Henrich Friedrich Theodor Ernst Grillo (20 December 1825,

Essen Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...

– 16 April 1888, Düsseldorf-Grafenberg) was a prominent

industrialist A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

in the

Ruhr The Ruhr ( ; , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr Area, sometimes Ruhr District, Ruhr Region, or Ruhr Valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 1,160/km2 and a populati ...

area of Germany, particularly in

and

Gelsenkirchen Gelsenkirchen (, , ; ) is the List of cities in Germany by population, 25th-most populous city of Germany and the 11th-most populous in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 262,528 (2016) inhabitants. On the Emscher, Emscher River (a tribu ...

. Born the son of an Essen merchant, into a Protestant family of Italian origin (his ancestors came from

Valtellina Valtellina or the Valtelline (occasionally spelled as two words in English: Val Telline; (); or ; ; ) is a valley in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, bordering Switzerland. Today it is known for its ski centre, hot spring spas, bresa ...

, from which they fled due to religious persecutions), together with his brother, Wilhelm he took over his father's enterprise and expanded the range of trade, becoming an influential businessman. Grillo was a board member and founder of several mining companies, including the Schalker Eisenhütte (

ironworks An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ''ironworks'' is ''ironworks''. Ironworks succeeded bloome ...

) in 1872. Friedrich Grillo and, after his death, his widow Wilhelmine Grillo donated the property and two thirds of the construction costs of the Grillo-Theater which opened in Essen in 1892.

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Grillo, Friedrich 1825 births 1888 deaths Businesspeople from Essen German industrialists German mining businesspeople German company founders 19th-century German businesspeople German people of Italian descent