Bavarian shipbuilding company

Coordinates: 49 ° 47 '56 "  N , 9 ° 9' 40"  E

Bavarian shipbuilding company​

Germany

The Bayerische Schiffbaugesellschaft (BSG) was a shipbuilding company founded in Erlenbach am Main in 1918 . It emerged from a predecessor company that had been in Wörth across the street since 1652 . The once largest shipyard in Bavaria had to file for bankruptcy in 1997 and was then renamed "Erlenbacher Schiffswerft Maschinen- und Stahlbau GmbH".

history

Until 1918

Since 1652 members of the Schellenberger family worked as boat and ship builders in Wörth, where they made wooden Main ships, Schelchen , and smaller boats . The business flourished and in the years 1704 to 1707 lease payments for communal land in Erlenbach on the north bank of the Main were announced, where the Schellenbergers had expanded their boat building in those years. After that, the expansion of the War of the Spanish Succession to Main Franconia and Lower Franconia seems to have considerably reduced shipbuilding in Wörth and brought that in Erlenbach to a standstill. Wörther shipbuilding recovered over time, but with the opening of railway lines between Frankfurt and Würzburg (1854) and between Aschaffenburg and Miltenberg (1876), shipping on the Main declined considerably, and with it shipbuilding in Wörth. In 1916 only that of the shipbuilder Anton Schellenberger existed out of five companies.

In 1897 Schellenberger made the change from manual to industrial shipbuilding and laid his first iron ship on the keel , which was soon followed by boats, pontoons , ferries , bucket chain excavators , chain tugs and barges . The upswing of his shipyard was favored by the progressive canalization of the Main, as this allowed greater ship depths and thus opened up the possibility of building larger ships for operation on the Rhine and other inland waters. Complaints from neighbors to the lower state supervisory authority, the Kgl. District office in Obernburg , about the considerably increased noise when riveting iron ships, however, led to the fact that in 1905 Obernburg wanted to order a relocation of the shipyard, but this could be averted through the mediation of the city of Wörth. The ever larger dimensions of the iron ships soon made the shipyard too small. The previously 107 m long shipbuilding site was expanded to 119 meters in 1911 against the stubborn objections of some neighbors, so that the 56 m long new shipyard and the repair slipway for wooden ships lay next to each other. By 1914 150 newbuildings with a load capacity of up to 500 t had left the shipyard.

Shipbuilding yard in Erlenbach

Nevertheless, in 1917, due to a lack of space and complaints from neighbors, Anton Schellenberger was forced to relocate his business to the other bank of the Main in Erlenbach, where the community made sufficient space available for him. There was an opportunity to modernize and expand the shipyard. In the spring of 1918 Schellenberger converted his company into a company, the "Bayerische Schiffbaugesellschaft mbH, vorm. Anton Schellenberger "(BSG). The final approval to settle in Erlenbach was given in October 1918.

1918-1945

The shipyard began its work after the war with reparation deliveries for the German Reich . From 1922, barges and Rhine-Herne Canal ships were built. The number of employees rose from 60 in 1920 to 550 in 1925. A serious setback occurred with the occupation of the Ruhr area in autumn 1923, because it shut down all shipping on the Rhine, which meant that the BSG also had to repair Rhine ships. Since orders from the Reich did not arrive in time either, operations had to be temporarily shut down on December 7, 1923, with the exception of a small maintenance team. After that, the company, the largest shipbuilding company in Bavaria, started to develop again and in 1930 it employed 320 people again. By 1939, almost 550 new ships had been launched in Erlenbach.

During the Second World War , the BSG mainly built naval ferries and artillery carriers for the navy and landing craft for the army . The number of employees rose to 420 in 1941.

1945-1996

After the occupation of Erlenbach by American troops at Easter 1945, operations were only idle for about five weeks. Then he was resumed with the construction of 19 driving bridges, which temporarily replaced the blown Main bridges. Shipbuilding also began again very soon, and in the mid-1950s, BSG was at the forefront of all German inland shipping yards in terms of tonnage . In 1952/53 the shipyard built its first ocean-going ships - the first ocean-going ships built in Bavaria - two motor tankers with a load capacity of 1125 t each for the Atlantic service, which reached the North Sea via the Main and the Rhine. The largest built in Erlenbach ship, 88 meters long and with 2,750 tons capacity, ran 1959 by the stack . From 1960 there was also the construction of fast patrol boats for naval use at home and abroad, such as B. 1961/62 the 13 boats of the "Belatrix" class for the Portuguese Navy.

1996-present

Erlenbacher Schiffswerft Maschinen- und Stahlbau GmbH; formerly Bavarian Shipbuilding Company (June 2011)

Although the BSG with its workforce of more than 300 employees (1970) was still one of the leading inland shipyards in Germany, the company was no longer able to cope with international competition in the 1990s due to its remote location and the worsening crisis in the shipyard sector. One of the last ships launched by the BSG was the fishing inspection boat Steinbutt of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , which was put into service in 1995 . BSG was taken over in 1996 by the Austrian company DOMARIN. In 1997 bankruptcy was filed. The company was then renamed to "Erlenbacher Schiffswerft Maschinen- & Stahlbau GmbH" and became the family-internal operating company and became the private property of the DOMARIN owners, the Brunner family. The shipyard, with around 50,000 m² and a 102 m long and completely renovated slipway, can light ships up to 135 m in length. Today it is the only slipway system for ships of this size between Duisburg and Linz . The new buildings built since the restructuring include a rescue cruiser for Iran and deep-sea tugs for Cameroon .

Web links

Commons : Shipyard in Erlenbach am Main  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Erlenbacher Schiffswerft Maschinen- und Stahlbau GmbH
• Inventory F 045 - Bayerische Schiffbaugesellschaft mbH vorm. Anton Schellenberger, Erlenbach a. Main, at the Bavarian Economic Archives in Munich

literature

• Bayerische Schiffbaugesellschaft mbH Vorm. Anton Schellenberger (ed.): 300-year shipbuilding tradition of the Bayerische Schiffbaugesellschaft mbH. before Anton Schellenberger, Erlenbach, Main: 1668–1968. Erlenbach, 1968
• Ernst Wensien: The construction of sea and coastal ships at Bayerische Schiffbau GmbH BSG vorm. Anton Schellenberger Erlenbach a. Main. Association for the Promotion of the Shipping and Shipbuilding Museum Wörth am Main , Wörth am Main, 1985
• Heiko Loder: The Bayerische Schiffbaugesellschaft vorm. Anton Schellenberger. Master's thesis, University of Bamberg, 2004
• Peter Brendel: Aspects of the economic new beginning 1945 to 1948 in the district of Obernburg - An investigation of the occupation time in a rural region in the Bavarian Lower Main. In: Yearbook for Franconian State Research 61 (2001), pp. 279–322, here pp. 295ff.
• Gregor Schellenberger: The Bavarian Shipbuilding Society (BSG) in the 20th century. A medium-sized company through the ages. In: Mainschiffahrtsnachrichten , Mitteilungsblatt 12, 1992
• Werner Trost: The Schellenbergers started in Lohr. In: Spessart No. 2 (1988), pp. 3-25
• Ernst Wensien: The building of sea and coastal ships at the BSG. Mainschiffahrtsnachrichten 1985, issue 5