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HEINRICH KASTRUP
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Heinrich Kastrup
Birthdate: June 17, 1860
Date of death: December 30, 1929
Thanks to his diligence and tenacity, Heinrich Kastrup climbed from humble beginnings to become the technical director of a factory producing bicycles Premier-Werke in Nuremberg. In 1891, the company management decided to establish a Nuremberg branch factory in Cheb. They entrusted this task to Heinrich Kastrup. Kastrup settled permanently in Cheb two years later. In 1911, along with Ambros Swetlik, the then director of the Cheb factory Premier, Kastrup became independent and formed his own company with bicycles called Elite. In 1922, the company under the name Es-Ka-Werke Kastrup Swetlik & A.-G was transformed into a joint stock company and its production of bicycles gradually became the largest in Czechoslovakia.
On 30 December 1929, at a time when the company was prospering exceedingly, Heinrich Kastrup died after myocardial pneumonia. He had three daughters, of whom only Annelies Marie came from his second marriage to Anna Emilie, born Steinhauserová. The widow of a successful Cheb entrepreneur decided to build a villa for her then minor daughter Annelies. The villa was built on a large plot next to the Jewish Synagogue in Gschier-Strasse (now Hradební Street).
The splendid villa, designed by Sokolov architect Heinrich Scherrer, included a gymnasium, music room, a winter garden and a wine cellar. It was completed in 1938. The construction still smelled brand new, when the synagogue next to it started to burn during the night of 10th November of that year. Luckily the villa was saved, but after the war it was nationalized and in 1949 it was given to the Czech Arms Factory, NC Strakonice. The family of Heinrich Kastrup followed the same fate as most of the Cheb Germans.
From the book Famous Villas of the Karlovy Vary Region rewrote E. Bastlová
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