Austrian Saurerwerke

Saurer flatbed truck with trailer, type S4C, Saurerwerke Austria, built in 1953 by Friedrich Müller Greiz

Saurer-Steyr infantry fighting vehicle in the medical version

Sour truck

Saurer bus Salzburg side view

The Austrian Saurer Werke AG , also known as Acid-Werke or sour Vienna or Saurer Austria , was an Austrian truck manufacturer in Vienna - Simmering , the 1906-1969 trucks and buses produced.

history

In 1906 the company acquired by the Swiss Saurer in Arbon the license for truck production, the Swiss parent company until 1937 the main shareholder remained. It sold all of its shares that year. Shortly before Austria was annexed to the German Reich , an artillery tug was constructed for the armed forces, the Saurer RR-7 .

During the Second World War , the Saurerwerke operated a branch of the Mauthausen concentration camp on their premises in Vienna-Simmering . Factories were set up and forced laborers were used in the Neugebude Castle . From the end of 1941, the SS converted Saurer trucks and used them as gas vans to murder Jews.

After the Second World War, the range focused on large trucks with their own diesel engines . After 1955, when the new federal army was established, the Saurer armored personnel carrier was developed and built in large numbers. But buses , which were mainly used for the bus service of the Federal Railroad and the Post , were also produced.

In 1954, a contract was signed with Auto Union for the assembly and sale of DKW vehicles.

In 1959, Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG acquired the majority of the shares. Production in Vienna was stopped in 1969.

See also

• List of commercial vehicle manufacturers

literature

• Stefan Keller : The time of the factories. Of workers and a red city . Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2001
• Johann Kopacs: The Austrian Saurerwerke Volume 1, company history 1996 - 2006

Web links

Commons : Saurer Austria vehicles  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Early documents and newspaper articles on Österreichische Saurerwerke in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Saurer bus of the Austrian Post in Vienna

Individual evidence

1. ^ Herbert Exenberger: April 2, 1945 - evacuation of the Saurer-Werke sub-camp . In: Simmeringer Museumsblätter, issue 73/74, Vienna April 2005
2. ^ Mathias Beer : The development of gas vans during the murder of the Jews . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , volume 3/1987, Munich 1987 ( PDF )
3. ^ "The German automobile industry"> Hans Christoph von Seherr-Thoss : The German automobile industry. Documentation from 1886 until today . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-421-02284-4 , p. 412 .