Franz Mayr (Industrialist)
Franz Mayr (* 27 January 1779 at the Melmayerhof in Leoben-Judendorf, Germany, 6th April 1847 in Graz) was an Austrian industrialist.
His father Lorenz Mayr owned a farm in Schönberg near Knittelfeld, which today belongs to Spielberg (Styria). From there he moved to Leoben.
Franz Mayr was an innkeeper from 1805 to 1841 in the Gasthof Zum schwarze Adler, located on the Leoben main square. In addition, he bought several hammer works in the area of Bruck an der Mur and an old copper hammer in the Leoben suburb Waasen, which he converted into an iron hammer. Indirectly, he became the founder of the Donawitz metallurgical works by setting up the first steelmaking and puddling plant in Styria in 1837 with the Franzenshütte located at Vordernbergerbach. In the surroundings of the Franzenshütte, the Donawitz metallurgical works were built in the following decades. Donawitz thus replaced Vordernberg as the center of the Styrian iron industry, whose radarmasters had until then been the sole claim to the production of pig iron from the Erzgebirge of the Styrian Erzgebirge, south of the Erzber area.
His son, Franz (1810-1889), continued the construction of the industrial enterprises. It was raised to the nobility in 1859 as "Mayr von Melnhof" and in the Freiherrenstand in 1872. Weblinks Edit sourcetext
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