Berlin-Lübeck machine factory

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Former factory building (status 2014)
Factory ruins, seen from the banks of the Trave (2014)

The Berlin-Lübecker Maschinenfabrik (BLM) was a German arms company.

history

The company was founded in 1934 by Bernhard Berghaus . The city of Lübeck, which had a strong interest in the settlement of industry, left the site north of the former state shipyard on the east bank of the Trave , plus the factory premises of the former wire pen factory Kühl & Co. with the characteristic water tower. According to Allied research after the war, a large part of the capital required came from a secret, non-repayable loan of around 1 million Reichsmarks from the Army Weapons Office . The site and money came from the city of Lübeck. In a short time on Glashüttenweg, which was renamed Curt-Helm-Straße in 1936 in memory of the recently deceased State Councilor Curt Christian Helm , extensive, spacious new plants were built for the machine factory and for the associated steel construction company Hannemann & Co., also Berghaus belonged to. Herbert Dullien , previously Lübeck's deputy authorized representative at the Reichsrat , became commercial director . Technical director and operations manager was initially Hans Oskar Sperling, and from 1943 Hugo Wedeking. The company received the National Socialist Model Company award .

The plans for the monumental factory buildings came from the architect Heinrich Bärsch (1899–1971) who specialized in industrial buildings and who also planned the Brandenburg Opel factory . The reinforced concrete buildings with clinker cladding and large windows are in the style of the New Building .

The BLM product range mainly comprised infantry rifles, which were manufactured from autumn 1935 on behalf of the Army Weapons Office , as well as handguns, ammunition up to 2 cm and precision mechanical war equipment . Together with the neighboring armaments company Leicht Konstruktionen Lübeck, a supplier to the North German Dornier-Werke , which had taken over the premises of the shipyard that had become insolvent in 1934 from Henry Koch , the Munitionsfabrik Maschinen für Massenverpackung (MfM) and the German arms and ammunition factories of the entrepreneur Günther Quandt im Lauerholz supplied the products of BLM with important components for arming the Wehrmacht .

In 1939 the company employed around 2,000 people. During the Second World War , the number rose to over 5000 at times. Among them were about 1,300 forced laborers .

Foreign and forced laborers

When the operational strength of the air raid was determined in August 1944 , the BLM had a total workforce of 3,809 people, including 1931 German men, 539 German women, 467 foreign women, 752 foreign men and (in violation of international law) 120 prisoners of war . The foreign workers came from the occupied territories of Western and Eastern Europe and were recruited under duress, especially in Eastern Europe. The BLM maintained its own community camp on Glashüttenweg. It consisted of two parts: one for western workers from France, Belgium and the Netherlands and one for eastern workers from Poland, Ukraine and Russia. There were 800 Russians and Poles and 400 Dutch, Belgians and French. Another list lists 10 residential barracks / BLM: 1196 foreign forced laborers; 595 “Eastern workers” (women and men), 154 Poles, 118 French, 218 Dutch, 57 Italians, 21 Latvians, 17 Ukrainians, 11 Belgians, 4 Czechs, 1 Spanish. On February 2, 1945, the BLM employed 1,388 forced laborers, 644 men and 744 women. 60 of the men were prisoners of war. The treatment of the forced laborers was very bad; The mistreatment was so serious that, according to Emil Bannemann , even functionaries of the German Labor Front felt compelled to object.

Air raid

On August 25, 1944 attacked around noon 81 B-24 bombers of the Eighth Air Force in the industrial area on the lower Trave. The production facilities of Dornier and BLM / Hannemann & Co. were severely damaged, as were residential barracks. At the BLM and Hannemann, 49 people were killed, 39 people seriously injured and 49 people slightly injured. Nevertheless, operations could continue; on August 27, 1944 there was only 20% production disruption . A total of 110 people died in the attack, including 39 slave laborers.

After the end of the war

With the occupation of Lübeck by the British Army on May 2, 1945, arms production ended.

In the summer of 1945 the company received approval from the British military government to manufacture electrical railway equipment and medical equipment for peace. In January 1946, however, the factory was closed and all property was confiscated. In the period that followed, all machine tools and all other equipment required for production were dismantled; It was not until April 1951 that the factory was able to resume production.

After the war, Hannemann & Co. manufactured containers for freight cars and were involved in the construction of the Herrenbrücke .

Products

Carbine 98

K 98

In the autumn of 1935, the BLM received its first major order from the Heereswaffenamt to manufacture the Karabiner 98k , the new standard rifle of the Wehrmacht , which was based on the Mauser Model 98 . In order to disguise the identity of the manufacturers, the rifles were marked with a code and not with company stamps. The 98k carbines produced by the BLM bore the code S / 237, 237 and later duv as well as mostly the Heereswaffenamts-Prüfstempel (WaA) 214.

Rifle 41

G 41

In December 1942, production was switched from the Karabiner 98k to the semi-automatic rifle 41 in order to counter the self-loading rifles of the Tokarev SWT-38 and Tokarew SWT-40 types used by the Soviet armed forces . BLM produced by Walther developed version and was the second largest production site of the K 43. The copies produced in Luebeck carry the manufacturer code duv and the Heereswaffenamt -Prüfstempel WaA214 . On the background of the experience with this model and its shortcomings, the Gewehr 43 was developed in the following year .

rifle 43

G 43

In 1944/1945 BLM manufactured the semi-automatic rifle 43 ; the manufacturer codes duv and qve were used.

Volkssturmgewehr

From the winter of 1944/45 the BLM participated in the manufacture of the VG1 Volkssturmgewehr . The letter code qve was affixed to the weapons as a manufacturer identification .

Scopes and equipment

From 1941 to 1944, all mounts for the Zf-41 telescopic sight , with which the sniper versions of the G 41 were equipped, were manufactured in Lübeck . In 1944/45 the BLM were one of two manufacturers of the mount for the ZF4 rifle scope.

The BLM supplied various weapon parts that can be identified using the manufacturer code duv . On a smaller scale, the company also produced signal pistols (light pistol 42) and parts for the MG34 .

Submarine parts

The Hannemann & Co. division was one of the companies involved in the construction of the Type XXI submarines . Section 1 (rear with rear compartment, control system and workshop) was manufactured in Lübeck.

Research and Development

The development department of BLM did not develop weapons itself, but strived to optimize the production process. She was responsible for the development and production of an automatic roller leveler.

A machine was also developed here in which rifle barrels could be produced using the cold hammer process.

BLM settlement

The BLM planned the construction of a large factory settlement on arable land in Israelsdorf , which should extend between today's streets Eichenweg, Gothmunder Weg, Wilhelm-Wisser-Weg and Fährbergweg. Of the several hundred one-, two- and four-family houses planned, only a good dozen houses along the newly laid streets Wilhelm-Wisser-Weg (No. 26-36) and Fährbergweg were built due to the war. Architect Alfred Schulze took on the architectural planning of the brick houses and heritage protection architecture ; Harry Maasz was commissioned with the design of the green areas and house gardens .

literature

  • Uwe Müller: St. Gertrud. Chronicle of a suburban residential and recreational area (= City Archives Lübeck (Hrsg.): Small booklets on city history. Booklet 2). Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1986, ISBN 3-7950-3300-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SSU - CIG EARLY CIA DOCUMENTS VOL. 5_0006: Statement by Viktor Schulz, October 19, 1946. PDF-S. 8, 10, 13. In: cia.gov, accessed on June 21, 2018 (PDF; 2.9 MB).
  2. ^ Statement by Emil Bannemann from February 25, 1947, accessed on April 29, 2020
  3. ^ Helmut Weihsmann: Building under the swastika. Architecture of doom. Promedia, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85371-113-8 , p. 628.
  4. ^ Memorandum of May 3, 1947: "Albert F. Bender to Major S. Johnson: Blocking of Properties Belonging to Bernhard Berghaus " in the Dodis database of Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland .
  5. ^ Antjekathrin Graßmann : Lübeckische Geschichte. 4th edition. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2008, ISBN 978-3-7950-1280-9 , p. 717 f.
  6. ↑ See the examples from Christian Rathmer: "I only remember tears and grief ...". Forced labor in Lübeck from 1939 to 1945. In: Democratic history. 11 (1998), pp. 115–160 ( PDF; 5.6 MB ), as well as Christian Rathmer: “I only remember tears and grief…”. Forced labor in Lübeck 1939 to 1945. Documentation on the exhibition in the Herrenwyk history workshop from May 4, 1997 to February 1, 1998. Edited by the Burgkloster cultural forum and the Herrenwyk history workshop. Translated from the French: Wolfgang Muth. Translated from the Russian: Katja Freter-Bachnak. Klartext Verlag, Essen 1999, ISBN 3-88474-729-0 .
  7. ↑ Alex van Gurp: The stairs that got steeper and steeper or “What the letters have to tell”. In: Information on contemporary history in Schleswig-Holstein. Issue 32 (December 1997), pp. 55–70 ( full text [without images] ); the number of 1196 camp inmates can also be found in the camp list of camps, accommodation for foreigners and prisoner-of-war commands in Schleswig-Holstein 1939–1945.
  8. ↑ Christian Rathmer: "I only remember tears and grief ...". Forced labor in Lübeck 1939 to 1945. Documentation on the exhibition in the Herrenwyk history workshop from May 4, 1997 to February 1, 1998. Klartext Verlag, Essen 1999, ISBN 3-88474-729-0 , p. 48 ( zwangsarbeiter-sh.de [accessed on May 31, 2017]).
  9. ^ Report of October 18, 1946. In: fold3.com, accessed on June 21, 2018.
  10. ^ Christiane Uhlig, Petra Barthelmess, Mario König , Peter Pfaffenroth, Bettina Zeugin: Camouflage, Transfer, Transit. Switzerland as a hub for covert German operations (1938–1952) (= publications of the ICE. Volume 9). Chronos, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-0340-0609-8 , pp. 203–215 ( case study: the industrialist Bernhard Berghaus ), here: p. 205.
  11. ↑ Combat Chronology of the US Army Air Forces: August 1944. In: gpo.gov, accessed June 21, 2018.
  12. ↑ Aviation Archeology . Searching for traces in Schleswig-Holstein. Air raids on Lübeck. In: spurensuchesh.de. accessed on June 21, 2018 (private website of Nils Hempel).
  13. ^ Nils Hempel: Final report on the air raid on Lübeck on August 25, 1944. In: spurensuchesh.de. Nils Hempel, archived from the original on February 11, 2013 ; Retrieved on June 21, 2018 (Memento readable to a limited extent, see also the current version ).
  14. ^ Gerhard Meyer (Ed.): Lübeck 1945 - Diary extracts from Arthur Geoffrey Dickens . Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1986, ISBN 3-7950-3000-5 , p. 91.
  15. ^ Siegfried Schier: The reception and integration of refugees and displaced persons in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. A socio-historical investigation for the period after the Second World War up to the end of the 1950s. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1982, ISBN 3-7950-0445-4 , p. 111.
  16. ↑ Albrecht Wacker, Joachim Görtz: Handbook of German weapons stamps on military and service hand weapons from 1871 to 2000 (= Morion. Volume 3). VS-Books, Herne 2005, ISBN 3-932077-10-5 , p. 422.
  17. ↑ Manfred Kersten: Walther - a German legend. Weispfennig, Wuppertal 1997, ISBN 978-3-00-001356-0 , p. 234.
  18. ↑ BLM settlement. In: spd-karlshof-israelsdorf.de, accessed on June 1, 2017.

Coordinates: 53 ° 53 ′ 47.8 "  N , 10 ° 42 ′ 14"  E