Bergmann-Borsig
Bergmann-Borsig was the name of the largest manufacturer of power plant components in the GDR . The company emerged from Bergmann Electricitäts-Werke Aktien-Gesellschaft, founded by Sigmund Bergmann in 1891 .
Bergmann electricity works
Sigmund Bergmann founded Sigmund Bergmann & Co. OHG in Berlin-Moabit in 1891 , where he initially sold articles for electrical lighting, telephone systems, and the like in New York. a. manufactured. As early as 1893, the company was converted into a joint stock company, Bergmann Electricitäts-Werke Aktien-Gesellschaft . After some of Bergmann's patents expired in the late 1890s, he expanded his production range to include dynamos, electric motors and electrical control devices.
When Sigmund Bergmann decided in 1906 to acquire an inexpensive 76,000 m² site in the vicinity of Wilhelmsruh , he was following a development that had been evident in Berlin's industry for some time. The main factory of Bergmann Elektrizitätswerke AG on Seestrasse in Berlin-Wedding had become too small and spatial expansion was no longer possible. So there was only the marginal hike as a way out. This is what Borsig , Siemens & Halske or Siemens-Schuckert and AEG had already done. In 1907, the first development took place on the site west of Wilhelmsruh, which has been newly created since 1893. The location offered ideal conditions. The proximity to the tracks and the stations of the Berlin Northern Railway and the Heidekrautbahn (today: Bahnhof Berlin-Wilhelmsruh ) guaranteed the handling of goods and passenger traffic. The tram connection from Reinickendorf to Wilhelmsruh, established in the 1920s, did one more thing to get employees to their workplaces quickly. In the 1890s, companies had already settled in the area around Reinickendorfer Flottenstrasse, which made the area interesting for further industrial settlements.
In 1908 production could begin in the new metal works. It began with the manufacture of systems for the construction and equipment of electric trams and overland railways as well as electric locomotives . In 1909 the cable factory was opened and the manufacture of steam turbines was relocated to Wilhelmsruh. At the same time, the manufacture of vehicles with gasoline engines began. In 1910 there were already 18 sub-operations on the factory premises. From 1911 the company also produced electric trucks . 1912 Sigmund Bergmann of the Technical University of Darmstadt , the honorary doctorate (Dr.-Ing. E. h.) Awarded praised "far-sighted engineers and successful organizer" in the grounds as and. From 1913 Bergmann AG increased its involvement in automobile production. The subsidiary Bergmann-Metallurgique built both cars and trucks under Belgian license.
With the outbreak of the First World War , large parts of the Bergmann works were converted to armaments production. After that, electric automobiles ( Protos type ) were also manufactured. The order situation was positive until the end of the 1920s. Sigmund Bergmann died in 1927 at the age of 76. In the course of the global economic crisis of 1929, the operations on Weddinger Seestrasse had to be sold to Osram , and in 1932 it was decided to stop locomotive production.
From 1932 production concentrated on the metal works, the cable works, the insulating tube, steel, machine and car factory in Wilhelmsruh. In 1933 only 900 people were employed at Bergmann. In 1933/1934, parts of the plant were gradually converted for armaments production. The administration building in Kurzen Strasse, which still exists today, was handed over to its intended use in 1937. Beginning in 1940, foreign forced laborers were employed in the Bergmann works. Due to the increasingly targeted bombing raids in 1943/1944, the company relocated part of its armaments production to Ratibor in Upper Silesia. On April 23, 1945, the Red Army occupied the Wilhelmsruher plant, 75 percent of which had been destroyed at the end of the Second World War .
After the Second World War, the plant, now in the Soviet sector of Berlin, was confiscated by the Soviet military administration and administered by the German Treuhandstelle in the Soviet occupation sector . Volunteers began to rebuild the plant to ensure a quick new start. Instead of armaments, all kinds of everyday items were made. This includes saucepans, plows, handcarts or stovetops.
VEB Bergmann-Borsig
In 1949 the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) decided that what was once a public limited company became a state-owned company . The company was now called VEB Bergmann-Borsig . The name Borsig was integrated into the company name because many workers from the former Borsig works in Berlin-Tegel helped with the reconstruction. The number of employees soared to 1900 by the end of 1949. These were now mainly used in the production of energy systems, large turbines and power plant generators . During this time, the "central office" of VVB Energie- und Kraftmaschinenbau (EKM) , located at Bergmann-Borsig, also designed and constructed turbines with a lower output for Görlitz mechanical engineering (today: the Görlitz location of Siemens Power Generation ) and the Elbe plant in Roßlau . In addition, repairs were initially carried out on ship turbines and large ship gears, as well as on motors, switches and other electrical devices. In 1953 the steam boiler manufacturer VEB Dampferzeugerbau Berlin with 3000 employees was spun off from Bergmann-Borsig. In June 1953, Bergmann-Borsig sparked a general strike and a popular uprising on 16-17. June off.
From 1949 to 1990, a total of more than 300 turbo sets in the power range from 25 to 110 MW were produced, primarily for the power plants in the GDR, but also some for export, for example to India , Finland , Cuba and China . In 1965, the first water-cooled stators developed by Bergmann-Borsig, each with an output of 50 MW, were installed in the Lippendorf power plant. In addition, from 1967 a total of 32 Soviet -made turbo sets in the 200 to 500 MW output range were installed and commissioned by Bergmann-Borsig in the GDR. In 1989 VEB Bergmann-Borsig had a total of 4,300 employees, around 3,500 of them at the Wilhelmsruh plant.
As had been requested by the East German government that the capital goods manufacturing companies and consumer goods should produce for better care of the population, began in 1960 years hence, dry shaver under the name bebo sher produce (for Bergmann-Borsig razors). The VEB Bergmann-Borsig was almost a monopoly on the GDR market, but also supplied West German mail order companies .
VEB Bergmann-Borsig was an important training company with its own company vocational school .
In the course of the social upheaval in the early autumn of 1989, the union officials of the individual departments wrote an open letter to the then chairman of the FDGB , Harry Tisch , in which various grievances both in the company and in society were pointed out. At this point in time, such a letter from a large socialist company was still a novelty, especially since it was also distributed through Western mass media.
Location on the Berlin Wall
With the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Bergmann-Borsig site became a border area that could only be entered with special authorization. In total, in 2008 meters of the company border on the north and south-west side of the area were the wall.
The border strip was particularly narrow in the area between the embankment of the Northern Railway and the plant. There was only enough space for the Grenzweg, so all openings in the factory buildings were walled up and secured accordingly. A curiosity on the edge: In the Bergmann-Borsig site, but belonging to the west, there was a piece of land (Tamerlan dog school) that was accessible from the west through a bridge in the railway embankment, while the wall enclosed this directly from the east.
In memory of the special location, three parts of the wall have been erected as a memorial at the main entrance to the site in Lessingstrasse.
The culture house
On the site of the Bergmann-Borsig plant there was also the building of the plant's own culture house, which with its culture hall was almost the size of a small theater. In keeping with the importance of the work in the GDR, this house of culture was also the location of important political and cultural events, for example:
- 2nd All Berlin Metalworkers Conference of the FDGB 1954
- Regular youth consecration celebrations since 1955
- Numerous festive events with cultural ensembles, choir and dance group performances, as well as amateur theater performances
- Cultural conference of the Central Committee of the SED, the Ministry of Culture and the German Cultural Association 1960
- Miss Germany and Miss Berlin / GDR election 1990 with 500 visitors.
Development after the fall of the Wall
After the change in the GDR , the company was converted into a GmbH with effect from July 1, 1990 and was owned by the Treuhand . On March 20, 1991, the large company ABB bought the company, which initially operated as ABB Bergmann-Borsig GmbH and from January 1, 1993 as ABB Kraftwerke Berlin GmbH . By then, the number of employees had dropped to around 1,300 due to layoffs and outsourcing. When Alstom took over the power plant activities from ABB , the company was changed to Alstom Power Service GmbH , which still has around 320 employees at its location in Wilhelmsruh.
The production and repair of power plants are concentrated on the core area of the former Bergmann site. At the same time, ABB is trying to develop the rest of the site into an industrial park called PankowPark . In the mostly listed buildings, an attempt is made to combine historical urban structures with economic use. Today more than 80 companies are located here, as well as artist studios , small businesses and cultural institutions and training companies such as BaFu Nord GmbH . The total number of employees is 1,800. The most important company is a factory for the production of rail vehicles, which was built by Adtranz in 1995 and which today belongs to the Swiss rail vehicle manufacturer Stadler Rail . Other larger companies on the site, which also built new factory buildings after 2000, are KST Kraftwerks- und Spezialteile GmbH , which emerged in the 1990s as a spin-off from ABB Kraftwerke Berlin GmbH, and Black Box Music Event Technology GmbH .
Sports
From the former company sports groups, in addition to the football club SG Bergmann-Borsig , which went bankrupt in 1994 , sports clubs that are still active today emerged. The largest sections of it are tennis and archery .
Others
- The AWG Bergmann-Borsig was a workers' housing cooperative founded in 1956, a housing association for the members of the company in Wilhelmsruh.
- A new road connection to the plant from the north was built in 2006. It was named after Heinz Brandt, who was persecuted by National Socialism and the SED regime .
- Bergmann Borsig, formerly VEB. Direction: Lothar Schuster , Barbara Kasper. Documentary. Germany 1992. Color 16 mm, 94 minutes.
literature
- Bernt Roder, Bettina Tacke, Museum Association Pankow (ed.): Energy from Wilhelmsruh. text.verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-938414-30-9 .
- Hans-Otto Neubauer: Cars from Berlin - PROTOS and NAG. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-17-008130-6 .
Web links
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
- Extract from the inventory overview of the Berlin State Archives on VEB Bergmann-Borsig
Individual evidence
- ↑ Personal memory
- ^ Berlin Wall - Section 05: The Bergmann-Borsig site. (No longer available online.) Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment, archived from the original on February 24, 2016 ; Retrieved April 22, 2012 . 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.
Coordinates: 52 ° 35 ′ 19 ″ N , 13 ° 21 ′ 19 ″ E