Bremen-Vegesacker Fishing Society
The Bremen-Vegesack fishing company was a logger fishery and existed from 1895 to 1969. It was at times the largest herring fishing company in Europe.
history
founding
In 1895 Germany imported a total of 1,181,953 barrels of salted herring valued at around 25,000,000 marks. In order to become more independent of imports, herring-catching societies were established in various coastal towns in Germany . The Bremen-Vegesacker Fischerei-Gesellschaft AG was founded on January 31, 1895 .
Another reason for founding this company was that the Weser correction by Ludwig Franzius had not brought the expected upswing for the town of Vegesack and its restored harbor . Many ships passed upstream directly to the port of Bremen. It was hoped that a new company would revive the port of Vegesack and also be able to procure orders from the underutilized Bremer Vulkan shipyard .
The foundation was preceded by the following advertisement in the December 14, 1893 edition of the Norddeutsche Volks-Zeitung: “The undersigned would like to arouse their interest in a company that can become of great importance for the local area as soon as patriotic and energetic men are found to take it in hand. We mean the establishment of a fishing company. Through the correction of the Weser, Vegesack is just as well connected to the sea as Bremen, the ships can reach the sea or the port here with a high tide or an ebb tide. The port facilities in Vegesack offer enough space for a small fleet of local fishing vessels, and the population of this area would soon turn to the sea profession again, as in previous years, if they were given the opportunity to do so in the immediate vicinity. "
Initiators of this action were mostly also the founder of the shipyard shortly before incurred Bremer Vulkan , the owner of Bremer Tauwerkfabrik in Grohn C. H. Michelsen, the architect and master mason C. Hartmann, the city manager and editor of the North Volkszeitung J. F. pipe, the sailor Albrecht Franzius , a Brother of the well-known hydraulic engineer Ludwig Franzius, as well as several other men, all from Vegesack. They tried to find shareholders for the fishing company to be founded, if possible from Vegesack, Grohn and the Blumenthal district .
When, by the end of 1894, instead of the 400,000 Marks required by the President of the German Sea Fisheries Association, only 129,000 Marks of capital were collected, the founding committee turned to wealthy Bremen residents. Another prospectus was published there, signed by several businesspeople around Franz Ernst Schütte . This also met with interest, there were enough shareholders to be able to found the fishing company. The intention to concentrate operations completely in Vegesack could not be realized given the overwhelming power of Bremen's capital. Bremen was expressly designated as the seat. Albrecht Franzius was appointed director and Bernhard Loose , whose bank had contributed around half of the initial capital, was appointed chairman of the supervisory board .
As the headquarters for the production facilities, the new company leased the premises of the Bremer Vulkan, which had previously been located there, at Vegesacker Hafen, and a neighboring area of around 1,300 square meters was acquired soon afterwards.
Immediately after the foundation, the four BV1 sailing loggers at Bremer Vulkan. to BV4. - as the first of its kind in iron construction - commissioned. The loggers were named Bremen , Vegesack , Blumenthal and Grohn ; The Vegesack logger is the only one of these vehicles that still exists today and is located in the Vegesack Museumshaven . The hull of the sailing logger BV26 “Wietze” can be viewed at the other end of the Vegesack maritime mile on the premises of Bremer Bootsbau Vegesack gGmbH (BBV).
These loggers started their first voyage at the end of May 1895 and have already brought about 2,800 tons of herrings ashore in this financial year.
Nevertheless, the yield probably did not quite meet the company's expectations, because the first operating report read: “Our 4 loggers brought a total of 3641 kantjes = 2776 ½ tons of herring in 4 voyages . The result of the herring catch was not a favorable one. "
Structure and blooming years
The first loggers were quickly followed by more. The Bremer Vulkan built 14 ships for the company between 1894 and 1896 alone. In 1899, 20 sailing loggers set out to catch the fish, followed by the first German steam logger named Welle (vom Bremer Vulkan, building no. 448) in the 1901 financial year .
At the turn of the century more than 400 people were employed. Many of the logger crews, from the captain to the two cabin boys (in technical terms Avhauer and Reepschießer), came from the structurally weak Mindener Land. Around 1930 z. B. at the employment office in Nienburg around 1000, in the Windheim office around 500 men with the profession of herring catchers reported.
In the following years, the company had its own workshops, a packing shop with a net and storage floor, cold stores, a deep well with a water de-ironing system, an electrical control center and a barrel factory, in which in 1904 around 650 barrels, the so-called " Kantjes ”. In 1909 a floating dock was added to carry out ship repairs (see Bremer Vulkan, ship list).
When the First World War broke out, the fleet consisted of 25 sailing loggers, 15 steam loggers and one motor logger.
Salted herring was a staple food in the first half of the 20th century. The fishing company therefore specialized in the production of sea-throated and sea-salted herrings, which were caught with net walls up to 4 kilometers long and 16 meters deep.
After the First World War, the company developed particularly successfully under its director Friedrich Klippert , who headed the company for almost 40 years. Additional land was acquired, so that in 1937 more than 37.00 m² was available and a quay length of around 450 meters offered loggers space to moor on the banks of the Lesum. In addition, land was acquired on which company employees built their homes.
In 1931 the Elsflether herring fishery was taken over with its entire inventory. At the height of its development in 1938, the company was the largest herring fishing company on the continent with 68 loggers, 1,200 crew members and an additional 600 workers on land.
In the meantime, vocational school classes for herring catchers had been set up in Windheim , and external courses were even held here by the Bremen Seafaring School for B2 patent acquisition (helmsman). In the basement of the Windheim school, cooking courses were offered from 1930 to 1938 in order to diversify the food on the loggers.
With the beginning of the Second World War, herring fishing came to a standstill - as in the First World War. The loggers were requisitioned and used for other military purposes. Of 69 ships, 12 did not return, and 2 modern ships had to be delivered to Russia.
Following an order from the military government, in May 1945 the equipment of 20 loggers began to support the food supply of the population. In the same year, 38,000 Kantjes herrings were caught in the mine-contaminated North Sea. In the years that followed, the number of ships was continuously supplemented and modernized with newbuildings, so that the same quantities as before could be caught with less effort. The logger crews traditionally came from the Mindener Land, although the offspring in the mid-1950s increasingly found employment here in the small and mining industry,
Decline and end
The turning point began around 1960. The reasons for this were mainly the ruthless overfishing of the herring stocks in the North Sea and the subsidized foreign competition, but also difficulties in staffing the ships with qualified personnel.
This negative development could not be stopped by new sales methods and the establishment of a subsidiary for semi-finished and finished products. This was followed by the sale of land and ships and, in 1965, the conversion of the stock corporation into a GmbH. In 1967, the Vegesacker Society then joined the Norddeutsche Hochseefischerei AG Bremerhaven, which took over the majority of the Vegesack Society in the following year.
In 1969 two loggers left for the last time to catch herring, after which operations in Vegesack were closed. During the 74th anniversary of the Bremen-Vegesack Fishery Society, 7,670,815 Kantjes herrings, corresponding to around 573,311 tons, were landed.
Vegesacker Fischwaren GmbH processed imported herrings until the mid-1980s.
Literature and film
- Wilfried Brandes (Hrsg.): Logger-Jantjes.- The Bremen Vegesacker fishing company and the herring catch . Edition Temmen, 2nd edition 1996, ISBN 3-86108-257-8 .
- Horst Gnettner : A Chapter Industrial History of Bremen North . In: Lebensraum Bremen-Nord, Yearbook of Wittheit zu Bremen Volume 31/1989 . Johann Heinrich Döll-Verlag , 1989, ISBN 3-88808-132-7 .
- Sophie Hollanders: Vegesack - Old pictures of a port city . Johann Heinrich Döll Verlag, Bremen 1984, ISBN 3-88808-016-9 .
- Wendelin Seebacher , Jutta Never et al .: Our oldest port - a chronicle of the Vegesack port . STAVE Stadtentwicklung Vegesack GmbH (Ed.), ISBN 3-00-009791-0 .
- Jantjes and Kantjes - fishing for herring in old films; 45 min. VHS video, distribution Edition Temmen Bremen.
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 53 ° 10 ′ 1 ″ N , 8 ° 37 ′ 40 ″ E