Chemical factory Griesheim-Elektron

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The chemical factory Griesheim-Elektron was a German company in the chemical industry based in Griesheim am Main.

Historic administration building in Frankfurt, Gutleutstrasse 31

The company was created in 1898 from the merger of the Frankfurter Actiengesellschaft für agricultural chemical products and its subsidiary Chemische Fabrik Elektron . It became known above all with new manufacturing processes in electrochemistry and the development of materials and polymers .

Various chemical sites in Germany that still exist today emerged from the company, including the Griesheim industrial park .

history

1856 to 1925

In 1856 the chemist Ludwig Baist founded the Frankfurter Actiengesellschaft for agricultural chemical products with the help of Frankfurt donors . Since the Free City of Frankfurt tolerated no industrial production within its borders, he built his factory in neighboring Griesheim am Main . The company initially produced fertilizers , sulfuric acid , nitric acid and soda .

In 1863 the company was renamed under the name Chemische Fabrik Griesheim am Main and the production of tar dyes started.

In 1882, chlorinated hydrocarbons and products derived from them were added, which were needed for the production of indigo and chloroform .

In 1892 the subsidiary Chemische Fabrik Elektron in Griesheim started up the first chlor-alkali electrolysis under its technical director Ignatz Stroof . As early as 1893, a second plant was built in a newly established plant in Bitterfeld . Another chlorine electrolysis plant in Greppin , built in 1894, was leased by Griesheim-Elektron in 1898 and finally taken over in 1921.

In 1894, the Elektron works began to produce graphite electrodes , which are mainly used in welding technology , in carbon arc lamps , in the steel industry and for the production of aluminum by means of fused metal electrolysis .

While looking for new possible uses for compressed hydrogen , chief engineer Ernst Wiss von Griesheim-Elektron came into contact with Bernhard Dräger from Drägerwerk Lübeck, Heinr. & Bernh. Dräger . In 1900/01, Dräger developed the "Dräger oxyhydrogen welding torch" from its oxy-fuel torch invented around 1896. There was a cooperation in the field of welding technology between Drägerwerk and Griesheim-Elektron. Dräger produced the welding technology and Griesheim-Elektron sold it. Wiss and Dräger also founded a working group for experiments in the field of autogenous metalworking.

In 1905, Griesheim-Elektron acquired the Oehler paint factory in Offenbach am Main , as the paint business was the most profitable division of the chemical industry at that time. In 1912, Naphtol AS, the first two-component dyeing process, came onto the market.

In 1908 Griesheim-Elektron developed the material electron , an alloy of magnesium and aluminum that is mainly used in optics, precision mechanics and aircraft construction.

In 1912 Fritz Klatte in Griesheim succeeded in producing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyvinyl acetate for the first time . However, the company found no technical application for PVC, which was initially only used to store the large amounts of chlorine produced during electrolysis, and later gave back the patents. It was not until the end of the 1920s that the plastic PVC was used on a large scale .

During the First World War , the Griesheim plant was one of the largest suppliers of explosives for the German army. In the production of picric acid , which had been in production since 1889, there had already been a serious explosion in 1901 that left 26 dead and 94 injured. The entrance portal to the Griesheim cemetery by the architect Carl Heinrich Gramm was donated by Griesheim-Elektron as a memorial for the victims. Even the military stationed in Frankfurt had to rush to help. On the inside, bronze plaques give the names of the victims. In the first year of the war in 1916, another explosion in a branch near Heusenstamm left 10 dead and many injured. Among the victims was the plant manager, but also women and children. The explosion occurred while filling grenades. In memory of the victims, a monument was erected in the old cemetery in Offenbach am Main , which was designed by the architect Hugo Eberhardt .

During the war, a consortium consisting of the companies Griesheim-Elektron and Metallbank & Metallurgische Gesellschaft AG (a subsidiary of the Metallgesellschaft ) set up aluminum works in Rummelsburg (see also: Klingenberg power plant ), Horrem and Bitterfeld . In order to further increase aluminum production in the German Reich, the establishment of the Vereinigte Aluminum-Werke AG (VAW) and the construction of another aluminum plant were sought. The VAW was founded on April 21, 1917. The consortium of Griesheim-Elektron and Metallbank held half of the VAW. At the end of 1919, the German Reich then took over the shares of the companies involved.

1925 to 1952

In 1925, the chemical company Griesheim-Elektron closed under Executive Theodor Plieninger the IG Farbenindustrie to. The Griesheim plant was incorporated into the Mittelrhein operating group . Since the plant was comparatively small and could not be expanded, it fell behind in the internal competition between the various IG Farben locations. The electrochemical plants and most of the inorganic production were shut down. Only the electrode production and the organic operations were modernized.

During the Second World War , like many in the chemical industry, the plant increasingly employed Eastern European forced laborers from 1941 to replace the German workers drafted into the Wehrmacht. The forced laborers, 987 of whom are known by name, had to maintain production under sometimes inhuman conditions.

At the end of the war at the end of March 1945, American troops confiscated the Griesheim plant and planned to dismantle all facilities. The plant was initially used as a depot and supply store for the army. On August 31, 1946, however, the military government released the plant again. The company resumed the production of organic intermediates under the name of Chemische Fabrik Griesheim am Main (US Administration) . However, the factory with its 1,400 employees and an area of ​​61 hectares was too small to remain independent in the long term.

From 1952

When IG Farben was disentangled in 1951, the oxy-fuel and welding technology division was spun off into Knapsack Griesheim AG , in which Farbwerke Hoechst received a majority stake. At the same time, the Meitingen plant was affiliated with " Siemens Planiawerke AG for coal factories " as "Siemens Plania - Chemical Plant Griesheim". In 1953 this new division was majority taken over by Hoechst AG. From 1965, the technical gases division traded as Messer Griesheim GmbH. The rest of the Griesheim chemical factory was incorporated into the Hoechst paintworks as the Griesheim plant . The Offenbach plant was originally supposed to be dismantled after 1945, but was then maintained as " Naphtol-Chemie Offenbach " and later integrated as the Offenbach plant near Hoechst. The operations of the plant predominantly manufactured preliminary and intermediate products, which were further processed in the other plants of the group. In 1977 Hoechst opened a plant for the production of pesticides.

In the 1980s, Hoechst modernized the site and built a powerful wastewater treatment plant . The location's steam boiler workshop temporarily took on maintenance work for museum railways , including the Frankfurt Historical Railway .

In 1985, Sigri GmbH was founded as a holding company by Si emens and Hoechst in Gri esheim, four years later Hoechst AG took over all Siemens shares and the electrode manufacturer Ringsdorff in Bonn. In 1992, Hoechst merged its graphite electrode production, which was bundled in Sigri GmbH, with the American Great Lakes Carbon to form S IGRI G reat L akes Carbon GmbH . In 1995, Hoechst sold its stakes in the listing of SGL Carbon AG, which was an important producer at the location until 2016.

In 1995, Hoechst brought the production of plant protection products in Griesheim into a joint venture with what was then Schering AG , Hoechst Schering Agrevo GmbH . Agrevo was later taken over by Aventis and has been part of the Bayer Group since 2003 as Bayer CropScience .

As part of the restructuring of the Hoechst Group, the plant with the former Hoechst Specialty Chemicals division was transferred to the Swiss Clariant AG in 1997 . In 2000 the transformation into an industrial park began . Clariant sold three operations for the manufacture of primary and intermediate products to AllessaChemie and subsequently sold further operations, including the site logistics to Infraserv Höchst in 2001 and the workshops to Bilfinger Berger Industrial Services in 2005 .

When Clariant's on-site services were outsourced to Industriepark Griesheim GmbH & Co. KG , the plant became Industriepark Griesheim on July 1, 2003 . In 2008, Clariant closed its last remaining production facilities. At times, the Dutch energy supplier Nuon planned to build a combined cycle power plant with an output of 400 megawatts in the Griesheim industrial park. However, he withdrew from the project in 2009 after a strategy change.

In September 2009 Clariant transferred the operation of the industrial park to Infrasite Griesheim , a subsidiary of Infraserv Höchst. At the traditional location, which had around 3,500 employees in the 1970s and 2,200 in 1993, around 900 people were still employed in 32 companies in 2015. In 2016 SGL Carbon ended its production of electrocathodes, in 2019 the last two chemical plants were shut down and chemical production in the industrial park Griesheim ended. At the end of 2019, Clariant leased 54 hectares to a real estate developer who wants to develop the area into a mixed-use commercial area . The operating license for the hazardous materials warehouse operated by Infraserv Logistics will be returned at the end of the year, so that the city planning restrictions in the vicinity of the industrial park according to the Seveso Directive will no longer apply. At the end of 2019, around 450 people were still working in the industrial park.

Chemical accidents at the Griesheim plant

At the beginning of the 20th century, two serious accidents occurred in the manufacture of explosives. On April 24, 1901, 26 people were killed and 94 injured in an explosion in picric acid production. A memorial at the Griesheimer Friedhof in Waldschulstrasse still commemorates this accident today. Another explosion occurred on November 20, 1917 in a plant for the production of trinitrotoluene . Four people were killed.

More recently, the plant made headlines with two chemical accidents that did not result in death, but shook public confidence in the safety and environmental sustainability of production.

The Shrove Monday incident

On February 22, 1993, a Shrove Monday , at four o'clock in the morning there was a sudden pressure increase in a reactor due to an operating error in a plant in Griesheim . Almost 10 tons of a chemical mixture, including ortho- nitroanisole , escaped through a safety valve and was deposited in the form of a sticky yellow precipitate on a strip 1.2 kilometers long and 300 meters wide. Residential areas for around 1,000 people and around 100 allotment gardens in the Schwanheim and Goldstein districts were affected . About 40 people had to be treated for breathing difficulties, skin and eye irritation or headaches. In a cleaning action that lasted for weeks, 36 hectares had to be cleaned of the precipitation and around 5000 cubic meters of earth had to be disposed of. The Hoechst later AG announced the direct costs of repairing the damage of 40 million DM in; In addition, there were the costs for the inspection of the plant safety in all plants triggered by the accident.

The damage to the image of Hoechst AG was even more serious. The company's crisis management and, in particular, its communication policy met with sharp criticism from the public because Hoechst had used a safety data sheet in the first information in which the chemical o -nitroanisole was classified as less toxic . A more recent study, which the company already had, had found that the chemical was possibly carcinogenic in animal experiments at high concentrations . The city health department announced on the day of the incident that, due to the low concentration of the substance, there was no immediate health risk from the chemical mixture. This did not reassure the public, however, especially since the workers assigned to clean up wore protective suits and breathing masks. Two days after the accident, the Hessian Environment Minister Joschka Fischer and, subsequently, Federal Environment Minister Klaus Töpfer and the Federal Environment Agency criticized the information policy of Hoechst AG. Only ten days after the accident did the chairman of the board, Wolfgang Hilger, appear before the public, apologize to the citizens of Schwanheim and Goldstein, but at the same time rule out any personal consequences.

In order to research the long-term consequences of the Griesheim accident, the City Health Office commissioned the Bremen Institute for Prevention Research and Social Medicine (BIPS) to create an exposure register for the 20,000 residents of the two districts affected. Around 6,600 residents took part in the survey, the data of which was to be stored for 30 years. The city health department came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of chronic, asthmatic or neurodermitic diseases as a result of the accident. Nevertheless, the question of further research and the handling of the collected data was still preoccupying the Frankfurt city council in March 2007.

The 1996 accident

On Saturday, January 27, 1996 at 6:47 am there was a deflagration at the Griesheim plant in a plant of the Hoechst subsidiary Hoechst Schering AgrEvo when a dryer that was still under pressure was opened for cleaning purposes. In this case, some were one thousand kg of plant protection isoproturon ( N- (4-isopropylphenyl) -N ', N'-dimethylurea ) is made. The odorless white powder precipitated on the factory premises and in the neighboring districts of Griesheim and Schwanheim. An area of ​​around 30 hectares was affected. Three employees of the company received outpatient treatment. As a precaution, three children were also taken to hospital for examination.

Since there was snow at this point in time, the precipitation could hardly be seen. The affected areas were cleaned, the contaminated snow layer disposed of in the wastewater treatment plant of the Griesheim plant. The information behavior of those responsible again caused criticism. Agrevo stated that the accident, including its follow-up costs, caused damage of around DM 10 million. The CEO of Hoechst, Jürgen Dormann , announced that the company would invest 150 million DM in the modernization of factories within 18 months. Where modernization fails, a closure must be considered. In an interview, Dormann asked "to what extent we can maintain chemical production, which deal with environmentally and health-relevant substances in large quantities, in a metropolitan area such as the Rhine-Main area" and coined the term urban-compatible for chemical production that is also carried out by could be accepted by a critical public.

The incident ultimately led to improvements in the security organization of all Hoechst plants, in particular by setting up emergency managers who were present around the clock and who immediately assess the danger of each incident, and the necessary measures, for example the formation of a task force for the company concerned and the authorities, coordinate. Although Hoechst cut around 160 jobs at the Griesheim plant within two years after Dormann's announcement, the plant was retained. As part of the reorganization of Hoechst AG into a strategic management holding company in 1997, Clariant took over the plant.

Griesheim Alps

For decades, the waste from the chemical factory was stored in an open landfill, popularly known as the Griesheim Alps . The location was west of the Autogenstraße and south of the tracks of the Main-Lahn-Bahn . ( 50 ° 5 ′ 38 ″  N , 8 ° 35 ′ 32 ″  E ) After measurements showed high levels of dioxins and furans, the waste dump was covered with iron oxide by Hoechst AG in 1992 on the instructions of the Hessian Ministry of the Environment . In the meantime the area is greened.

Old Schwanheimer Bridge

From 1905 to 1907 a narrow truss bridge over the Main , the Alte Schwanheimer Brücke, was built near the chemical factory . The only two-lane bridge connected Stroofstrasse in Griesheim with Eifelstrasse in Schwanheim opposite. It was blown up on March 26, 1945 by Wehrmacht engineers to stop the advance of American troops . In 1947 a makeshift bridge from American military stocks connected the Griesheim and Schwanheimer banks. It was demolished after the new Schwanheimer Bridge, built 600 meters downstream, was opened to traffic in September 1963.

Workers' housing

A housing estate for the company's workers was built on Elektronstrasse, which is named after the company and is now on the Frankfurt-Griesheim monument list .

literature

  • Industrial park Griesheim (ed.), Wolfgang Metternich: From the early days of the chemical industry to the industrial park Griesheim. 150 years of chemistry in Griesheim. (Festschrift) Frankfurt am Main 2006.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Michael Kamp : Bernhard Dräger: Inventor, Entrepreneur, Citizen. 1870 to 1928. Wachholtz Verlag GmbH, 2017, ISBN 978-3-52906-369-5 , p. 170.
  2. ^ Michael Kamp: Bernhard Dräger: Inventor, Entrepreneur, Citizen. 1870 to 1928. Wachholtz Verlag GmbH, 2017, ISBN 978-3-52906-369-5 , pp. 219 f.
  3. ^ Roet de Rouet, Henning: Frankfurt am Main as a Prussian garrison from 1866 to 1914. Frankfurt am Main 2016. P. 141.
  4. ^ Peter Josef Belli: Das Lautawerk der Vereinigte Aluminum-Werke AG (VAW) from 1917 to 1948, LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, pp. 41–44, 54–55, 62.
  5. ↑ Ringsdorffwerke Bonn founded in 1910 .
  6. ↑ History of SGL Carbon AG .
  7. ↑ Nuon: Kraftwerk is sold , Frankfurter Rundschau of September 7, 2009.
  8. ↑ Infraserv Höchst takes over Clariant site operations in Griesheim ( Memento from February 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
  9. ↑ Thorsten Winter: Chemical production in the industrial park Griesheim before the end. In: faz.net. April 8, 2019, accessed August 5, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Rainer Schulze: The end of chemistry. In: faz.net. December 17, 2019, accessed December 21, 2019 .
  11. ↑ See also the article by Klaus Reinfurth in Newsletter 10 ( memento from September 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) of the Institute for Urban History : Reinfurth gives the number of victims with 25 dead and almost 200 injured.
  12. ↑ For a summary of the Griesheim accident and its consequences, see FAZ of February 22, 2003, No. 45, p. 62.
  13. ↑ BIPS - Institute for Epidemiology and Prevention Research : Chronological outline of the research project on the Hoechst incident from 1993. ( Memento from November 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ^ Annual report 1996 of the Federal Environment Agency ( Memento from March 19, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 132 kB).
  15. ↑ Hoechst rust removal failed .
  16. ↑ FAZ from January 31, 1996.
  17. ^ FAZ from February 1, 1996.
  18. ↑ Griesheim: Everything was chemistry
  19. ^ Chronicle of Griesheim
  20. ↑ Schwanheimer Bridge. In: Structurae

Web links

Coordinates: 50 ° 5 ′ 26.3 "  N , 8 ° 35 ′ 37.7"  E