HATSCHEK, Ludwig

Ludwig H. was born in 1856 in Tešetnice as the first of six children to a brewery owner Filipp H. (1824-1908) and his wife Sofia. The brewery was founded by his grandfather Solomon H., a hop grower from Zatec. After the lost war in 1866, the family moved to Linz where Filipp and his brother James bought the city pub along the Danube in 1869 and managed it. They called it the Brothers H. tavern. In 1878 H’s family bought the pub in the Kapuzinerstraße in Linz. H. attended trade school in Linz and then finished the professional brewing school in Weihenstephan near Munich. In 1889 he married Rosa Würzburger in Linz. After he came into conflict with his brother-in-law Ludwig Weiß over the administration of the brewery, H. in 1890 paid him out 100,000 guilders and began seeking new fields of activity. While he was in England in 1892/93, he received a letter from his wife, telling him that there is an asbestos factory on sale in Vöcklabruck (Upper Austria).
H. bought a small factory and after the establishment of the First Austrian-Hungarian Ludwig H’s asbestos factory in 1893 moved to Vöcklabruck. After several years of experimentation, he in 1900 succeeded in developing a new, stable and frost resistant asbestos board and Portland cement as binding agents for roofing and facade cladding. This invention was patented in 1901 under the name Eternit. H. purchased the raw asbestos in Russia (Ural) and thus bought a cement factory near Gmundno in 1907. He sold the patent to a number of licensed manufacturers abroad, including France (1903), Belgium, Italy, England, Sweden, Russia, Switzerland and the USA.
The income from the transfer of the patent license, provided supply of asbestos, the patent process and construction of the Eterit factory in Vöcklabruck and further establishing of the factories around the Monarchy would suffice for H. until his death in 1914 in Linz. His son Hans H. (1890-1956) successfully managed the factory together with Hans Czerwenko, Ludwig H’s long-time co-worker.

The use of asbestos has been prohibited in Austria since 1990, because it causes cancer and asbestosis (powdery lungs). The Eterit production has since than been carried out by an asbestos-free procedure.