EinHamburgerIngenieur

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Johannes Leopold Sievers was born on November 16, 1871 in Hamburg-Bergedorf as son of Johann Christoph Sievers and Luise Margarete Warnke. His father worked in Bergedorf as a hotelier and gastronomer.

He died in Wewelsfleth on January 9, 1944; birth and death mark almost exactly the life span of the German nation state known as the “German Reich” between 1871 and 1945.

His birth year 1871 is the year of the foundation of the German Reich. 1871 also marks the beginning of the Gründerzeit, which from 1873 was followed by almost 20 years of economic stagnation. A stagnation that also shaped his childhood due to the economic challenges his father faced.

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One year before the birth of Johannes Leopold Sievers, Thomas Edison founded his first own workshop for development and production in Newark (USA). Thomas Edison, who was 26 when Johannes was born, and his inventions as well as the technological upheaval at the time, influenced Johannes Sievers and his professional career.

After completing his military service in 1891 and training as an engineer in Darmstadt, he went abroad for further studies, first to Leeds and then to Newark to Thomas Edison. In November 1895, he began his professional life in Worms with Cornelius Heyl, at that time a major leather manufacturer. In 1899 he moved to Berlin to Siemens & Halske. After more than 10 years outside of his home country, he accepted a new professional challenge in his home town of Bergedorf in 1902. There he married Ludolfine Dora Ottilie Tholl in 1904. With her he had three children: Louise, Otto and Leopold.

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After a few years as plant manager of the Bergedorf power plant, he was able to take up a career opportunity with the Hamburgische Elektrizitätswerke in 1923; he moved there as an authorized signatory. He moved from Bergedorf to Hamburg, to a house at Hagenau 63. This house became the center of middle-class life in the period between the two world wars, which was cut short when the National Socialists seized power. He retired in 1934; the early retirement was preceded by disputes with the new rulers.

In 1926, Johannes Leopold Sievers was promoted from plant manager of the Bergedorf works to director of Hamburgische Electricitäts-Werke AG (HEW). In the course of the promotion, the Sievers family moved from Reinbecker Weg 42 in Bergedorf to Hagenau 63 in March 1926.

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As part of “Operation Gomorrha”, the series of air raids carried out on Hamburg by the Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Eighth Air Force of the USAAF during the air war of World War II from July 24 to August 3, 1943, the property at Hagenau 63 was destroyed when the fire of a neighboring house spread to the house. Johannes Leopold and his wife found refuge with his daughter and son-in-law in Wewelsfleth. He died there on January 9, 1944, at the age of 72.

During the air raids on Hamburg in July 1943, the house in Hagenau was completely destroyed. On January 9, 1944, Johannes Sievers died at the age of 72 in Wewelsfleth, in the house of his son-in-law Siegfried Pohlenz, where he and his wife had found refuge after the destruction of their home.