Emil Rathenau

Emil Moritz Rathenau (11 December 1838 to 20 June 1915) was a German entrepreneur, industrialist and mechanical engineer, a leading figure in the early European electrical industry and the founder of AEG. He was born in Berlin into a wealthy Jewish merchant family, apprenticed in Silesia, gained a technical training in Hanover and Zurich and worked as a technical adviser for the Berlin railway manufacturer Borsig, and in 1865 he joined a school friend in taking over a small machine building factory. At the International Exposition of Electricity in Paris in 1881 he saw Thomas Edison's light bulb for the first time and then acquired the rights to manufacture products based on Edison's patents. In 1883 he founded the German Edison Corporation for Applied Electricity, which in 1887 became the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, abbreviated AEG. In 1884 he and the magistrate of Berlin signed an agreement on the electrification of the city, and in 1903 he was appointed general manager of AEG. One of his sons was Walther Rathenau, who served as German Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic.