Drugs factory in Dresden

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VEB Arzneimittelwerk Dresden
legal form VEB , most recently GmbH
founding 1835
Seat Dresden , GermanyGermanyGermany 
Number of employees
  • about 3000 (1961)
  • around 3600 (late 1980s)
  • about 650 (2001)

The VEB pharmaceutical plant in Dresden was a pharmaceutical company of the GDR . It was split into several successor companies, of which Menarini von Heyden's pharmaceutical production still exists at the Dresden site, the Arevipharma synthesis site at the Radebeul site and several smaller research companies also in Radebeul. The pharmaceutical trade, which had long existed as AWD.pharma , was closed in Radebeul and parts of it were relocated to Ulm.

history

Predecessor companies

In 1835 Franz Ludwig Gehe founded the drugstore and dye store Gehe & Co. in Dresden . In 1865/1866 the company moved into the new location on Leipziger Strasse . After the Second World War, the headquarters in Dresden and most of the branches were expropriated. While the Go & Co. AG in West Germany took a fresh start in 1947 the Go-headquarters in Dresden under the name was medicinal chemistry as a state-owned enterprise continued.

In 1919 the doctor founded Gerhard Madaus with his two brothers peace mouth and Hans in Bonn , the pharmaceutical company Madaus . After the First World War, the company relocated its headquarters several times, most recently in 1929 to Radebeul near Dresden on Gartenstrasse, where they built a modern factory around 1938 . After the Second World War, the company in Radebeul was expropriated and dismantled, while the two surviving founding brothers Friedemund and Hans founded the company in Bonn.

Expropriations and mergers

In the antibiotics department in the Dresden pharmaceuticals plant (1960)

The biologist Robert Thren , who had researched medicinal plants and microbiological problems for the Biological Institute of Madaus from 1938 and carried out experiments on the production of penicillin during the Second World War , built up the East German penicillin production after the Second World War. From 1948 he headed natural product research at the Biological Institute of the VEB Pharmazeutische Werke Madaus .

On April 1, 1951, the nationalized parent company of the Dr. Madaus & Co merged with the expropriated Dresden parent company of Gehe & Co. ( VEB Heilchemie ) to form VEB Arzneimittelwerk Dresden (AWD).

The chemical factory founded in 1874 by the chemist Friedrich von Heyden v. Heyden, with its headquarters in Radebeul on Meißner Strasse, was confiscated and dismantled in 1945. After production started up again in Radebeul in 1946, the company was expropriated in 1948 and converted into a state-owned company. Since the shareholders had relocated the company headquarters to Munich , the name had to be renamed VEB Chemische Werke Radebeul in 1958 for legal reasons .

On January 1, 1961, the Radebeul chemical works were integrated into the Dresden pharmaceuticals factory , creating one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in the GDR with around 3,000 employees. In 1970 the company that was created was raised to the status of a combine . In 1979 it became the parent company of the newly founded Pharmaceutical Combine VEB Pharmaceutical Combine GERMED , to which almost all pharmaceutical manufacturers in the GDR belonged. The Drugs Factory in Dresden was the center of drug research in the GDR within the combine; at the end of the 1980s, it had 13 parts of the company with around 3,600 employees. By 1989, 27 original developments had been brought onto the market. Research and production focussed on the synthesis of psychotropic drugs, biochemicals as well as cardiovascular and cardiovascular drugs.

The drugs gonabion (an animal drug used to treat hormonal disorders such as bull addiction), oxytocin (a labor trigger in clinical obstetrics), lysine vasopressin (an animal drug to regulate blood pressure) and somatropin were misused for state-prescribed doping in competitive sports in the GDR (natural growth hormone to treat short stature). There are no indications for attempts by the AWD on the athletes themselves in the documents evaluated by the investigation committee.

Privatization, closings and sales

On June 1, 1990, the Dresden pharmaceuticals plant was converted from the Kombinatsverbund into AWD GmbH and in 1991 sold to ASTA Medica , a subsidiary of Degussa . ASTA Medica moved the company headquarters to Dresden in 1992. In the same year AWD bought Germed-Handelsgesellschaft mbH and in 1996 merged the Eastern European sales of AWD, GERMED and ASTA Medica into the Eastern European sales of ASTA Medica International . In the years that followed, the Radebeul synthesis site (Meißner Strasse, formerly von Heyden) was retained, and AWD became the research and production site of ASTA Medica in Germany. At the same time, 10 of the 13 parts of the company were shut down, including the former Madaus plant in Radebeuler Gartenstrasse, and the number of employees fell to around 900 by the end of the 1990s.

With the merger of Degussa-Hüls AG in 1999 and its concentration on specialty chemicals, ASTA Medica and AWD were to be separated.

In January 2000, the active ingredient synthesis of the AWD in Radebeul was sold directly to Degussa-Hüls and in 2004 it was taken over by Hexal as an independent subsidiary HEXAL Syntech GmbH. After Hexal was sold to Novartis , the Radebeul synthesis site, Hexal Syntech, remained independent and has been operating as Arevipharma GmbH since September 2007 .

The rest of the AWD GmbH on Leipziger Strasse in Dresden (formerly Gehe) was renamed AWD.pharma GmbH & Co. KG in 2001 and was taken over by the Croatian pharmaceutical company Pliva in the same year with around 650 employees . Pliva, in turn, joined Barr Pharmaceuticals in 2006 as an equal partner to form the world's third largest manufacturer of generics . In 2006, the drug production of AWD.pharma was sold to the Italian Menarini Group, which uses the historical name Menarini von Heyden again for its Dresden plant .

As a result, AWD.pharma moved to its new headquarters in Wasapark in Radebeul in 2007 to establish itself as a pharmaceutical retailer with products from Menarini and Barr-Pliva. The US company Barr was in turn taken over in January 2009 by the largest generics manufacturer in the world, the Israeli Teva Pharmaceutical Industries . Thus the AWD.pharma in Radebeul near Dresden also changed hands. It now belongs to Teva Germany. In 2010, Teva informed the AWD.pharma employees that they wanted to close the Radebeul site and relocate some of the workplaces to the headquarters of ratiopharm, which also belongs to Teva Germany, in Ulm .

Parts of the research in Radebeul (former Biological Institute of Madaus) were transferred to the independent research companies elbion AG and Viatris GmbH (since 2006 as MEDA Pharma part of the Swedish pharmaceutical company MEDA). Elbion, in turn, went to the Finnish company Biotie Therapies in 2008 .

literature

  • Frank Andert (Red.): Radebeul City Lexicon . Historical manual for the Loessnitz . Published by the Radebeul City Archives. 2nd, slightly changed edition. City archive, Radebeul 2006, ISBN 3-938460-05-9 .
  • Andreas Schuhmann, Bernhard Sorms: History of the drug factory Dresden . Ed .: AWD.pharma GmbH & Co. KG. Dresden 2002.

Web links

Commons : VEB Arzneimittelwerk Dresden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Drugs factory in Dresden. In: Frank Andert (Red.): Stadtlexikon Radebeul . Historical manual for the Loessnitz . Published by the Radebeul City Archives. 2nd, slightly changed edition. City archive, Radebeul 2006, ISBN 3-938460-05-9 , p. 9-10 .
  2. a b State doping: the VEB Jenapharm in the sports system of the GDR.
  3. First keep it small, then stretch. In: sueddeutsche.de. August 24, 2015, accessed May 11, 2018 .
  4. Menarini von Heyden
  5. Closure of AWD-Pharma in Radebeul safe
  6. Elbion Pharma Research goes to Biotie. ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2013 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / news.wer-zu-wem.de