhauer and Grete Osterwald, 2010: Reinhard Kaiser, 2013 Since 2001, Gontard & Metal Bank Foundation awards every three years with 25,000 euros in prize money Wilhelm Merton Prize for European translations (2001 Klaus Reichert).