Translations:Johannes Eckart (Da VII 10)/4/en

Apprenticeship and Army Service in Nuremberg and Munich

After successfully completing trade school, Johannes undertook a commercial apprenticeship in Greiz, Thuringia, in 1857/58. He subsequently returned home and served in the Bavarian army between 1859 and 1865. However, the armed forces did not impose strict rules in times of peace, so Johannes was on leave for a total of 762 days during these years. This adds up to more than two years. At first, he was stationed in Nuremberg, then in Munich from 1863. Johannes had relatives in Munich; his uncle Philipp Wich ran a draper’s store at the address Residenzstrasse 5. Besides serving in the army, Johannes held a position as bookkeeper in Josef Beck’s factory that produced tar paper in Sendling, then a village near Munich (today a municipal district). Even after his army service, Johannes stayed in Munich and started to set up his own business as a sales agent. At first, he worked on the disinfection of privy pits, i.e., toilet pits, with his brother Friedrich. No one less than Professor Max von Pettenkofer, the famous promoter of hygiene measures, wrote a report about the activities of the Eckart brothers on September 15, 1867. This report states among other things: "The principle of their disinfection procedure is to acidify the contents of the toilet pits and to keep them acidic. This is mainly achieved by using solutions of iron and manganese metallic salts with an acidic reaction in combination with a bit of carbolic acid. … I have seen for myself in several houses that the aforementioned gentlemen carried out the procedure in a correct and thorough way and am thus able to highly recommend their disinfection company to everybody." It was also during that time that Johannes conceived a procedure for protecting metals against rust and another for protecting walls against humidity and efflorescence. He also occupied himself with the usability of carbon black.