Buchtal AG

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The Buchtal AG in Schwarzenfeld in the Upper Palatinate was a producer of ceramic facing materials, the "Buchtal AG, Ceramic operations of 12 November 1937 as Reichswerke, Hermann Goering ' had been Oeslau bei Coburg" founded and today as Agrob-Buchtal for ceramics Group " Deutsche Steinzeug Cremer & Breuer AG " belongs. The name goes back to the field name "Buchtal", which occurs several times in the vicinity of the company.

history

Lignite , loam and clay have been mined on an industrial scale in the Schwarzenfeld area in the Middle Upper Palatinate since the second half of the 19th century . In the extraction of lignite in open-cast mining , the focus was on its use as fuel and fossil fuels for electricity generation and the production of lignite briquettes until the 1920s . Since the mining of raw materials was rarely profitable, it was often stopped temporarily. The ownership and prospecting rights for the approx. 600 hectare large mine fields around Schwarzenfeld, the so-called Kuxe , have been sold several times over the years. During the general fuel shortage of the First World War , coal mining was resumed. With the purchase of the mining rights by Hugo Sachs, who was Norwegian consul in Munich until 1923, the combined mine fields were given the new name "United Schmidgaden-Schwarzenfeld Unions" in 1917. The names of the union were given by the places Schmidgaden and Schwarzenfeld , in whose municipal area brown coal mining was carried out. In the meantime, a brick factory was built in which clay, which is a waste product in large quantities, was processed into clinker .

The acquisition of the United Trade Union by the AnnaWerk

After further changes of ownership, the ceramic company Annawerk acquired 90 Kuxe from the union in June 1937 in order to secure its own raw material requirements for high-quality clays with high levels of aluminum oxide for the next few decades. The remaining shares of the rights were acquired by the Deutsche Steinzeugwarenfabrik AG (Friedrichsfeld) and the Deutsche Ton- und Steinzeugwerke AG (DTS, Berlin- Krauschwitz ) at 5 kuxe each . The majority owner of all three companies involved in the purchase was the Cremer Group , a ceramics group that had been founded in Frechen in 1906 and was headed by Jakob Cremer at the time . In August 1937, the planning and construction of a modern tunnel kiln , which was used for the production of clinker bricks and fired with gas, began. The fuel for this was obtained from a newly built gas generator that was operated with its own brown coal.

The participation of the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" AG

Also in the summer of 1937, the Annawerke negotiated with the relevant offices of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring , who at the time were responsible for organizing the expansion of domestic ore mining and steel production as formulated in the so-called four - year plan of October 1936 . Since refractory materials, such as firebricks , are absolutely necessary in steel production and the fireclay industry at that time could not meet a higher demand, it was essential for the achievement of the four-year plan that the capacities of the so-called refractory industry were multiplied in advance. The choice of the Reichswerke for a partner to increase the production of the refractory products fell on the Annawerke , because one has already worked successfully with them in the field of sanitary technology and found willing support or in some cases equality of interests. In addition, even before the establishment of the Reichswerke (founded July 15, 1937), there were overlaps between employees of the Cremer Group and the specialists or officials of the Nazi regime. For example, the board of directors of DTS AG and the Buchtal-Reichswerke , Heinrich Willach, acted as head of the “special ring stoneware in the main ring stones and earth” at the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production.

In November 1937, the Annawerke and the Reichswerke agreed to share the Kuxe of the United Trade Union with the establishment of Buchtal AG, ceramic factories of the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" , the latter being to get the majority with 52% of the shares. The son of the chairman of the supervisory board of the Cremer Group , Gottfried Cremer, was entrusted with the planning, construction and management of a modern and efficient chamotte factory. The agreed annual production is 50,000 tons of refractory materials. In his Buchtal chronicle, Gottfried Cremer notes in this regard: “Buchtal was founded for the sole purpose of supplying highly refractory material for the lining of the blast furnaces and wind heaters in Salzgitter and Linz , both for the expansion and for the repairs to be expected later - and a need for overhaul. ”Even before the contract was signed, Paul Pleiger , the organizational head and co-founder or director of the Reichswerke and later military manager (January 1938), was personally on site to work with the specialists of the Cremer Group to set up the new plant to guide the ways.

The inauguration of the company took place in June 1939 with the participation of prominent figures from the party , armed forces , SS and business. After a tour of the plant, which in its expediency and arrangement “fully corresponds to the National Socialist economic management”, the Schwarzenfeld settlement was also visited. The keynote speakers included Wilhelm Meinberg , State Councilor and member of the board of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring , the ceremony ended with “a pledge of loyalty to the Führer and the consecration songs of the nation”.

In order to be able to produce the amount of refractory materials contractually agreed for the establishment of the Buchtal-Reichswerke , during the course of 1938 a. a. two more tunnel kilns, drying chambers and a second gas generator were built. In 1939, u. a. an in-house power plant to generate electricity, a roof tile factory and other infrastructural structures were built. In May 1940 "accommodations for foreign workers" were created, in January 1941 "special kitchens for foreign workers (French and Russians)" and in January 1944 "baths for these accommodations." Other functional buildings such as locksmiths, carpenters and administration buildings followed.

At the beginning of the Second World War , around 650 people were employed in Buchtal. In the course of the mobilization of the Germans, so-called “ foreign workers ” were brought in for the production at the Buchtal plant, which was classified as important to the war effort. Most recently, the “foreign workers” made up more than two thirds of the workforce; some were recruited as civilian workers, and others were used as prisoners of war for forced labor . According to the information provided by the “operator” Cremer, an average of “80 French, 120 Poles and 250 Russians, the latter men and women” had to work in Buchtal. In 1950, the International Tracing Service assumed there were around 750 people of Ukrainian origin living in the Schmidgaden civilian labor camp. The tracing service referred to the mayor's report. Elsewhere the camp is referred to as a forced labor camp with reference to the tracing service .

Immediately after the founding of the Buchtal-Reichswerke , the planning and construction of the so-called "Hermann Göring settlement" in the nearby Schwarzenfeld market began. Since the population of the market was to increase by leaps and bounds in the wake of the Buchtal works - from approx. 1800 in 1935 to approx. 3300 in 1939 - the construction of apartments on a large scale became necessary. The practicality and appearance typical of National Socialist settlement programs has been preserved in the so-called Schwarzenfeld “Buchtal settlement” into the 21st century.

The Buchtal Reichswerke and the "Aryanization" of Jewish property

The banking house Gebrüder Arnhold (Dresden-Berlin) ceded its shares in the Annawerk to the Cremer Group in 1934 , which became the majority owner of the Annawerk through the acquisition of another block of shares from Thuringian Gas . In 1950, when Buchtal AG was about to be completely returned to the Cremer Group , Hans Arnhold initiated legal restitution proceedings for his family because of the Aryanization in 1934. In this process, Gottfried Cremer received support from a former authorized signatory, Gert Bahr, who had profited from the takeover of the Arnold bank and took over 16 seats on the supervisory board, one of them at the Deutsche Steinzeugwarenfabrik Mannheim-Friedrichsfeld . The restitution negotiations ended in 1954 with a payment of 100,000 DM, which the Cremer Group made to Arnhold.

After the defeat and occupation of Czechoslovakia , the Buchtal-Reichswerke acquired the absolute majority in what is probably the most important clay mine in Czechoslovakia, the "Vereinigte Wildstein-Neudorfer Tonwerke AG, Eger", for around 400,000 RM. After difficulties in the cooperation, the Reichswerke "Hermann-Göring" AG took over all rights to this pit. The takeover of the Tonwerke in Eger at that time was obviously forced; a restitution procedure, which the heirs of the former Jewish majority shareholder Hugo Sachs initiated, was still pending in 2008.

The Buchtal-Reichswerke in the first years after the end of the Nazi regime

After the American troops entered Schwarzenfeld on April 22, 1945, they also occupied parts of the Buchtal plant. Production, which was previously essential for the war effort, collapsed shortly afterwards, former forced laborers were freed and the company was placed under the supervision of the military government. The "operational leader" Gottfried Cremer came a few days later captured by the Americans in former Nazi Stalag VII-A to Moosburg , where he remained until March 1948 interned remained. In the course of the so-called denazification process , he had to a. as head of a war-important operation, as NSDAP and SS member. Neither the indictment nor the verdict against Cremer are known to date. Paul Pleiger, however, who has acted as its chairman since the founding of the Buchtal-Reichwerke , was in the so-called Wilhelmstrasse process u. a. sentenced to 15 years imprisonment because forced laborers had to work in the "Hermann-Göring" works under conditions that violated the Geneva Conventions .

Since most of the shares in the Buchtal factory were owned by the Reich, the military government appointed a trustee and the “Bavarian State Office for Asset Management and Reparation” intervened to check. Furthermore, in a legal process it was considered or politically demanded to nationalize the Buchtal-Reichswerke as a company that is active in the coal mine or in the electricity production. The Bavarian tax office also registered property claims on the fireclay factory, which in the meantime fell mostly back to the latter due to a capital increase initiated by the Cremer Group . In the resulting legal proceedings, the founding contract of the Buchtal-Reichswerke from November 1937 was declared null and void and it was agreed that the shares of the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" in Buchtal AG would revert to the German state against compensation payments that had yet to be clarified to the Annawerk or the Cremer group . After many years of negotiations about the amount of the resulting payments, these were not concluded until 1952 and the legal status of summer 1937 was restored. The deletion of the addition to the name Reichswerke “Hermann Göring” had already been decided and carried out in May 1947, in the first supervisory board meeting after the end of the World War, and later concerns of official bodies about these processes were abandoned in view of the importance of the Buchtal works in the course of the reconstruction Post-war Germany fall.

The Buchtal AG after the currency reform

Since the Buchtal plant was structurally able to mine coal and produce electricity for the public grid, a non-profit interest led to the resumption of these activities as early as October 1945. The production of simple building ceramics (unglazed split tiles ) was resumed after the currency reform of 1948 , the production of roof tiles in 1952. Just two years later another factory for glazed ceramics (split tiles) was built. In the 1970s, the Buchtal factory presented the large ceramic tile "KerAion" as a world first, which can be up to two square meters in size and is mainly used for facade design.

In the 1970s, the number of employees in the Buchtal plant was highest at around 1,600.

After further expansions in the factory, Deutsche Steinzeug Cremer & Breuer AG bought the tile manufacturer AGROB in 1993 and Buchtal AG was renamed - since then it has been called "Agrob-Buchtal", based in Schwarzenfeld.

The turnover of Agrob-Buchtal was - according to a press release - in 2009 192 million euros and the number of employees is given as 1499.

Well-known company employees

  • Gottfried Cremer (1906–2005; see Keramion ), operator
  • Helmut Lehmann (1918–2010), technical director
  • Willy Lersch (1914–2006), commercial director and supervisory board

literature

  • Gottfried Cremer: Buchtal-Chronik Volume I. Prehistory and the time of the foundation until the end of 1955 , without location, 1982.
  • August Meyer: Hitler's Holding. The Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" , Europa-Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1999. ISBN 3-203-80035-7 .
  • Jochen Wistinghausen: The 100 year history of the Annawerk in Oeslau near Coburg , 1957.
  • Ingo Köhler: The "Aryanization" of private banks in the Third Reich. Repression, elimination and the question of reparation , 2nd edition, Verlag CH Beck , Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53200-4 .
  • Julia Weigl: From the “United Trade Union” to the market giant “Buchtal” , in: this: IndustrieKulturGeschichte im Landkreis Schwandorf , Mittelbayerische Druck- und Verlags-Gesellschaft, Regensburg 1994, pp. 61–70, ISBN 3-927529-85-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Most of the historical and technical details for come from: Gottfried Cremer: Buchtal-Chronik Bd.I, 1982.
  2. ↑ Jochen Wistinghausen: The 100-year history of the Annawerk in Oeslau near Coburg, 1957, p. 114.
  3. ↑ See for example 80 years of Annawerk. 1857-1937 (Festschrift) , 1937, p. 44.
  4. ↑ Holger Klein: The Deutsche Ton- und Steinzeugwerke A.-G. - From small business to industrial network, 2008, no page number. ( Memento of the original from February 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / steinzeug.kulturpixel.de
  5. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 154.
  6. ^ August Meyer: Hitler's Holding. The Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" , Europa-Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 375.
  7. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 23. There is also a picture with Pleiger and Gottfried Cremer from August 1938.
  8. ↑ Bavarian East Mark. Official organ of the NSDAP dated June 13, 1939. The report under the heading “Operation celebration of the Buchtal AG. - A proud work of the National Socialist construction. ”Is rounded off with a photograph. There are u. a. Operational leader Cremer (in SS uniform), deputy Gauleiter Ludwig Ruckdeschel , Gauinspektor Franz Ganninger and Schwandorf district leader Oskar Fürst are pictured.
  9. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 189.
  10. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 150; also quoted by Julia Weigl: From the “United Trade Union” to the market giant “Buchtal” , in: this: IndustrieKulturGeschichte im Landkreis Schwandorf , Mittelbayerische Druck- und Verlags-Gesellschaft, Regensburg 1994, ISBN 3-927529-85-0 , p. 61–70, here p. 69.
  11. ↑ Martin Weinmann (Ed.): The National Socialist Camp System. (CCP) . Zweiausendeins, 2nd edition, Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 215.
  12. ↑ See Winfried Nerdinger (Ed.): Building in National Socialism. Bavaria 1933–1945 [Exhibition by the Architecture Museum of the Technical University and the Munich City Museum]. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Munich 1993, p. 536, ISBN 3-7814-0360-2 .
  13. ↑ Winfried Nerdinger (Ed.): Building in National Socialism. Bavaria 1933–1945 [Exhibition by the Architecture Museum of the Technical University and the Munich City Museum]. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Munich 1993, p. 296, ISBN 3-7814-0360-2 .; Julia Weigl: From the “United Trade Union” to the market giant “Buchtal” , in: this: IndustrieKulturGeschichte im Landkreis Schwandorf , Mittelbayerische Druck- und Verlags-Gesellschaft, Regensburg 1994, ISBN 3-927529-85-0 , pp. 61–70 , here p. 68.
  14. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 12.Hans Arnhold made it clear in the restitution negotiations after the war that the selling pressure did not come from Cremer, but from local functionaries around the Saxon NSDAP Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann (Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 272. For the Aryanization of the banking house Gebr. Arnhold (Dresden) see Köhler: The “Aryanization” of the private banks in the Third Reich, pp. 207–226, for the role of Mutschmann see p. 209).
  15. ^ Ingo Köhler: The "Aryanization" of the private banks in the Third Reich, p. 151.
  16. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 272.
  17. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 148.
  18. ↑ CLAIMS RESOLUTION TRIBUNAL in the Hugo Sachs u. a. because of the Tonwerke Wildstein-Neudorf (PDF; 120 kB).
  19. ↑ Cf. Julia Weigl: From the "United Trade Union" to the market giant "Buchtal" , in: this: IndustrieKulturGeschichte im Landkreis Schwandorf , Mittelbayerische Druck- und Verlags-Gesellschaft, Regensburg 1994, ISBN 3-927529-85-0 , p. 61–70, here p. 69. Weigl speaks of Cremer's prison sentence of four weeks.
  20. ↑ According to the registration form of the Moosburg internment camp (December 17, 1946), Cremer was a party and SS member in the years 1933 to 1945. However, he had no "knowledge of the commission of crimes by my organization". According to the information in his chronicle, he was only named "honorary" SS-Sturmführer on the occasion of the inauguration of the plant in June 1939 . See Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 148.
  21. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 243.
  22. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, pp. 246–247.
  23. ↑ Gottfried Cremer: 1982, p. 226.
  24. ↑ Quoted from the innovation report from the 2009 annual report