![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crestwoodpublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Klauer-front-cover-232x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Update: <\/strong> KLAUER MANUFACTURING: A Family Enterprise’s First 150 Years<\/strong> is now available at the Dubuque Museum of Art <\/a>for a donation to the museum. The museum, Sixth and Locust streets, is open 10 am-4 pm Wednesday through Saturday.<\/em><\/p>\n In 1854, when the Johann and Anna Maria Klauer family left Germany and settled in Iowa, their son Peter was but 11 years old and had \u201cnot a second dime in his immigrant clothes.\u201d In Dubuque, he received little formal education, but the boy was industrious, learning English as well as the copper and tin trades.<\/p>\n In 1870, when he was in his 28th year, Peter Klauer opened his own hardware store and tin shop on Iowa Street in Dubuque. Such was the beginning of today\u2019s Klauer Manufacturing Company, one of the few U.S. businesses to have existed for 150 years and \u2013 rarer still \u2013 operated under family leadership every minute of its history, now in the fifth generation. The company specializes in sheet metal goods but has offered many other and varied products throughout its first century and a half.<\/p>\n A Dubuque newspaper described Peter as a businessman who \u201cknew no limits to the A rope is stronger than the sum of its individual strands, and Klauer Manufacturing: A Family Enterprise\u2019s First 150 Years <\/em>makes no attempt to unravel the corporate history from the family biography. One cannot fully consider the company without the family, and one cannot know and appreciate the family without understanding their business. They are intertwined, inseparable. Their story is flavored with a dash of business intrigue, noteworthy arts patronage, and outstanding philanthropy.<\/p>\n This book is a celebration of Klauer Manufacturing\u2019s many successes over its first 150 years, but it ignores neither the lean times of the past nor its major challenges of today and the future. Today\u2019s leaders of Klauer Manufacturing might not fall asleep at their desks \u2013 at least not often! \u2013 but readers of Klauer Manufacturing: A Family Enterprise\u2019s First 150 Years <\/em>will see why Peter Klauer would be proud of what his descendants, complemented by an incredibly dedicated workforce, have been able to make of his enterprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Update: KLAUER MANUFACTURING: A Family Enterprise’s First 150 Years is now available at the Dubuque Museum of Art for a donation to the museum. The museum, Sixth and Locust streets, is open 10 am-4 pm Wednesday through Saturday. In 1854, … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crestwoodpublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Klauer-Peter-mug-color-210x300.jpg\")
day\u2019s work,\u201d noting that he \u201ctoiled until he fell asleep upon his work bench and then made the bench his couch.\u201d However, Peter was not content to simply succeed as a retailer and tinsmith. He became prominent in other local enterprises, including banking, and, with his oldest son William H. as an equal partner, he rapidly and boldly expanded their Dubuque-based business into Klauer Manufacturing, serving customers across the United States and in several other nations. Following William H., presidents of the company have been the founder\u2019s two grandsons, great-grandson, and great-great-grandson \u2013 and no one else.<\/p>\n