General Berliner Omnibus AG

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ABOAG bus depot (1908)
Official of the ABOAG (right), 1909
ABOAG double-decker bus on a Büssing chassis, built in 1927
Reconstructed ABOAG bus as a Zille-Express in Berlin

The General Berlin bus AG (ABOAG) was a 1868 in the legal form of a joint stock company established transport - companies and the largest operator of horse bus -lines in Berlin , in 1928 with other Berlin transport companies in Berlin traffic company (BVG) came up.

History of ABOAG

founding

Many of the smaller bus companies that existed in Berlin until 1868 had economic difficulties due to the fierce competition; in 1864, for example, there were already 36 bus companies. The company was founded on June 25th, 1868 with share capital of one million thalers , and on July 1st it started operating horse-drawn buses. The company already had 257 drawn omnibuses and 1089  horses from the start .

Own bus and coach construction and other brands

In 1897, at the suggestion of Frederic Simms (British Bosch representative), ABOAG manufactured its own buses by placing the bodies of horse-drawn buses on chassis that were equipped with an electric drive. A Büssing omnibus was tested on June 13, 1906 and, from July 3, 1907, a first “deck seat” omnibus with 19 lower and 20 upper seats. In total, the deck seat omnibus had space for 42 people, the entrance was at the rear, and on the platform there was an iron spiral staircase for the places on the roof.

The electric tram-omnibus presented in collaboration with Siemens & Halske in 1898 was an unsuccessful project . It was a mixture of electric tram and battery- powered bus , the two-way vehicle could move on and off the tram network in perambulator mode .

In 1913, the company's own omnibuses with gasoline engines were built according to plans by General Director Richard Kaufmann, most of which were made as deck seat cars. They were given the designation "RK" after the director's initials.

In 1924, ABOAG developed new buses with a closed upper deck together with the commercial vehicle manufacturers Büssing and NAG . These four-meter-high, double-decker omnibuses , which had also been tested with pneumatic tires , had a low-floor frame , the steering on the left and the entrance on the right. 350 of these buses came into operation in the near future. In 1927, Büssing developed new three-axle or six-wheel double-decker chassis that were fitted with double-decker superstructures that could carry up to 82 people. At that time they were the largest omnibuses in the world. 100 buses of this type of bus were immediately ordered in 1928, which now also had heating. That year, the company switched all buses to pneumatic tires. In 1929 Büssing started a maintenance and repair company with 50 employees in Berlin-Halensee . a. set up for the new BVG.

From 1928, two buses with a Maybach six-cylinder engine and front-wheel drive were built by BVG in collaboration with Richard Bussien (owner of Voran-Automobilbau in Berlin-Wilmersdorf).

Bus transport

On November 19, 1905, ABOAG had the first two motorized buses (“Kraftomnibuses”) run in Berlin.

In 1914, a total of 336 buses ran in Berlin. In 1926, a high-speed bus service was set up from den Linden to Grunewald and the Büssing bus had a white "E" on a red sign at the top in the front. In 1928 ABOAG already owned 580 buses and employed 4,340 people, of which 1,317 were drivers and 1,235 conductors . It operated 24 city bus routes with a route length of 253 kilometers, six suburban routes over 52 kilometers and one express route over 11 kilometers. The daily mileage was around 100,000 kilometers, around 600,000 people were transported annually. In 1928, the authorization for passengers to transfer from the S, U and trams to the bus lines was introduced.

Treptower depot and merger

In 1925 (possibly as early as 1924) ABOAG acquired the grounds of the Carl Beermann machine factory between Eichenstrasse, today's Puschkinallee, Flutgraben and Spree (opposite the Osthafen ) in today's Alt-Treptow . In May 1925 the main workshop for chassis moved from the Usedomer / Jasmunder Straße depot to the shed roof hall at the Treptower depot. This building was built for the machine factory according to plans by the architect Bruno Buch .

Beermann's foundry, which was no longer usable, made way for a new building. According to the designs by Franz Ahrens , the main bus workshop of ABOAG was built there in 1927 with an associated office wing. The highly rationalized operation required a hall in which the double-decker buses could be maneuvered quickly and easily in order to be able to carry out necessary repairs as quickly as possible. With a length of 100 meters and a span of 70 meters (7000 m²), it was the largest self-supporting hall in Berlin and one of the largest in Europe . Daylight still comes in through the skylights and the glazed front sides of the hall. On February 15, 1928, operations began in the hall; the last interior work dragged on until June. An extension was built according to plans by Alfred Warthmüller. Today the area is known as “ Arena Berlin ” and is a cultural and event site.

The two major competitors, the Society for Electric Elevated and Underground Railways in Berlin and the Great Berlin Tram , each acquired larger shares in ABOAG around 1913, so that the prerequisites for coordinating the various modes of transport were favorable. On December 10, 1928, these three companies went into the Berliner Verkehrs-AG (BVG) .

Other fields of activity

For unknown reasons, the ABOAG apparently expanded its entrepreneurial activities by 1910 at the latest, the definition of the corporate purpose was supplemented by the following sentence: "The company is also entitled to acquire and sell immovable property and rights, to store operations as well as to participate in commercial transactions and endeavors. " the of the former Victoria memory AG acquired, built in 1880, Victoria memory on Köpenicker Straße in Kreuzberg was 1910/1911 by a modern warehouse construction in reinforced concrete, designed by the architect several times working for the ABOAG Franz Ahrens expanded. Around six months after the merger to form BVG, BEHALA, founded in 1923, acquired the facility in July 1929 .

literature

  • Hans D. Reichardt: Berlin omnibuses. From the horse bus to the double decker. Alba, Düsseldorf 1975, ISBN 3-87094-308-4 . (2nd edition 1975, 3rd edition 1979)
  • Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (publisher): 50 years BVG. A look back at a piece of Berlin's traffic history. Berlin 1979.
  • Dieter Gammrath, Heinz Jung: Berlin omnibuses. 1st edition. Alba, Düsseldorf 1988, ISBN 3-87094-334-3 . / 2nd revised edition, Alba, Düsseldorf 1999, ISBN 3-87094-359-9 .
  • MAN Nutzfahrzeuge GmbH (Ed.): H. Büssing. Man, work, inheritance. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-525-13175-5 .
  • Wolfgang H. Gebhardt: History of the German truck construction. Weltbild-Verlag, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-811-2 .
  • Judith Uhlig: Treptow. (= History of the Berlin administrative districts , Volume 22.) Stapp-Verlag, Berlin 1995.
  • Support association for the local history museum Treptow e. V. (Ed.): Alt-Treptow in Berlin. Berlin 2004.
  • Frank Pieter Hesse: The Friedrichshain-Kreuzberger Spree. Urban space and monuments in transition. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Berlin 2004, stadtentwicklung.berlin.de (PDF; 1.6 MB)
  • Halwart Schrader: Oldtimer Commercial Vehicle Lexicon. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-613-02944-6 .

Web links

Commons : Allgemeine Berliner Omnibus AG  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Oldtimer-Nutzfahrzeug-Lexikon , p. 12
  2. ↑ luise-berlin.de
  3. ↑ a b History of German truck construction , p. 22
  4. ↑ a b H. Büssing. Mensch, Werk, Erbe , p. 263
  5. ↑ a b H. Büssing. Mensch, Werk, Erbe , p. 269
  6. ^ H. Büssing. Mensch, Werk, Erbe , p. 285 f.
  7. ^ H. Büssing. Mensch, Werk, Erbe , p. 286
  8. ↑ Handbook of German Stock Companies , 30th edition 1925, Volume 2, p. 3822 f.
  9. ↑ Property or plant as property of ABOAG can be proven in various Berlin address book volumes