4P Rube Göttingen
| 4P Rube Göttingen GmbH | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Company with limited liability |
| founding | 1873 |
| resolution | 2007 |
| Reason for dissolution | closure |
| Seat |
Goettingen , Germany
|
| Number of employees | about 500 |
| Branch | Food packaging |
The company 4P Rube Göttingen GmbH (formerly Rube & Co.) was part of the industrialization and industrial development in the city of Göttingen and its suburb of Weende and illustrates the development of food packaging from parchment paper to modern plastic packaging. The street name Reinhard-Rube-Straße in the Lutteranger industrial area in Göttingen goes back to the company's founder. The company premises cleared in 2007 are an example of the use of former industrial areas in modern urban space.
history
The Göttingen company Rube was founded in 1870 on the site of the Weender Klostermühle. The monastery mill (lower mill) was built outside the ring walls of the Weender monastery on the Weendebach and was first mentioned in a document in 1428. From the 16th to the 18th century the monastery leased it to Müller for grinding grain and extracting oil.
On May 1, 1850, the monastery chamber sold the monastery mill to Heinrich Christoph Eberwein (Göttingen cloth factory Eberwein founded in 1882), along with other buildings. The cloth factory was on the site of the former Scharff mill near the monastery mill and was the first Weender factory. In 1866 the monastery mill then became the property of the manufacturer Richard Esau.
In 1870 the Dortmund engineer Reinhard Rube bought the monastery mill and operated a laundry on the acquired site until 1873. In 1873, when the laundry was converted into a factory for the production of parchment paper, the parchment factory Rube & Co. was established. The company employed 11 workers. From the middle of the 19th century, parchment paper was used in food packaging for chocolate, cheese, etc. because it was impermeable to grease and waterproof. The location of the monastery mill was ideal for generating energy and water on the Weendebach. The delivery of the finished goods, as well as the delivery of the manufacturing raw materials (mainly chemicals and paper), took place by horse and cart from the Göttingen train station. Later the Rube company had a direct rail connection to freight traffic.
In 1900 the son Reinhard Rubes, Reinhard Rube Junior, took over the company. He expanded the company, which in 1900 still employed 11 workers, to 180 by 1922. The production and operating facilities were constantly expanded. Production increased from approx. 20,000 kg of parchment paper to over 900,000 kg. Two artificial lake basins were created on the Weendebach that served to clarify the water. The water quality in the Weendebach left a lot to be desired, as early as the 19th century when the cloth factory was already grappling with the municipality of Weende about water rights and water quality. In 1923, Rube Junior converted the company into a stock corporation.
The factory owner's villa was built in a park next to the factory, highlighting the great contrast between the wealth of the factory owner and the social situation of the workers in the Göttingen industrial areas Weende and Grone. In 1905, workers in the parchment factory worked 10 hours and 40 minutes a day, 6 days a week, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. In some cases, shift work was carried out around the clock. The rents in Weende were high at an average of 90 marks a year. The social situation of the workers contributed to the emergence of the workers' movement. However, it was not until 1912 that a local social democratic group was founded in Weende.
During the National Socialist dictatorship, the Dutch Unilever group bought the Göttingen company in 1936 . The Rube company is also associated with forced labor during the Second World War : a prominent example is the Polish cartoonist Stanisław Toegel (1905–1953), who was deported to Göttingen after the suppression of the uprising in Warsaw , where he performed forced labor in the paper mill.
In 1973 Unilever renamed the Göttingen company to 4P Rube Göttingen GmbH. The packaging company thus belonged to the so-called “4P Packaging Group”, which Unilever had been expanding from an internal service provider to a profit-oriented business operating on the market since 1965. In the meantime, Rube was active in the production of modern plastic packaging for food (margarine containers, yoghurt containers, etc.). The 4P Group initially comprised four production sites in Germany and a company in France for the manufacture of paper cups, folding cartons and plastic films, including today's Huhtamaki Ronsberg, which had also been producing parchment paper since 1886 and was taken over by Unilever in 1937. She still belongs to the Huhtamaki group today.
On January 1, 1992 Unilever sold the 4P packaging group to Royal Packaging Industries Van Leer BV In 1999, Van Leer BV merged with the Finnish Huthamaki to form Huhtamaki Van Leer, the eighth largest packaging manufacturer in the world with an annual turnover of more than 2.8 billion euros. From then on, the Göttingen 4P Rube belonged to Huhtamaki Van Leer.
In the 1999 annual report, Huhtamaki Van Leer already mentioned falling sales volumes and strong price pressure in the plastic margarine and yoghurt pots, especially in Germany and Poland. In 2005 Huthamaki announced the closure of the Göttingen site, which now has over 500 employees. The closed industrial use of the former monastery grounds in Weende ended in 2007 after 134 years.
In 2007, the city of Göttingen decided to use the area known as “Huhtamaki site”, which covers around 11 hectares, for commercial use in its western part, residential development in its eastern part and mixed use in the southern part. A city quarter is planned that will also include parts of the former industry (for example the extinguishing ponds). Today, the site is used by various logistics companies (including Spedition Zufall ) and service providers. Historic industrial buildings from 130 years of industrial history have been preserved.
Web links
- Early documents and newspaper articles on the 4P Rube Göttingen in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Uta Schäfer-Richter: Industrialization and social change in the region. An example: the suburb of Weende near Göttingen in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hanover 2001. Dissertation approved by the Joint Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Hanover to obtain a Doctor of Philosophy (Dr.phil.).
- ↑ a b c Ernst Böhme, Michael Scholz, Jens Wehner: Village and monastery Weende from the beginnings to the 19th century. Göttingen 1992. pp. 436-438.
- ↑ a b international website Unilever - Our History ( memento of March 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on April 8, 2015.
- ^ Website of the German Poland Institute , accessed on April 8, 2015.
- ↑ Website Huhtamaki - Who we are ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 8, 2015.
- ↑ Unilever Germany website - Our story , accessed on April 8, 2015.
- ^ Funding Universe Royal Packaging Industries Van Leer History , accessed April 8, 2015.
- ↑ Annual Report / Annual Report of Huhtamaki Van Leer 1999 ( Memento of the original from August 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 8, 2015.
- ^ Council information system of the city of Göttingen, local council Weende-Deppoldshausen, October 4, 2011 , accessed on April 8, 2015.
- ↑ Wayback: Picture gallery of the former Huhtamaki site in Göttingen-Weende , accessed on April 8, 2015.
