Johann Liebieg (1802–70)

Johann Liebieg was a textile industrialist who helped transform the region around the northern Bohemian town of Liberec into one of the major industrial centres of the Austrian Empire.

Liebieg was born in 1802 at Broumov in Bohemia. The town is now in the northern part of the Czech Republic near the Polish border but was then known as Braunau and was within the Habsburg Monarchy. Liebieg came from a weaving family and at 16 he was apprenticed to a weaver. In 1822 he set up a small wool trading business with his older brother Franz, Gebrüder Liebieg, and in 1828 they bought a dyeing factory for woollen yarn at Liberec (then Reichenberg) in Bohemia. Johann travelled around France and Britain observing textile businesses and expanded the factory to weave specialist woollen textiles, including merino and mohair. He separated from his brother Franz and in 1841 started a dyeing and finishing works at Mödling south of Vienna and in 1843 established a worsted spinning mill at Liberec.

He continued to expand and diversify his textile production. In 1845, he opened a cotton-spinning factory near Velké Hamry that from 1855 was operated with a weaving mill. In 1856 he began another cotton spinning mill at Železný Brod and a worsted spinning mill at Raspenava that supplied woollen yarn to hand looms in the area. His company was one of the biggest textile businesses in Europe.

Liebieg also diversified into other industries. He bought an abandoned glassworks in Bihar (now Romania) in 1852 and took expert glassworkers there from Bohemia to modernise it, he acquired a mirror factory, an iron forge at Gutenstein in Austria, slate quarries at Radčice, copper works at both Gutenstein and Rokytnice nad Jizerou, limekilns, a sawmill and a brewery.

He was a progressive employer, providing healthcare, housing and education for over 6,000 workers. Two years before his death in 1870 he was ennobled by Emperor Franz Joseph I as Ritter von Liebieg.