Buderus
| Buderus
|
|
|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | AG |
| founding | 1731 |
| resolution | as a large corporation in 2003 |
| Seat |
Wetzlar Germany
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| Branch | Metal processing |
Buderus (each period JW Buderus , OHG Gebrüder Buderus , Aktiengesellschaft Buderus'sche Eisenwerke , Buderussche Handelsgesellschaft , Buderus AG ) was a German (large) company in the field of iron smelting and iron processing with its headquarters in Wetzlar .
The family company was founded on March 14, 1731 by Johann Wilhelm Buderus I and gradually expanded over the centuries by his descendants to become one of the largest foundry companies in Germany and Europe. It was one of the longest-standing large companies in Europe.
In 2003 the then Buderus AG with its three daughters Buderus Heiztechnik GmbH , Buderus Guss GmbH and Edelstahlwerke Buderus AG were taken over by Robert Bosch GmbH . Edelstahlwerke Buderus AG, now Buderus Edelstahl GmbH , was sold to the Austrian Böhler-Uddeholm AG in 2005 . Buderus Guss GmbH went to Munich-based private equity company Orlando Management . The former Buderus Heiztechnik GmbH operates under the name Bosch-Thermotechnik GmbH and continues to belong to Robert Bosch GmbH. The "Buderus" brand will be continued for products in the heating and sanitary sector.
History of the company
Prehistory to 1731
In 1678 the Buderus family built the first blast furnaces in Hirzenhain ( Vogelsberg , Hesse ) . The history of the Buderus company began in the first half of the 18th century when numerous iron stone deposits were found in the Lahn-Dill area and in Upper Hesse . The right to extract ore lay with the sovereigns. These built iron works and either operated them under their own management under a smelter or leased them. Friedrich Ernst Graf zu Solms-Laubach founded the Friedrichshütte, named after him, near Ruppertsburg on his territory in 1707 and thus reactivated the ironworks that had come to a standstill as a result of the Thirty Years War . In the spring of 1707, the construction of a new charcoal blast furnace with an attached foundry began. An iron hammer with a fresh stove was put into operation in 1709 to convert the pig iron into wrought iron .
In 1717 Johann Wilhelm Buderus I was given the commercial and technical management of Friedrichshütte; he was born in Nassau (Lahn) in 1690 as the son of a master baker. Although Buderus was only an administrator, he invested considerable resources of his own in the operation of the ironworks, which, in addition to the charcoal blast furnace and the foundry, had two iron hammers from 1718. As early as 1729, he owned most of the Friedrichshütte's working capital. He was de facto head of the ironworks.
Lease of the Friedrichshütte, expansion of the family business (1731–1806)
On March 14, 1731 Johann Wilhelm Buderus I paid a deposit, with which the lease of the Friedrichshütte and the associated hammers (Hessenbrücker Hammer and Oberhammer) passed to him. Since then, this day has been considered the date the company was founded. On June 26, 1734, Buderus signed a new lease agreement with Count Friedrich Magnus II of Solms-Laubach. Johann Wilhelm Buderus I was the hut tenant for 22 years. He died on June 23, 1753. On December 10, 1753, a new lease was signed with his second wife Elisabetha Magdalena Buderus. The widow led the company through the turmoil of the Seven Years' War that broke out in 1756 and which hit Central Hesse badly.
Buderus' son - Johann Wilhelm Buderus II - joined the company in January 1762 after completing his metallurgical apprenticeship. Under his management - officially as the leaseholder of Friedrichshütte from 1766 - the family company stepped out of the limited radius of a regional iron producer in the Vogelsberg region and expanded into the area around Lahn and Weil . On February 1, 1779, Johann Wilhelm Buderus II was able to lease another hammer mill near Schellnhausen from the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt and was also given the sole right to sell iron in the five Hessian offices of Burg-Gemünden , Grebenau , Grünberg , Schotten and Ulrichstein . In 1798 he acquired the Audenschmiede in Weiltal. This was an important ironworks in the Nassau-Weilburg area , at that time the center of the iron industry on the middle Lahn. Johann Wilhelm Buderus II, who was appointed Bergrat by the Count of Solms-Laubach in 1776 , died on May 1, 1806. His father's estate - and with it his starting capital - had amounted to around 710 guilders in 1762; after his death the family fortune was valued at 180,000 guilders.
Foundation of a law firm, further expansion (1806–1840)
After the death of Johann Wilhelm II, the company went equally to his three surviving sons Johann Christian Wilhelm, Anton Georg Wilhelm Christian and Georg Friedrich Andreas Buderus (born March 9, 1777, † February 26, 1840 in Frankfurt am Main , who later became Georg Buderus I.). On January 2, 1807, these merged to form the JW Buderus Söhne partnership based on the Friedrichshütte near Laubach .
After the death of his two brothers, Georg Buderus I continued to run the company on his own. He followed the company's further expansion. In 1812 he leased the Löhnberger Hütte near Weilburg , and in 1817 the ironworks in Hirzenhain. The main factory, the Friedrichshütte, was modernized and in 1821 a blast furnace and a smelting building were added. In 1817 the family's new mansion was completed. The Oberhammer was also now owned by Buderus and was renamed Georgenhammer . In 1822 Georg Buderus I bought the Christianshütte near Schupbach in the county of Wied-Runkel . In 1824 the previous lease Schellnhausen Hammerwerk was bought. The plant was renamed Louisenhammer in 1827 , after Georg's wife. The Eisenhammer, which was in the County of Leiningen-Westerburg , also passed into family ownership in 1830.
In the course of this expansion, more family members were added to the management of the family company. In 1830, three nephews of Georg Buderus I entered the business: Georg Carl Theodor Buderus (* 1808; † 1873, later Georg Buderus II ), Alexander Richard August Leberecht Theodor Moritz Buderus (* 1814; † 1871), both sons by Johann Buderus, and Friedrich Ludwig August Buderus (* 1810), son of Anton Buderus. On July 1, 1838, a new partnership agreement was signed between Georg Buderus I and his three nephews. The general inventory of December 31, 1836 showed:
- Peculiar smelting works: Audenschmiede and Christianshütte
- Lease works: Löhnberger Hütte, Friedrichshütte with Hessenbrücker Hammer and Hirzenhainer Hütte
- Strange hammer mills: Louisenhammer, Georgenhammer and Gemünder Hammer
- Mines: Iron stone mines, Mehlbacher silver mine and Buderus lignite mine
- Other possessions: Hessenbrücker Mühle, Horloffsmühle, Haus in Weilburg and Roheisen-Magazin in Frankfurt am Main.
Acquisitions and closings of smelters (1840-1860)
Georg Buderus I died on February 26, 1840 in his second home in Frankfurt / Main . His wife Louise received a severance payment from his nephews and they redistributed the partnership's shares. Richard and Georg Buderus II each received 5/18 and Friedrich Buderus 8/18 shares in the partnership.
In 1846 the Aßlarer Hütte was leased, as was the Oberndorfer Hütte, both of which were located in the Wetzlar district and belonged to the rulership of Solms-Braunfels . Both huts could not be operated profitably in the long run. The Aßlarer Hütte was shut down in 1859 and the Oberndorfer in 1861. In 1855 a new steel and hammer mill was added, which was managed by Wolfgang Ernst III. Prince zu Ysenburg and Büdingen bought. Neuschmitten, which was in the valley of the Bracht near Wächtersbach , was extremely unfavorable for a steelworks at the time. The ores had to be transported by cart from the Wetzlar area. This turned out to be unprofitable, so that this hut was also closed in 1859. The cabin closures were related to the 1857 outgoing of North America Great Depression , which had a negative impact also on the domestic steel industry.
On May 24, 1856, the firm decided to convene a board of directors. This board of directors included the three nephews, as well as the three long-time managers Gottfried Stuhl from Friedrichshütte in Laubach, Fritz Spies from Löhnberger Hütte near Weilburg and Georg Friedrich Carl Heitefuß from Aßlarer Hütte. Initially, Asslar was the headquarters of the administration. After iron mining there was stopped, the company's headquarters were relocated to Wetzlar.
When Friedrich Buderus bought the sheet metal rolling mill "Albion" near Neuwied on his own account in 1857, without asking his co-partners beforehand , he provoked a serious and ultimately irreparable rift. He repeatedly tried to incorporate this plant into the company, but his cousins were against it, so that he finally founded his own company under the name L. Fr. Buderus Germania .
Connection to the supra-regional railway network and the Ruhr area (from 1862), introduction of coke ovens
In 1861 Buderus acquired the Hedwigshütte near Lollar . It was located on the Main-Weser Railway , so that the pig iron products could now be sent quickly and easily to customers at greater distances. Furthermore, it was able to obtain coke from the Ruhr district via Paderborn at a considerably lower cost than via the previous railway route . There was now a direct rail link between the iron ore-rich Lahn area and the coal-rich Ruhr area . In 1862 the Deutz-Gießener Railway was opened. Ore dispatch and iron sales were thus finally independent of the Lahn region.
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Based on the adjoining railway line, the Hedwigshütte was renamed Main-Weser-Hütte . It became the birthplace of the modern development of Buderus. At the factory built by Justus Kilian near Lollar in 1854, Buderus first had to build new blast furnaces because the old ones were unusable. On November 9, 1863, the first Minerva blast furnace was blown. The second blast furnace, Vulkan, followed in November of the next year . Vulkan was the first coke oven on the middle and upper Lahn. The new plant was headed from 1862 by Georg Buderus III (* 1838), the eldest son of Georg Buderus II. With the introduction of coke ovens, the charcoal huts became superfluous and unprofitable, so that they were abandoned. In the mid- 1860s , the Georgen and Hessenbrücker hammers and in 1872 the Louisenhammer were shut down. 1866 the Löhnberger Hütte.
In contrast, ore extraction reached its peak in 1867 with 129,412 tons of iron ore . In the 19th century, the center of iron ore mining from Buderus moved from Upper Hesse to the Lahn district, with the main focus being on the Wetzlar mining district.
Dissolution of the partnership (1870)
In 1870 the family quarrel intensified and could ultimately no longer be regulated by internal family contracts. Above all, Friedrich Buderus and his idiosyncratic trade policy were held responsible. The partnership was officially dissolved on January 18, 1870. From then on, there were two separate companies 'Buderus', once the L. Fr. Buderus zu Audenschmiede , while Friedrich Buderus was the Audenschmiede, most of the mining area near Weilburg and a severance payment in Received an amount of 225,000 marks. The second company was called Open Trading Company Gebrüder Buderus zur Main-Weser-Hütte near Lollar and was continued by the brothers Richard and Georg. Friedrichshütte, the origin of the Buderus family business, was sold in 1870 because the company could not come to an agreement with the administration of the County of Solms-Laubach on a new lease.
Georg Buderus II. And his son Georg Buderus III. After the establishment of the new company, they acquired building land near the Wetzlar train station, where they built a new blast furnace based on coke. Richard Buderus died on March 1, 1871 and his family took over half of the shares in the OHG. The new Sophienhütte in Wetzlar got its name from the mother of Georg Buderus II and Richard Buderus. The first blast furnace was blown in Wetzlar on August 1st, 1872.
On December 8, 1873, the head of the Buderus family, Bergrat Georg Buderus II, died . His son, Georg Buderus III, took over the management of the family company and expanded the pig iron production. His brother Hugo Buderus , who joined the company in 1874 as a partner with equal rights, mainly focused on the foundry business. Hugo Buderus was in charge of the Hirzenhainer Hütte. In 1878 the Christianshütte was closed and a new foundry was built in Lollar with the models that were still there. Part of the foundry iron developed by Buderus in the same year was processed here. The foundry, whose workforce consisted of formers from Christianshütte, quickly acquired a good reputation for building modern room furnaces . In 1880 the Buderus brothers bought back a large part of the mine property in the Weilburg area, which had been awarded to Friedrich Buderus during the family dispute with him. On February 9, 1880, Buderus bought the Lahnhütte near Gießen and also produced cast iron there. This hut was named after the mother of the shareholders and was henceforth called Margarethenhütte.
Conversion into a stock corporation (1884)
After the family had acquired the Georgshütte from the prince and later Prince Georg zu Solms-Braunfels in 1883 , they owned all the pig iron works on the Lahn , albeit at the price of a very high level of debt. From 1870 onwards Buderus had spent seven million marks to purchase iron works and another five million marks to expand the ore base. The bad iron prices at that time reduced the company's profits considerably. With these financial burdens and in this size, the family business could no longer exist as an OHG. For this reason, the Buderus brothers converted the company into a stock corporation in 1884 . The Central German Credit Bank helped the company with a loan of 6.6 million marks to favorable credit conditions.
Wilhelm Buderus , who had managed the Sophienhütte for 16 years, died on May 20, 1888 at the age of 45. Hugo Buderus, who had always been an advocate of foundry production within the family business, took over the Hirzenhainer ironworks in 1891 in order to be able to go independent from the family stock company. After Friedrich Buderus, another family member left the association to run his own company. His company ran under the name Eisenwerk Hirzenhain HR Buderus . Georg Buderus III died in Lollar on June 28, 1895. He had endeavored right up to the end to maneuver the company through the economic crisis and to preserve the family character of the company. Shortly before his death, he agreed to the sale of the Main-Weser-Hütte in Lollar to a newly formed company under the leadership of Hugo Buderus. In 1895 Hugo converted the company he was running into the Hirzenhain and Lollar Aktiengesellschaft ironworks, based in Hirzenhain . Carl Buderus, who had previously been the head of the Lollar foundry that was founded in 1878, became a member of the board alongside his brother Hugo. In the Lollar foundry, which had an excellent reputation for producing the Lönholdt stoves, the best long-burning stoves of the time, the first industrial production of cast-iron boiler elements in Germany was started in 1895 . The first radiator factory on the European continent was built here in 1898 .
The other Buderus company owned by Georg Buderus III, who died in 1895, initially relocated its headquarters from Lollar to Giessen. The Buderus'schen Eisenwerke were now a pure pig iron producer, because Hugo Buderus had brought the processing sites under his management (in addition to the Buderus family, the house banks were also involved in the Hirzenhain and Lollar ironworks). After the death of Georg Buderus III, the authorized signatory Friedrich Schiele took over the management. He was related to the Buderus family through his marriage to Amalie Buderus, the sister of Georg Buderus III.
End of the family business (1896)
The financial situation of the Buderus'sche Eisenwerke stock corporation deteriorated further despite the sale of the Main-Weser-Hütte and the cash that came into the company. As a result, the house banks decided that the company had to be restructured. They made Eduard Kaiser head of the company as general director. He was supported by mine director Ludwig Roth and Reinhard Buderus for the smelter operations. From December 31, 1895 they formed the new board of directors of Buderus'schen Eisenwerke. With Eduard Kaiser as general director and non-family member, the Buderus family business ended. After Reinhard Buderus left the management board in 1896, the Buderus family was only represented on the supervisory board of Buderus'schen Eisenwerke.
In 1900 Eduard Kaiser sold the Margaretenhütte premises to the city of Gießen . The stock exchange listing of the Buderus share took place on April 8, 1899 in Berlin and on April 12, 1899 in Frankfurt am Main. Kaiser's goal was to profitably utilize the by-products in pig iron production. Therefore, in 1899, the company began using the slag from the Wetzlar blast furnace plant to produce cement . In addition, the pig iron produced should largely be processed in-house in order to become more independent from the fluctuating pig iron market. From 1901 cast iron pipes were also produced in a newly established foundry in Wetzlar and in January 1902 a new foundry for special castings (e.g. for electric motor housings) was established.
On January 1, 1903, Hugo Buderus' company split into Eisenwerke Hirzenhain Hugo Buderus and Eisenwerke Lollar A.-G. in Lollar. The iron works Lollar A.-G. merged with Buderus'schen Eisenwerke on March 28, 1905, because the companies were largely owned by the same shareholders, namely members of the Buderus clan. Buderus now needed a new foundry for drainage pipes, so on August 8, 1907, the Karlshütte foundry near Staffel, which had been founded on May 30, 1900, was bought . A new problem was the supply of the blast furnaces with enough coke . Therefore, the Bergbau AG Massen was merged or bought, which officially became part of the Buderus'schen Eisenwerke on January 1, 1911.
Eduard Kaiser, head of Buderus, died on June 27, 1911. Kaiser had managed to maneuver the loss-making company out of the crisis years of 1895 and 1896 and to shape it into a stock corporation that paid constant dividends of between 5 and 9%. After his death, the board of directors decided to radically reorganize the Buderus'schen Eisenwerke and on July 27, 1911 to convert it into the Buderus'sche Handelsgesellschaft . A new chairman of the board was found in Alfred Gröbler , who started work on January 1, 1912 together with the smelter Georg Jantzen and the commercial director Heinrich Jansen.
From World War I to 1935
The First World War, which broke out on August 1, 1914, was a turning point for the company . On July 31, 1914, the company employed 8,500 workers, of whom 2000 were drafted for military service. In February 1915 prisoners of war were used in production and from May 1915 German women were employed in the factories. At the end of 1916 the number of employed prisoners of war peaked at 1,584. As part of the war economy, production in the gray foundries was switched to army deliveries, especially ammunition. In 1915 a steel foundry was set up on the grounds of the Sophienhütte in order to be able to manufacture cast steel grenades . In 1917/18 two more Röchling-Rodenhauser electric ovens followed.
After the end of the war in 1918, new foundries and associated processing plants were increasingly built in order to be able to process the pig iron extracted more efficiently. On April 15, 1919, Buderus acquired most of the shares in Eisenwerke Hugo Buderus GmbH and on May 23, 1919, the general assembly decided to merge the Westdeutsche Eisenwerke Aktiengesellschaft in Essen-Kray with Buderus. On April 20, 1920, Stahlwerke Buderus-Röchling Aktiengesellschaft was founded, a joint venture between Röchling in Völklingen and Buderus with a 50% stake. The Kray and Staffel plants came to a standstill due to the invasion of French and Belgian troops in the course of the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. Georgshütte was given up on September 29, 1925. The Massen mine was also shut down on December 31, 1925 due to increasing operating losses.
In 1926 Gröbler died, who had been committed to maintaining the company since 1912 and successfully brought it through the world war. His successor was Kommerzienrat Adolf Koehler, who had come to Buderus on April 16, 1898 as a commercial apprentice. In 1917 he became commercial director and in 1919 a member of the board. In the course of the savings measures during the time of the global economic crisis , the formally still independent Eisenwerke Hirzenhain were fully integrated into the Buderus'schen Eisenwerke on November 1, 1932, and thus after 41 years of independence. From then on there was only one company called Buderus.
Of great importance was the community of interests decided in 1932 with the over-indebted Hessen-Nassauischer Hüttenverein GmbH , which came into force on January 1, 1933. This community of interests strengthened the Buderus foundry sector in particular, as the Hüttenverein had ore mines in the Dill district and a small blast furnace near Oberscheld, as well as six foundries in the Dill district and in the Biedenkopf district . On December 1, 1935, the Hüttenverein was completely absorbed by Buderus'schen Eisenwerke.
time of the nationalsocialism
During the Third Reich, Buderus was involved in covert armaments production for the armament of the Wehrmacht . From Heereswaffenamt Commerce Adolf Koehler was ordered to throw grenades for infantry mortars produce. The annual report from 1937 stated that the forced conversion of production had led to considerable losses in sales, as parts of it had come to a standstill, especially that of cast products. In the Rhein-Mainische Wirtschafts-Zeitung of November 5, 1934, Koehler spoke out against the "increased mining of domestic iron ores" demanded by "various bodies" and called for the state to "manage" the "natural resources given to it by nature ". Until 1938, the Buderus supervisory board consisted of Jewish members. Of them, at the end of 1936, Albert Katzenellenbogen was the only one who was still chairman of the supervisory board.
In the pre-war years up to 1939, the foundry company Buderus had to accept production restrictions in the foundry sector due to the national socialist rearmament policy and losses amounting to millions in the iron ore mining due to state-required increases in capacity. This interrupted the transformation of Buderus , which had begun in the 1920s , from a vertically structured mining and metallurgical company (including coal mining and coke production) to the leading German foundry group. Adolf Koehler died on December 13, 1941, and was succeeded by Heinrich Giesbert as chairman of the board. Neither of the Buderus board chairs were members of the NSDAP .
On September 19, 1944, the Buderus'schen Eisenwerke site in Wetzlar was bombed , which brought the entire pig iron production to a standstill. The other departments were kept running until the end of the war, despite bomb damage. At the beginning of 1945 around 45% of the approximately 8,000 employees were foreign workers. About 70% of the production was used for war purposes. In 1944 the Amalienhütte was leased to Friedrich Krupp AG and the Hirzenhain plant was ceded to Breuer-Werke AG, a subsidiary of its own.
After the Second World War
American troops occupied the Sophienhütte, the company's main production site and headquarters, in Wetzlar on March 29, 1945. At the same time, all Buderus operations in the Lahn-Dill area and in Upper Hesse came to a standstill. The outworks were largely spared bombs during the war, but they suffered high material losses due to looting at the end of the war and their operability was seriously impaired. On October 20, 1945, the members of the board resigned except for the chairman of the board, Heinrich Giesbert (who, however, was taken into custody in mid-November 1945 because of his membership in the Commerzbank supervisory board ) and mine director Wilhelm Witte. The Allies also decreed that from July 31, 1945, the supervisory board had lost its mandate, so that the registry court in Limburg an der Lahn in conjunction with the government of Greater Hesse set up a supervisory board on November 20, 1945, which on December 1 1945 State Secretary ret. D. Hans Bredow , the "father of broadcasting" during the Weimar Republic , elected chairman.
Bredow and Witte now fought for the approval of the American military government to start up operations again with the products of the prewar period, primarily that of the blast furnaces to supply the foundries with pig iron. On March 5, 1946, the first blast furnace in Wetzlar resumed operations. At the same time, pipe production in the Wetzlar plant (the former Sophienhütte) started up again. Franz Grabowski and Franz Grosser became new board members in August. It was not yet possible to work under normal conditions, because neither the vote on the Hessian state constitution took place nor the currency reform was consistently implemented. Only after the currency reform in June 1948 could operations in the Buderus foundries run under normal conditions again. On October 25, 1949, workers' pensions were introduced and over 30 million euros were paid to former workers. On September 30, 1950 the new iron art foundry was opened in Hirzenhain and on October 20, 1950 the centrifugal foundry in Staffel. On December 1st, a new training workshop followed in Wetzlar to promote the next generation of the company.
1950s and 1960s
Buderus was fighting in those years with the Hessian state government to based on the "socialization article" 41 of the Hesse Constitution in trust management of the country located pit, metallurgical and electricity companies in the Buderus iron works. The state government wanted to bring the dispute to an end and founded its own company, Hessische Berg- und Hüttenwerke AG Wetzlar, with a provisional share capital of 100,000 DM. On March 6, 1954, the dispute came to an end when a contract on the joint use of the Pits and huts was closed. For this, the share capital was raised to 15 million marks and Buderus was granted a blocking minority of 26 percent and a severance payment. The accounting was regulated by a separate contract dated April 13, 1954.
As it became clear that plastics were increasingly intervening in the production of the pipe sector, Omniplast GmbH & Co. KG was founded in Frankfurt-Höchst together with Halberger Hütte in Brebach / Saar . On April 1, 1956, Heinz Gries took over the technical management of the company from Franz Grosser. The shares in Buderus'schen Eisenwerke were widely spread, but in 1956 Friedrich Flick succeeded in acquiring the majority of shares in Buderus through Metallhüttenwerke Lübeck . Flick became deputy chairman of the supervisory board. Alfred Rohde from Lübeck Metallhüttenwerke AG became a new member of the Supervisory Board. In 1958 Buderus acquired the majority share in Burger Eisenwerke AG, the largest German company in the heating and cooking appliance industry with the brand name Juno. In 1964, Buderus expanded abroad for the first time in the post-war period with the acquisition of small shares in Tiroler Röhren- und Metallwerke AG . At the beginning of 1965, the Röchling Group's shares in Stahlwerke Röchling-Buderus AG were taken over by Buderus and from then on the company continued under the name Edelstahlwerke Buderus AG .
On May 18, 1965, the state of Hesse's shareholding in the share capital of Hessische Berg- und Hüttenwerke AG, now amounting to DM 18.5 million, went to Buderus. The Wetzlar iron and steel industry was now "rounded off" and was one hundred percent in the hands of Buderus. The new CEO from 1967, Karl von Winckler, wanted to strengthen the heating technology sector and therefore took over a majority of shares in the Senkingwerk company in Hildesheim , which u. a. Manufactured heating and cooking appliances.
1970-1985
The main task of corporate policy after the end of the reconstruction years and the economic crisis of 1966/67 was to restructure the foundry area, which had become partially uneconomical. The Essen-Kray plant was the first foundry to be shut down on December 31, 1971. Essen-Kray was under strong pressure to substitute steel bathtubs, which were lighter and cheaper to manufacture than the cast-iron bathtubs that had been produced here since the late 1920s. On July 24, 1972, the honorary chairman of the supervisory board, Friedrich Flick, died. The Wilhelmshütte in the Biedenkopf district was the first Buderus foundry to shut down in 1974 , followed by the Amalienhütte in Bad Laasphe, Westphalia, and the Niederschelden plant (the former Schelder Hütte ) in the Dillkreis in 1975 . At the same time, the foundry operations in the Breidenbach plant for automotive casting were significantly expanded. On July 10, 1975, Buderus sold the shares in Metallhüttenwerke Lübeck and took over the previous subsidiary Omniplast GmbH & Co in order to become more active in the plastics sector.
Burger Eisenwerke AG had concluded a profit-loss transfer agreement with Buderus since December 15, 1958, and the Burger company was merged with Buderus on January 1, 1976. In 1977, the Hessian mining and steel works in Buderus. On July 22, 1977, the general meeting decided to increase the company's share capital by DM 18,875,000 to DM 85,625,000. At the same time the name of the company was changed to Buderus Aktiengesellschaft (short: Buderus AG). On March 14, 1981, the Buderus company celebrated its 250th anniversary . With the blowing out of the last blast furnace in Wetzlar, the era of pig iron production at Buderus ended in 1981 after the ore mining of the Buderus Group came to a standstill with the closure of the Falkenstein mine near Oberscheld (Dillkreis) in 1973.
1985-2000
From the end of 1985 to the end of 1991 Buderus belonged to Feldmühle Nobel AG , into which Friedrich Karl Flick had brought his industrial property. After a subsidiary of Metallgesellschaft AG, Metallgesellschaft Industriebeteiligungen AG , took over the non-paper activities of Feldmühle Nobel AG on January 1, 1992, Buderus' share capital was increased in 1992 and 20 percent of the shares were placed on the stock exchange. In June 1994 the Metallgesellschaft listed all of its Buderus shares on the stock exchange as a result of the financial difficulties it had experienced at the end of 1993. Since then, Buderus has been considered a takeover candidate.
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Following the sale of the Aircraft Accessories division in 1997, Buderus AG consisted of three divisions:
- Heating products ,
- Castings and
- Stainless steel products .
After the restructuring of Buderus in 1987, the heating products division, together with Buderus Heiztechnik GmbH, was the flagship of the Buderus Group. This subsidiary was by far the Buderus AG division with the highest sales. Research and development was very important. The cast products division with Buderus Guss GmbH was active in the areas of cast iron pipe technology, brake discs , special castings, separators and artificial castings. In the course of time, Buderus Guss built up an extensive network of sales activities. As a manufacturer of semi-finished products , hot strip , cold strip , open- die forgings, forged steel bars (tool steel and structural steel) and closed-die forged products , the stainless steel products division with Edelstahlwerke Buderus AG is one of the leading European manufacturers and processors of high-quality stainless steels. Thanks to strengths in the field of materials, metallurgy, forming technology and further processing, the group division was able to maintain a leading position in special steels.
In 2000, Buderus AG joined the German business foundation's initiative to compensate Nazi forced laborers .
Takeover by Bosch
In the first years of the 21st century, Robert Bosch GmbH began buying up Buderus AG shares. In April 2003, Bosch made a public takeover offer, which met with broad approval. On September 1, 2003, the Bosch share in Buderus reached 97.16 percent. The Buderus Annual General Meeting on May 13, 2004 approved the squeeze-out of minority shareholders with 98.7 percent of the shares represented. The corresponding resolution stipulated that the shares of the minority shareholders should be transferred to the main shareholder, Robert Bosch GmbH, in return for cash compensation.
At the same time, the Annual General Meeting resolved to merge the heating technology activities of Bosch and Buderus with 98.8 percent of the share capital represented. The exclusion of minority shareholders became effective with the entry in the commercial register on July 23, 2004. In August 2004, BBT Thermotechnik GmbH was entered in the commercial register, Buderus Heiztechnik GmbH operates under this new name. Bosch-Buderus Thermotechnik GmbH was renamed Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH with effect from January 1, 2008 . Wetzlar became the seat of the Bosch Thermotechnology division.
Due to the focus on the heating technology market , the previous group divisions cast and stainless steel products ( Buderus Edelstahl ) were sold in 2005. With the exception of Buderus Guss GmbH, which remained in the Bosch Group with the production of brake discs at the Breidenbach location , the cast products division was initially sold to the venture capital fund SSVP and under the umbrella of Buderus Foundry Management S.à rl , based in Wasserbillig ( Luxembourg ) continued. In 2012 Buderus Kanalguss GmbH in Limburg an der Lahn was sold to the Meierguss Group and has been operating as Meierguss Limburg GmbH since then.
In 2005, Edelstahlwerke Buderus was taken over by Böhler-Uddeholm AG , a stainless and tool steel company based in Vienna. Böhler-Uddeholm, in turn, was taken over by Voestalpine AG , based in Linz , in 2007/08 . The largest investments since then have been an open-die forging press, the redesign of the steelworks and a modern dedusting system. The current Wetzlar product portfolio includes stainless steel, tool steel, open die forgings, hot and cold strip as well as rolled semi-finished and closed-die forgings for the automotive, household appliance and energy machinery industries. The number of employees is around 1400.
Buderus / Bosch Thermotechnik now has a company tradition of more than 155 years in Wetzlar . Today, Bosch Thermotechnik is headquartered in Wetzlar, and the Buderus thermotechnology brand is also managed from here. In total, more than 400 Bosch employees work in Wetzlar. Bosch Thermotechnology produces in more than 20 plants in Europe, America and Asia and achieved sales of 3.3 billion euros in 2016. The product portfolio ranges from floor-standing and wall-mounted heating devices, water heaters, solar thermal systems, heat pumps for heating and cooling to systems for large businesses and industry such as large boilers, combined heat and power plants and systems for waste heat utilization in industrial processes. The products are sold under the Bosch, Buderus brands and selected regional product brands.
List of CEOs and CEOs
- Johann Wilhelm Buderus I (1731–1753)
- Elisabetha Magdalena Buderus (1753–1762)
- Johann Wilhelm Buderus II (1762–1806)
- Johann Christian Wilhelm Buderus (1806–1815)
- Anton Georg Wilhelm Christian Buderus (1806–1811)
- Georg Buderus I (1806-1840)
- Friedrich Buderus (1840–1862)
- Richard Buderus (1840–1871)
- Georg Buderus II (1840–1873)
- Hugo Buderus (1874-1891)
- Georg Buderus III (1873–1895)
- Friedrich Schiele (1895)
- Eduard Kaiser (1896–1911)
- Alfred Gröbler (1912–1926)
- Adolf Koehler (1926–1941)
- Heinrich Giesbert (1942–1945)
- Franz Grabowski (1946–1953)
- Franz Grosser (1946–1953)
- Franz Grabowski (General Director) (1953–1967)
- Karl von Winckler (1967–1974)
- Hans Werner Kolb (1974-1983)
- Frank Rogge (1983–1988)
- Hans-Ulrich Plaul (1989-2001)
- Uwe Lüders (2001-2003)
- Andreas Nobis (2003)
- Joachim Berner (2003-2008)
Former and existing subsidiaries and holdings
- Buderus Edelstahl GmbH , Wetzlar, emerged from Edelstahlwerke Buderus AG in 2006
- Buderus Guss GmbH, Breidenbach , emerged in 2003 from Buderus Gießerei Wetzlar GmbH
- Buderus Kanalguss GmbH, Limburg ad Lahn
- Buderus Schleiftechnik, Asslar
- Buderus Immobilien GmbH, Wetzlar, successor to the Wetzlar construction association from 2002
- Buderus'sche Handelsgesellschaft mbH, Wetzlar
- Buderus'sche Handelsgesellschaft mbH, Berlin
- Hessische Berg- und Huettenwerke AG (Berghuette), Wetzlar
- Krauss-Maffei AG , Munich-Allach
- Omniplast GmbH & Co. KG, Ehringshausen Krs. Wetzlar
- Ursania-Chemie GmbH, Ehringshausen Krs. Wetzlar
- Omnical Ges. Für Kessel- u. Apparatebau mbH, Ewersbach / Dillkreis
- Burger Eisenwerke AG (Juno) to Electrolux and partly to Sell aircraft kitchens
- Logana forwarding agency, Wetzlar
- Ferrum GmbH, Dinkelscherben
- Rittershaus & Blecher GmbH, Wuppertal-Barmen
- Winner boiler plant, bush huts
- Baustoff-Union, Wetzlar
- HAGEWE GmbH & Co., Ötigheim / Rastatt
- Senking works , Hildesheim
- Roeder Großküchentechnik , Darmstadt
- Ready-mixed concrete, Wetzlar
- TBG Mittelhessische Lieferbeton, Wetzlar
- GeWoBau, Wetzlar
- WANIT GmbH & Co. KG, Wanne-Eickel
- Zentroguss GmbH, Wetzlar
- Breuer-Werke GmbH, Frankfurt am Main-Hoechst
- Metallhuettenwerke Luebeck GmbH , Luebeck-Herrenwyk
- Eckert & Ziegler GmbH, Weissenburg / Bavaria
- Fellner & Ziegler GmbH, Frankfurt am Main
Sponsorship
The Buderus E-Bike Tour has been organized in the Bergisches Land since 2017 . In addition, the company is the main sponsor of RSV Köln , which plays in the rugby Bundesliga .
See also
- Hirzenhain labor education camp , from 1943 provided prisoners and forced laborers for the Buderus subsidiary Breuer Werke AG
literature
- Hans Schubert , Josef Ferfer, Georg Schache: From the origin and development of the Buderus'schen Eisenwerke Wetzlar. 2 volumes. Munich 1938.
- Rainer Haus: The Buderus share - a security through the ages. Wetzlar 2000.
- Hans Pohl: Buderus 1932–1995. Wetzlar 2001, ISBN 3-00-007455-4 .
- Buderus'sche Eisenwerke (Ed.): Buderus-Lollar Handbook. Lollar 1965.
- Rainer Haus, Hans Sarkowicz: Fire and Iron. 275 years of warmth from Buderus. Piper, 2006, ISBN 3-492-04947-8 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Buderus in the catalog of the German National Library
- Literature on Buderus in the Hessian Bibliography
- Early documents and newspaper articles on Buderus in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
- Buderus heating technology
- Buderus Guss GmbH
- Buderus Kunstguss
- Buderus Edelstahl GmbH
- stahlseite.de - Photo documentation of the Buderus Edelstahl-Werk, Wetzlar, accessed on January 5, 2011
- former Buderus Giesserei Wetzlar GmbH (special castings, cast iron pipe systems) today DUKTUS
- former Buderus Kanalguss GmbH, Limburg (cast iron products for municipal infrastructure) today MeierGuss Limburg
Individual evidence
- ↑ Böhler Uddeholm takes over Edelstahlwerke Buderus AG. In: APA Original Text Service. March 31, 2005, accessed June 5, 2012 .
- ↑ Supervised participations: Buderus Guss ( Memento from August 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ E-bikes have become an important part of cycling culture. In: rp-online.de. July 31, 2017, accessed July 17, 2018 .
- ↑ Tour of historic motorcycles and e-bike tours. (No longer available online.) In: www.wipperfuerth.de. Archived from the original on July 17, 2018 ; accessed on July 17, 2018 . 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.
- ↑ Accompanying the tour of historic motorcycles and e-bike tour 2018 in the VIP bus. In: www.mapillary.com. Retrieved July 31, 2018 .
- ↑ Sponsors and partners of the RSV Cologne. In: rugby-koeln.de. October 16, 2019, accessed October 16, 2019 .
