Dippell

The founders of Verla's second mill company were the Austrian papermaker Gottlieb Kreidl, the consul Wilhelm Dippell from Vyborg and the German technician Louis H�nel. The necessary financing was mainly provided by the consul Wilhelm Dippell and his brother, the architect Eduard Dippell. Gottlieb Kreidl lived in Verla and the villagers saw him as the manager of the mill. The Patruunan Pytinki was built as Kreidl's residential building.

The establishment of Verla's second mill was a continuation of the first mill company, whose groundwood mill burned down in 1874. Even though this mill had burned down, the contemporaries had not forgotten the Verla rapids plot and the turbine there. The sale of the Verla rapids plot was hampered by an unfavourable market and the division of the ownership of Verla's firs mill company between several partners. Things started to happen when Gottlieb Kreidl and Reinhold Munck met in Helsinki in September 1876. Hugo Neuman redeemed the shares of Verla's first mill company from its partners Sj�berg, Conradi and Munck's heirs during the following year. Kreidl sought confirmation of the deal from the Senate's finance department immediately after buying Verla.

CONSUL FRIEDRICH WILHELM DIPPELL (1853-1906)

Consul Wilhelm Dippell is often mentioned only as a partner in the Verla mill company, when in fact, he was the executive director of the company, who was managing the company from Vyborg. Although the mill company was based in Jaala, its financing, accounting and contacts with customers were handled from Vyborg.

Wilhelm started school at the age of 8 at Behm's German-language school in Vyborg. He left school in June 1868 with the statement "Ging jetzt ab, um Kaufmann zu werden", i.e. to become a businessman. This meant that he went to learn the skills of a merchant and prepared for his vocation abroad. Wilhelm worked for eight years (1868–1876) in Germany, France and England.

At the age of 23, he returned to his hometown and founded his own business, W. Dippell. During his time in Bordeaux, France, he had become an expert in the wine trade and soon became a wholesaler of other goods. In the 1880s, he became the Nobel Fire Oil Officer in Eastern Finland and, like his father, continued to be active in the Vyborg City Administration, the Northern Bank and the Beer Brewery. He also became a representative of the Rettig tobacco factory in Turku. At the same time, he acquired the Rakkolanjoki tile factory and Hovinmaa estate and groundwood mill in the rural municipality of Vyborg.

Dippell became the financier – and perhaps the initiator – of Verla's new groundwood company. This is what Victor Hoving writes about the matter in his book published in 1949: Kymi Ltd. 1872-1947: "It is not certain whether he (Gottlieb Kreidl) himself had the idea of building a groundwood mill in Verla again and connecting it with a board mill. There is also a version that the father of the idea was the consul Wilhelm Dippell from Vyborg, although it was considered more appropriate that Kreidl appeared as a buyer in Neuman's eyes. In any case, Kreidl did not have enough funds to build a grinding mill on his own and keep it running, and therefore in the autumn of 1882 an open company was founded in Vyborg, "Handelsbolaget Werla Tr�sliperi och Pappfabrik", with a basic capital of 90,000 marks, divided equally between Dippell, Kreidl and the German Louis H�nel."

ARCHITECT CARL EDUARD DIPPELL (1855-1912)

Eduard Dippell was a versatile person and much more than just an architect. Eduard began his schooling in the city of Hanover in the 1860s. The city was home to the administration of the Kingdom of Hanover, and the kingdom's consul in Vyborg was Eduard's father, Julius Dippell. Eduard graduated from high school in 1871 and in the autumn of the same year enrolled in the preparatory class of the Hannover University of Technology. He graduated as an architect in 1876.

Eduard's father Julius died in Vyborg in 1868 and his mother Maria in 1878. Eduard's brother Wilhelm had returned to Vyborg in 1876 and established his own business there. Eduard himself probably worked in Hanover in 1876–78 in the office of Professor Conrad Wilhelm Hase (1818–1902). After the death of his mother, Eduard returned to the city of his birth.

In Vyborg, Eduard first designed a wooden residential building on plot no. 15 in Salakkalahti, which he owned, and in the 1880s he began to design houses in Vyborg for himself and other burghers of the city. In 1884, he designed a two-storey warehouse building in the courtyard of the W. Dippell trading house. In 1883, he participated in the design competition for a church to be built in Vyborg, which he won. The church building was completed ten years later.

In addition to the city of Vyborg, Eduard designed a church also in Nuijamaa. That church was also destroyed during the Continuation War. He designed factory and warehouse buildings in Papula in Vyborg and several buildings in Verla, where his design can still be seen. In addition to the factory building, Eduard Dippell designed several tile stoves for the Rakkolanjoki tile factory owned by the Dippells. The tiled stoves in the Patruunan Pytinki are also Eduard's handiwork, as is the entire building.

Eduard Dippell's active career ended in the late 1890s, when his lung disease and diabetes required more treatment. Eduard and his wife Dagmar (n�e von Alfthan) lived in Nice in the winter and in the summers in Finland, when they sometimes would also visit Verla.

Eduard Dippell was a respected person who actively participated in association and social life. As the sole heir of his brother, he fulfilled this one’s will through donations to employees and various associations as well as to the city of Vyborg. Later, his wife Dagmar continued the same tradition.

TECHNICIAN HEINRICH LOUIS H�NEL (1836-1905)

H�nel moved back to Germany in 1883 and then visited Finland only a few times. According to the partnership agreements, he received the same monthly payment as the other two partners (Gottlieb Kreidl and Wilhelm Dippell) and his share of the company's profits. We can only guess what his role in the company was. Based on the accounts and partnership agreements, it is known that his share in the company remained until the limited company was sold in 1920.

Louis H�nel was born on 12 September 1836 in the small municipality of Breitenbrunn, located in the Kingdom of Saxony. He entered military service at the age of 15, when his profession was listed as a papermaker. The military service lasted until August 1855.

In 1874, he married 22-year-old Marie Brandemer. In this case, H�nel's profession was listed as a factory manager. Soon after, the couple travelled to Finland to Kymi mill. In the book Kymi Ltd. 1872-1947, Victor Hoving writes about H�nel: "The Kymi company announced again in Wochenblatt and hired Werkf�hrer Louis Haenel, who had been in charge of a German paper mill for three years. At the beginning of February 1876, he took up his position, which included all three departments of the Kymi Company. Through one of the Kymi company's machine purchasers, Haenel had had the opportunity to learn a patented method for making paper from boiled wood, i.e. from natural brown groundwood. For this reason, a provision was included in his contract with the Kymi company. 'that, since Mr. Haenel has learned the method of Mr. Meissner & Sohn at the expense of the Kymi Limited Company, Mr. Haenel undertakes to fully familiarize the one person selected by the company with this method.'. Haenel was obviously a capable professional, but he had taken on too heavy a workload."

In March 1876, daughter Grete Aina was born to the family, at that time her father's profession was listed as a papermaster. In March 1882, the year the Verla mill company was founded, Marie gave birth to her second child, who died three months later. The family travelled back to Germany in 1883. At the time, the wife was expecting her third child, who was born in November in Wiesbaden and named Hans Allan. Two years later, in September 1885, a second son, Roland Heinrich, was born in Leipzig. From 1889 onwards, the family lived in Dresden.

Louis H�nel died on July 3, 1905 in Dresden. After her husband's death, Mary H�nel visited Finland a few times with her daughter and son Roland and participated in the annual general meeting of Verla Ltd. in 1913. Mary H�nel sold the 204 shares of the Verla limited company she owned in 1920 and received 4,080,000 Finnish marks for them, which came in handy in the post-war conditions.

Of Verla's three partners, H�nel was the oldest and most experienced. He was about 15 years older than the others. It is not known what kind of correspondence he had with them. The partnership agreement of 1892 was not renewed in 1902, but the company was formed into a limited liability company in 1906, the year of W. Dippell's death, a year after H�nel's death.

The text is taken from the book Werlan tehdasyhti�t (Werla mill companies) written by Hannu Pukkila.