Pharmaceutical Industry

Jacob Hasslacher has been counted among the American chemical industry’s “founding fathers.” The manufacture and sale of specialty chemicals was more advanced in his native country than in his adopted one, and his firm, the Roessler & Hasslacher Chemical Company, benefited from its German connections during most of the period in which it was led by Hasslacher.

The German doctor, homeopathist, author and philanthropist Constantine Hering was born at the dawn of a new century, on January 1, 1800, in Oschatz, Saxony, and played a crucial role in the development of the medical sector in the United States, in particular regarding the introduction of the innovative medical treatment called homeopathy.

Joseph Jacobs, a second-generation German-Jewish immigrant, built up a large retail drug-store chain in Atlanta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A scientist by training and an entrepreneur by nature, Jacobs possessed a unique combination of skills that helped him play a defining role in the Atlanta pharmacy trade for decades.

Industrialist Edward Mallinckrodt Sr. achieved success in the chemical manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries through a combination of factors that included strong connections to Germany, an awareness of the broader business environment, and an ability to formulate innovative responses to technological and economic changes.

Together with his cousin Charles Erhart, Charles Pfizer founded Charles Pfizer & Company, initially compounding a pharmaceutical product sold to retailers. The company soon shifted to the production of specialty fine chemicals, which were produced in relatively small quantities and sold for relatively high prices. Pfizer & Company expanded steadily to become one of the largest specialty chemical manufacturers in the United States by the beginning of the twentieth century, and Charles Pfizer retired a wealthy and successful entrepreneur.

Julius Weltzien spent nearly his entire career with one company, Schering AG, one of Germany’s oldest specialty chemical firms. He built up the international and American business of one of Germany’s leading companies only eventually to be exiled from Germany to the United States, albeit as a potentially dangerous alien to his new hosts.