Berlin carburetor factory

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VEB Berlin carburetor and filter works
legal form publicly-owned business
founding 1946
resolution 1990
Reason for dissolution Sale to the West German filter manufacturer Hengst
Seat Berlin - Friedrichshain , Germany
Number of employees
  • 15 (1946)
  • 192 (1948)
  • 348 (1949)
  • 700 (1966)
  • 2140 (1990)
Branch Engine supplier

The VEB Berlin carburetor and filter works (BVF), based in the Frankfurter Allee and branches on Stralauer Platz in the district Berlin-Friedrichshain and in the district Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg was a producer of carburetors for the GDR-built vehicles Trabant and Wartburg , for agricultural machinery and for the later two-wheeled vehicles. In addition, the outboard motors of the "Tümmler" and "Forelle" series were manufactured there. The company was founded in 1946 in the eastern part of Berlin through the merger of long-established carburetor factories. Later in the GDR era, motor vehicle manufacturers and suppliers were forcibly combined in the IFA . Each company was assigned what it had to produce.

After German reunification , the Simson successor MZA Meyer Zweiradtechnik GmbH bought the BVF logo and word mark. Since then he has been using the established brand name BVF to designate his carburettors, which are identical to the earlier GDR carburettors.

History of the establishment of the company

Advertisement for the Pallas carburetor from Charlottenburg (1914)

The founding of the Berliner Vergaser-Werke (BVF) dates back to 1946. Before the Second World War , its direct predecessor companies were Pallas-Apparate-Gesellschaft mbH ( hereinafter : Pallas) and Sum Vergaser-Gesellschaft Carl Wirsum & Co. KG ( hereinafter : Sum), whose company properties after the Second World War were mainly in the Soviet sector Berlins and were later nationalized.

In 1910, Pallas-Vergaser-Gesellschaft mbH was founded in the city ​​of Charlottenburg with a share capital of 200,000 marks. The object of the company was the "manufacture and sale of the Pallas carburettors designed according to the carburettor property rights owned by Messrs. August Wasmuth and Paul Schüttler". In 1914 talks began between the owners of Pallas and Allgemeine Electricitäts-Gesellschaft ( AEG ) with the aim of taking over Pallas to AEG; In July 1915, AEG finally owned "all the shares in the Pallas-Vergaser-Gesellschaft with limited liability in Berlin (...)". From this point onwards, Pallas, as a pure AEG subsidiary, sold carburetors, fuel pumps, petrol filters and aircraft equipment , which were manufactured in the AEG factory for metering devices in Ackerstrasse in Berlin .

In 1918, the name of Pallas-Vergaser-Gesellschaft mbH was changed to Pallas-Zenith-Gesellschaft mbH , since Pallas took over the business of Zenith-Vergaser-Gesellschaft mbH (hereinafter: Zenith) against the transfer of 50 percent of its company shares to the owner of Zenith, which Hasag Apparatebau GmbH (parent company Hugo Schneider A.-G. , Leipzig) took over under license. On December 24, 1921, the company name was changed to Pallas-Apparate-Gesellschaft mbH (hereinafter: PAG); In the next few years there were some increases in the company's share capital. In 1925, PAG's business area was expanded to include commercial motor vehicle trading. After a takeover offer by AEG, company partner Hugo Schneider ceded his shares in 1929. In May 1931, the French carburetor factory Société Générale des Carburateurs Zénith took over ten percent of the shares in PAG and, against this background, handed over the general and exclusive manufacturing and sales license for its products to PAG. It is also worth mentioning that PAG also manufactured carburetors for aircraft engines under license from the US American Bendix-Stromberg Corporation; A Pallas-Stromberg carburettor was used in the BMW 132 radial engine manufactured from 1933 to 1945 .

In 1920, the Sum carburetor company Carl Wirsum & Co. KG was founded in Berlin as the second original company of BVF by Carl Wirsum, a former employee of PAG. He was employed at PAG in the design office and in the testing department. Sum mainly manufactured carburettors for motorcycles and from the early 1930s also for aircraft engines ( Siemens & Halske Sh 14 and SAM / Bramo 314, Argus As 10 ). With the seizure of power by the National Socialists and the resulting armaments policy, Sum became a large company; the production facilities were relocated from Berlin's Wiesenstrasse to Michaelkirchstrasse for reasons of space. During the Second World War, slave laborers were also used at the Sum Carburetor Company ; The company used a “foreigners camp ” at Brandenburgstrasse 81, SW 68 (Kreuzberg, since 1962 Lobeckstrasse) to accommodate these workers .

The situation in the early post-war period

After the Second World War, both PAG and Sum began to salvage factory equipment that had been buried under the rubble of the war; In the context of Soviet reparation orders, PAG started carburetor repairs, the construction of new carburetors and other commercial goods in rented rooms in Ackerstrasse and - for reasons of space - since spring 1946 on Frankfurter Allee since mid-1945 ; the company traded under the name Pallas-Apparate GmbH Gerätewerk. The Sum also resumed its productive activity to a limited extent. With reference to the law on the transfer of corporations and other privately run commercial enterprises into the common property of Greater Berlin, the East Berlin magistrate confiscated both Pallas-Apparate GmbH Gerätewerk and Sum-Vergaser-Gesellschaft in 1947 and placed them under fiduciary management. As a further measure, on the instructions of the Soviet command of the East Berlin district of Friedrichshain - probably in order to strengthen the production power of the formerly heavily reduced companies Pallas and Sum - the concentration of both companies on Frankfurter Allee; the new plant created by this merger traded here under Treuhandverwaltung Berliner-Vergaser Fabrik - Systeme Pallas and Sum . After a sober analysis, the management of the PAG, which was deprived of its production sites as a result of the expropriation measures in East Berlin and resided in Berlin-Grunewald , Hohenzollerndamm, came to the conclusion that a resumption of carburetor production - with all the investments involved and taking into account the War circumstances no longer existent competitiveness - is uneconomical under the umbrella of the AEG; the West Berlin remnants of the PAG, which still comprised company property on Wilmersdorfer Strasse in Charlottenburg, were finally sold in 1950 to the Deutsche Vergaser-Gesellschaft; In 1953 PAG was deleted from the company register.

The operational development of BVF from 1949 to the political upheaval in 1989

From 1949, the year the GDR was founded, the Berlin carburetor factory became a state-owned company (VEB). As a member of the GDR Vehicle Construction Association (IFA), BVF was initially a subcontractor of the IFA Combine for Motor Vehicle Parts Karl-Marx-Stadt , and from 1979/80 part of the newly formed IFA Combine Commercial Vehicles. In addition, with the start of filter construction in 1967, BVF acted as the lead company for smaller operating units in this product segment. The space required by the Berlin carburetor factory for production increased from 1745 m² in the early post-war period to 15,257 m² in 1966.

Former carburetor and filter factory on Stralauer Platz

In addition to the company premises at Frankfurter Allee 71 in the Berlin-Friedrichshain district , the BVF soon had other locations; Mention should be made of the operating part on Stralauer Platz  - also in Friedrichshain - and an area in the Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg district , which was bordered by the Ostsee- , Greifswalder- and Mandelstraße and had a size of 44,000 m². While there were only 15 people in the workforce at the start of production in September 1946, this number gradually increased to 192 people at the beginning of 1948, to 348 people at the beginning of 1949, to 700 people in 1966 and finally to 2140 in 1990, the last year of BVF's existence. In addition to GDR citizens, a number of South American and Asian contract workers of both sexes found employment with the BVF.

The first technical developments at the Berlin carburetor factory included the variant F 30 and H 30 carburettors, the first working according to the downdraft principle, the latter according to the flat current principle. Both types served as the technical basis for the further developed carburettor series F 323, H 321 and H 362. At the same time, type-specific motorcycle carburettors were manufactured according to the needle-nozzle flat slide principle in the early days of BVF production. The production program up to and including 1966 included specific supplier parts such as carburettors and fuel pumps for the Trabant and Wartburg vehicles as well as various motorcycles, scooters, mopeds, agricultural machinery and stationary engines; Equipment was also manufactured for racing vehicles. In addition, there were solenoid valves and overflow valves as well as articles for the population , which had to be manufactured in many companies on the instructions of the GDR's economic management in order to reduce deficiency symptoms: for example, a hydraulically operated camera self-timer was manufactured by the BVF. In the mid-1960s, according to the BVF, around 40 percent of the goods produced fell under the highest GDR quality category “Q”.

Expansion of production and change of company name in 1967

In 1967, the construction of air, oil and fuel filters on the one hand and the manufacture of boat engines on the other hand began in newly created parts of the company. The latter production line was presumably taken over by VEB Motorenbau Berlin and comprised the rear boat engine HM 125 Forelle and the side board engine SB 75 Tümmler; these were often exported to socialist and “capitalist” countries. Due to this expansion of the production range, the previous BVF now operated as the Berliner Vergaser- und Filterwerke.

The difficult situation of BVF after the political change in 1989

Due to the political change in the GDR in 1989, the economic and monetary union with the Federal Republic of Germany implemented on July 1, 1990, which led to an immediate increase in the price of products, and the reunification of the two German states on October 3, 1990 The BVF was in an extremely difficult economic situation: Since the BVF were almost exclusively domestic market suppliers for the vehicle factories of the GDR, which usually produced outdated products, until the political upheaval in the GDR, their sales fell noticeably parallel to the production slumps in these final operations. Even if a certain order backlog could be secured, the BVF suffered from a lack of productivity, increased price pressure and quality defects of their products and this against the background of a free, highly competitive market, which had replaced the collapsed planned economy which largely avoided competitive mechanisms. In the temporary ownership of the Treuhandanstalt, VEB Filter- und Vergaserwerke was taken over by the West German filter manufacturer Hengst in 1990 and incorporated into the company. Parts of the old company premises are still used for production, but had to be freed from contaminated chemicals from the time before the fall of the Wall.

literature

  • Development of the carburetor production of the VEB Berliner Vergaser-Fabrik . In: Motor Vehicle Technology 6/1958, pp. 223–225.
  • BVF production program 1967/68 . Ed .: VVB Automobilbau - Foreign Trade Department. Group advertising and fairs. 69 pages. Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1967. (Foundation Deutsches-Technik Museum Berlin (SDTMB) - Archive: III. SSg. 2, 13820)
  • Catalog of the VEB Berlin carburetor factory. Ed .: VEB Berliner Vergaser Fabrik. 36 pages. Factory font. Berlin, 1966. (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 233)
  • Information from the operations director of the VEB Berliner Vergaser- und Filterwerke from May 7, 1990. Ed .: Berliner Vergaser- und Filterwerke. Copy. 4 sheets. Factory font. Berlin, 1990. (SDTMB archive: I.2.025, 0028)
  • Report on soil protection / contaminated sites using the example of VEB Berliner Vergaser- und Filterwerke Berlin. Senate Department Berlin, Environment, 2010
  • Articles of Association of the “Pallas Carburetor Limited Liability Company”. 5 sheets. Berlin, 1910. (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  • Minutes of a "meeting of the shareholders of the Palls (sic!) Carburetor company with limited liability on July 31, 1915 in Berlin in the office of the Allgemeine Electricitäts-Gesellschaft". Copy. 1 sheet. Berlin, 1915. (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  • Management letter from Pallas-Apparate-Gesellschaft mbH to the Legal Bureau dated June 10, 1918. 1 sheet. Berlin, 1918. (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  • Letter from the Bz of Pallas - Zenith Gesellschaft mbH to the legal office of October 30, 1918. 1 sheet. Berlin, 1918. (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  • Company profile of Hengst GmbH & Co KG. (PDF) Business information service for press, radio and television. 5 p.
  • “Pallas Apparate GmbH Berlin N .; Report on the financial and economic situation of the company in mid-1949 ”. Ed .: Pallas - Apparate - GmbH. 13 sheets. Copy / copy. Berlin 1949. (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02678)
  • Letter from AEG to Mr. Alfred Pierburg dated March 23, 1950. 1 sheet. Berlin, 1950. (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 04621)
  • "Businesses into the hands of the people". Article in the Berliner Zeitung of April 22, 1948. Copy. 2 sheets. Berlin, 1948. (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 0812)
  • Letter from AEG to the stock exchange tax office dated June 19, 1929. Ed .: Allgemeine Electricitäts-Gesellschaft. 1 sheet. Berlin, 1929. (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  • Letter from the Société Générale des Carburarteurs Zenith to Pallas – Apparate GmbH dated March 24, 1931. 5 sheets. Translation from French to German. Levallois, 1931. (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 02524)
  • "PALLAS APPARATE GmbH Berlin N. Report on the financial and economic situation of the company", publisher: Pallas Apparate GmbH 13 pages. Berlin, 1949. (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 02678)
  • Storage locations in the middle / Kreuzberg / Tiergarten. Berlin initiative for research into Nazi forced labor. Berlin 2002.
  • “Note about a meeting; Re: PALLAS-APPARATE-GESELLSCHAFT mbH “of July 2, 1949. Ed .: Pallas - Apparate - Gesellschaft. Berlin, 1949. (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02678)
  • "Report on the current status of Pallas Apparate Ges. MbH". Published by Pallas – Apparate Gesellschaft mbH. 3 sheets. Berlin, 1949. (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02678)
  • "Note; Re. Contract between AEG and Zenith dated May 5, 1931 ”, publisher: Allgemeine Electricitäts-Gesellschaft. 1 sheet. Berlin, 1955. (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02524)
  • Maren Brodersen: Berlin forced labor companies . Berlin History Workshop e. V. Berlin, 2000/2001.
  • Production program of the VEB-IFA-Kombinat Nutzkraftwagen Ludwigsfelde GDR 1979/90. Ed .: Dewag Dresden. Vehicle construction specialist collective. Dresden, 1979. (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 13823)
  • About us . ( Memento from October 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Hengst Immobilien & CO. KG.
  • Factory ID cards for the Berlin carburetor and filter works. (SDTMB archive: I.2.025, 0397)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Catalog of the Berliner Vergaser Werke, 1966, p. 3 (Foundation Deutsches Technik-Museum Berlin (SDTMB) - archive: III. SSg. 2, 233).
  2. ^ Articles of Association of the Pallas Vergaser Gesellschaft, 1910, Bl. 2 (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  3. ^ Articles of Association of the Pallas Vergaser Gesellschaft, 1910, Bl. 1 (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  4. ^ "Meeting of the shareholders of the Palls (sic!) Carburetor Society (...)", July 31, 1915 (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  5. ↑ Management letter from the Pallas Apparate Society to JB, June 10, 1918 (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  6. ^ Letter from the Bz of Pallas-Zenith-Gesellschaft mbH to the legal office, October 30, 1918 (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  7. ↑ Letter from AEG to the stock exchange tax office, June 19, 1929 (SDTMB archive: 1.2.060 A, 0812)
  8. ↑ Letter from Société Générale des Carburateurs Zenith to PAG GmbH, March 24, 1931 (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02524)
  9. ↑ Catalog of the Berliner Vergaser Werke, 1966, p. 41 (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 233)
  10. ^ Maren Brodersen: Berlin Forced Labor Companies .
  11. ↑ zwangsarbeit-forschung.de
  12. ^ "PAG mbH; Report on the financial and economic situation of the company in mid-1949 ", 1949, p. 2 (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02678)
  13. ^ Catalog of the Berliner Vergaser Werke, 1966; P. 5 (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 233)
  14. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , April 22, 1948 (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 0812)
  15. ^ Catalog of the Berliner Vergaser Werke, 1966; P. 5 (III. SSg. 2, 233)
  16. ^ Catalog of the Berliner Vergaser Werke, 1966; (III. SSg. 2, 233)
  17. ^ "Report on the current status of Pallas Apparate-Gesellschaft mbH", 1949, p. 2 (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02678)
  18. ↑ “Note about a meeting. Re: Pallas-Apparate-Gesellschaft mbH "(SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02678)
  19. ^ "Report on the financial and economic situation of the company in mid-1949", 1949, p. 2 (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02678)
  20. ^ Letter from AEG to Mr. Alfred Pierburg, March 23, 1950 (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 04621)
  21. ↑ "Betr. Contract between AEG and Zenith dated May 5, 1931 ", 1955, p. 1 (SDTMB archive: I.2.060 A, 02524)
  22. ^ Catalog of the Berliner Vergaser Werke, 1966; P. 5 f. (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 233)
  23. ^ Production program of VEB IFA Kombinat Ludwigsfelde 1979/1980 (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 13823)
  24. ^ Catalog of the Berliner Vergaser Werke, 1966; P. 6 (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 233)
  25. ↑ About us. Hengst Immobilien GmbH & Co. KG, archived from the original on October 6, 2010 ; Retrieved December 10, 2013 .
  26. ^ Catalog of the Berliner Vergaser Werke, 1966; P. 6 (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 233)
  27. ^ Copy of the information from the operations director dated May 7, 1990; P. 2 (SDTMB archive: I.2.025, 0028)
  28. ↑ Company ID cards for the Berlin carburetor and filter works (I.2.025, 0397)
  29. ^ Catalog of the Berliner Vergaser Werke, 1966; P. 7 (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 233)
  30. ↑ BVF production program 1967/68 (SDTMB archive: III. SSg. 2, 13820)
  31. ^ Copy of the information from the operations director dated May 7, 1990; P. 1 f. (SDTMB archive: I.2.025, 0028)
  32. ^ Company profile of Hengst GmbH & Co KG.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) WID.Münster, 2010, p. 2@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.wirtschaftsinformationsdienst-muenster.de  
  33. ↑ Filterwerke Senate Department Environment, 2010.