General Transportation Equipment Company
| Allgemeine Transportanlagen-Gesellschaft mbH (ATG) ATG Maschinenbau GmbH Leipzig |
|
|---|---|
| legal form | Company with limited liability |
| resolution | October 1945 |
| Reason for dissolution | Expropriation by the state administration of Saxony |
| Seat | Leipzig , Germany |
| Number of employees |
|
| Branch | Conveyor systems , defense industry , aircraft manufacturers |
The General transportation equipment-Gesellschaft mbH , abbreviated ATG in Leipzig was a manufacturer of conveyor systems and since 1933 a major operation of German air armament .
history
Company formation
The Kaisergrund was located south of the Lausner Weg and the Leipzig-Plagwitz-Pörsten railway line . The depression with a pond and a number of parcels of fields, consisting of alder and willow coppices, belonged to Großzschocher . Plant II of the Deutsche Flugzeug-Werke (DFW), founded in 1911 by Bernhard Meyer and Erich Thiele, was built in Kaisergrund and the adjacent area to the west . The DFW had set up a works airfield on the nearby Weidenweg. After the First World War and the prohibition of a German air force under the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty , the aircraft factories and airfield had to cease operations. The Allgemeine Fluggesellschaft Vorbereitungsgesellschaft mbH (AFG) became a new company on June 16, 1919 in Berlin through a new partnership agreement initiated by Meyer's son-in-law Kurt Herrmann . On August 1, 1919, the company's headquarters were relocated to Leipzig and the site of Plant II of the former Deutsche Flugzeugwerke was taken over. The name of the new company producing in competition with Adolf Bleichert & Co. has been Allgemeine Transportanlagen-Gesellschaft mbH since November 11, 1920 .
Within three years the company had grown to 1,900 employees, including 200 engineers. Like Bleichert, it produced electric suspension tracks, cable cars, cable cranes and later also elevators. The oldest cable car in Germany, the Fichtelberg suspension railway , built in 1924 , also comes from the ATG. The company built conveying equipment for the lignite - opencast mining , so in 1931 the first conveyor bridge at 76 meters Support distance and driving, lifting and lowerable Schaufelradträger. In the field of lignite mining systems, ATG developed into a superior competitor to the Lauchhammer plant of the Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke (Mittelstahl) owned by Friedrich Flick . The Flick Group had therefore already decided to take over at the end of the 1920s. Negotiations with Bernhard Meyer's heirs dragged on for several years, so that the ATG did not become the property of the Maximilianhütte ironworks company until May 20, 1933 , which had belonged to Flick since 1929. The takeover of ATG has long been considered an example of Flick's early knowledge of the National Socialist armaments plans. However, there is little to suggest that Flick relied on the prohibited establishment of a German air force even before Hitler came to power.
Entry into air armaments
After Hugo Junkers had transferred his company and patent rights to the German Reich under pressure, Flick's long-time employee Heinrich Koppenberg was appointed General Director of the Junkers Works in 1933. With reference to the historical roots of aircraft construction, negotiations were held in 1933 with the State Secretary in the Reich Aviation Ministry, Erhard Milch , as a result of which Flick promised the Reich Aviation Ministry in December 1933 to start re-profiling to aircraft construction. This made the ATG the first large company in Leipzig to be entrusted with major armaments contracts. After the conveyor system and elevator construction was sold in 1934, the company manufactured aircraft parts exclusively under license from Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke as a so-called “shadow factory”.
In 1934 the first production line for series production of the Junkers W 33 and W 34 was set up. The first major order was the Ju 52 / 3mg3e makeshift bomber . The Leipziger Werkzeug- und Gerätefabrik mbH (LWG) at Saarländer Straße 20 was founded in 1936 as a supplier for aircraft production . ATG quickly expanded into one of the largest companies in Leipzig. Even before the Ju-52 production ended in December 1937, production of the Ju 86D (since 1936) and the Heinkel He 111 B and E (since April 1938) began.
After the start of the war, the ATG became a pure air armaments company. The main program from October 1940 to 1943/44 was the series production of the Ju 88 bomber . The monthly production was up to 19 Ju 52 aircraft and 54 Ju 88 aircraft. The Ju-88 production was greatly reduced in favor of the further development Ju 188 in April 1943, which went into series production in the summer of 1943.
On January 1, 1944, the company was renamed ATG Maschinenbau GmbH Leipzig . The production of the high-altitude bomber Ju 388 had been in preparation since 1944, but only the hulls and cockpit were assembled until the Ju-388 production went to the Bernburg branch on July 19, 1944. The last order from ATG was the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet aircraft , for which individual assemblies were still being manufactured in 1945.
In 1935 the number of employees at ATG was 3900, in October 1938 it had already risen to 6356 and at the end of 1944 was 9500.
To the east of Schönauer Strasse between the Leipzig-Plagwitz-Pörsten and Leipzig-Probstzella railway lines , the Reich Aviation Ministry set up an aviation preschool in 1940 . It served the ATG to train skilled workers. The training of pilots and the flying in of the machines manufactured by ATG also took place there.
Production facilities
When arms production began, branch plants were set up in several districts of Leipzig. The following production facilities existed:
- Main plant at Schönauer Strasse 101
- Plant II Zschortauer Strasse 22 (since November 1934)
- Plant III Seehausener Strasse ( Leipzig-Mockau Airport , since May 1935)
- Plant IV Ludwig-Hupfeld-Straße 12/14
- Plant V Anton-Zickmantel-Strasse 50
- Plant VI Exhibition Grounds , Exhibition Hall 15 (after 1939)
- Plant VII Nonnenstrasse 17-21 (electrical and radio technology, after 1939)
Prison camp
The ATG employed a large number of prisoners of war and forced labor as well as prisoners from concentration camps for arms production . The armaments factory had the following camps to accommodate them:
- Wola 1 Schönauer Strasse 101
- Wola 2 "Am Sandberg", Zschortauer Straße 22
- Wola 3 "Zum Park", Pistorisstraße 2
- Wola 4 Rödelstrasse 18
- Wola 6 (Hotel "Elstertal"), Rödelstrasse 14
- Wola 9 (“Schwarzer Jäger” restaurant), Theodor-Fritsch-Straße 111
- Wola Giesserstrasse 16
- Wola 11 Lützner Strasse
- Wola Böhlitz-Ehrenberg, Ludwig-Hupfeld-Straße 13/15
- Wola "Germanus" (garden club house), Viertelsweg
- Community camp "Tiefland" (Michaelis & Co. Apparatebau building), Dübener Landstrasse 2
- Camp "Flugplatz Mockau", Dübener Landstrasse 100
- "Martin-Park" warehouse, Leipzig W 31
- "Rödelheim" camp (49th elementary school), Rödelstrasse 6
- "T.-u.-B.-Lager" (club house of the association for gymnastics and movement games), Diezmannstrasse
- "Gießerburg" warehouse, Gießerstraße 75
- "Am Salzberg" warehouse, Spinnereistraße 7
- Shared accommodation Theodor-Fritsch-Straße 103
- Camp 16 Dieskaustraße
There was also a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp , the "Schönau camp" in the middle of the then Lindenallee (today Parkallee), in which around 500 women were housed. At the request of the ATG, 500 Hungarian Jewish women were transported here from the Stutthof concentration camp in August 1944 .
After 1945
After the end of the war, the company's assets were confiscated and expropriated by the state administration of Saxony in October 1945 - before the referendum in Saxony in 1946 . The production facilities were dismantled and taken to the Soviet Union as reparations . Remaining structures were blown up.
From 1952 to 1953, the technical school for agricultural machinery (since 1960 engineering school for mechanical engineering ) was built on the western former ATG company premises at Schönauer Straße 113 a . The State Study Academy Leipzig of the vocational academy in Saxony has been located in the building since 1993 . To the south of it, the “Lerchenhain” allotment garden was laid out in 1946. After extensive debris clearing, VEB Technische Gase Leipzig was established between 1966 and 1969 , where mainly liquid oxygen for medical technology and industry as well as nitrogen for animal breeding were produced.
The college for pharmacy assistants was opened on November 26, 1951 at Schönauer Straße 162 on the site of the former pilot school . From 1952 to 1955, the later pharmaceutical engineering school was expanded to include a south wing, a central building and a sports hall. Today, Leipzig's vocational school center 9 for health and social affairs is located there, which was named Ruth Pfau School on December 10, 2010 . On both sides of the school, the area previously belonging to the Reich Aviation Ministry was parceled out and the Aufbau settlement was created (Dreiecksweg, Grauwackeweg).
The former ATG plant II in Eutritzsch became Plant II of VEB Verlade- und Transportanlagen Leipzig Paul Fröhlich in Zschortauer Straße 2 in 1949 .
literature
- Johannes Bähr, Axel Drecoll, Bernhard Gotto, Kim Christian Priemel, Harald Wixforth: The Flick Group in the Third Reich. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58683-1
- Kim Christian Priemel: Flick. A corporate history from the German Empire to the Federal Republic. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0219-8 , pp. 328–334
- Peter Kühne, Karsten Stölzel: Sachsenflug and fair charter. From the history of aviation in Leipzig and aircraft construction in Saxony. Connewitzer Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-928833-41-3 , pp. 45-49
- Wolfgang Grundmann: History about Grünau. A walk through the history of Leipzig's youngest district. Kulturbund der DDR, Gesellschaft für Heimatgeschichte Leipzig, Leipzig 1988, pp. 32–34
- Leipzig's residential construction in the post-war period. Scale 1:25 000. Plan 49 × 55 cm in multi-color print, Carl Starke, Leipzig around 1930, with the representation of the “Allg. Transp.-Anl.-GmbH, Masch.-Fabr. " Bottom left ( online at the Deutsche Fotothek)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Priemel: Flick. A corporate history from the German Empire to the Federal Republic. P. 328
- ↑ a b Address book of the Reichsmesse city Leipzig 1942. Verlag August Scherl Successor, Leipzig 1942
- ^ Kühne, Stölzel: Sachsenflug and fair charter. P. 47 f.
- ↑ Thomas Fickenwirth, Birgit Horn, Christian Kurzweg: Foreign and forced labor in the Leipzig area 1939–1945. Archival special inventory. (Ed. By the city of Leipzig, city archive), Leipzig calendar, special volume 2004/1, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-937209-92-1 , p. 279 f.
- ↑ Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z. Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 11
- ^ Website of the Staatliche Studienakademie Leipzig
- ^ Website of the Ruth Pfau School
Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 36.2 ″ N , 12 ° 18 ′ 27.9 ″ E