Chemical factory Helfenberg

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Chemical factory Helfenberg
legal form Corporation
founding 1869
resolution 1974
Seat Dresden , Germany
Branch Chemical industry

The chemical plant Helfenberg was founded in 1869 chemical plant in Helfenberg , a modern district in the east of Dresden . Since 1898 a public limited company , the company produced adhesive plasters , pharmaceutical preparations and medicines . After the expropriation in 1951, the business in the Rhineland was continued and taken over by Byk Gulden in 1974 . The Grevenbroich site is now part of the Altana Group.

location

The buildings of the chemical factory Helfenberg are located in the Helfenberger Grund in the district of Helfenberg in the town of Schönfeld-Weißig belonging to Dresden . You are in the lower part of this Kerbtal about 1 km before the confluence of the Helfenberger Bach in the Elbe . The buildings are located between the districts of Pappritz and Rockau and border on the Niederpoyritz district .

history

prehistory

As early as the end of the Middle Ages, there was a water-powered mill on the site of the later chemical factory . It was part of the local manor and was therefore owned by the Helfenberg lords of the castle . This grain mill was known as the Hofemühle because it was temporarily under the control of the Saxon rulers' court, which was located in the Dresden residential palace . It was sold in 1764. In the 19th century it finally worked as a paper mill ; the mill building was demolished shortly after it was returned to the manor in 1895.

On behalf of the Sächsische Hypothekenversicherungsanstalt, the chemist Eugen Dieterich from Lower Franconia , a student of Justus von Liebig , took over this liquidated paper mill as administrator in 1869 and was supposed to convert it into a chemical factory . He founded the chemical factory Helfenberg in 1869 and initially produced synthetic casings , parchment paper and other special papers here. The final liquidation of the company resulted in its sale in 1872.

Foundation and development at the time of the German Empire

In 1872 Eugen Dieterich bought the former paper mill together with Eduard Schnorr von Carolsfeld, a relative of the painter Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld . This represents the actual founding of the company. Until Schnorr von Carolsfeld's withdrawal from this business in 1890, the company had two shareholders ; then Dieterich took over the former chemical factory in Helfenberg near Dresden completely.

The owners had a laboratory built on the mill property . There they first made the adhesive and rubber plasters called Helfenberg . In the period that followed, many other pharmaceutical and medicinal products were added. These include various tinctures and elixirs such as iron and protein preparations and the Helfenberger effervescent powder .

The manufacture of such products provoked the protest of established pharmacists , who saw inadmissible competition in the rapidly expanding company. The company founder and chemist Eugen Dieterich, on the other hand, who developed many new preparations himself, gained more and more recognition as an industrialist and scientist. He published the trade journal Helfenberger Annalen and regularly took part in specialist congresses. He had a spacious factory owner's villa built at the company's site.

At the end of the 19th century Dieterich left the management to his sons Karl and Hans. Hans, the older of the two, took over the commercial management and the doctorate Karl took over the scientific and technical management . On December 22, 1898, the brothers converted the company into a stock corporation. The company, now run as Chemische Fabrik Helfenberg AG , temporarily employed more than 250 workers and had branches in London , Paris , New York City and Antwerp .

After the turn of the century, the factory also had its own printing shop for the production of packaging materials, a joinery , its own water and electricity company and a post office for shipping the products. The company's founder Eugen Dieterich died on April 15, 1904 in Helfenberg. The road from the factory to Niederpoyritz is named after him today.

Development in the interwar period

Preference share for RM 300 in Chemischen Fabrik Helfenberg AG, 1928

The meanwhile Europe and worldwide exporting chemical factory Helfenberg AG - the company name (company) was partly still with the addition vorm. Eugen Dietrich - after the First World War, in her tradition as a paper manufacturer , put increased emphasis on the production of wallpaper . In 1921 she bought the following companies:

During this time, however, a wide variety of chemical-pharmaceutical preparations continued to be produced, for example the branded products Antacid , Farnotän tapeworm remedy, Pneumarol, Blutan and many more.

Expropriation and relocation to the Federal Republic

After the Second World War and the founding of the GDR , the nationalization of larger companies and corporations or those parts of the operations located in the former Soviet Zone took place . The chemical plant Helfenberg AG was expropriated in 1951 in a state-owned enterprise converted. Two years later, it relocated production from the main factory in Helfenberg to its Wevelinghoven location near Düsseldorf .

In 1974 the chemical factory in Wevelinghoven, which one year later became a district of Grevenbroich , was merged into Byk Gulden Lomberg Chemische Fabrik GmbH through a share swap by VARTA AG . Today the location of ACTEGA Rhenania GmbH, a subsidiary of the Altana group, is located here .

Re-use of the Helfenberg site

Today's appearance after renovation and renovation, 2010

After the expropriation, what was now the VEB Chemische Fabrik Helfenberg , known colloquially as the chemical factory, continued to produce on the premises of the main plant. From 1955 part of the VEB Pentacon , the factory changed over to the needs of the camera production . After the fall of the Wall , the complex was initially empty.

The industrial wasteland was acquired in 1997 by a design company that is still the main user today. This was followed by a comprehensive renovation and reconstruction of the building, which was honored in 1999 with the Saxon State Prize for Architecture and Construction. In the same year, an art and living project was set up here in which designers, commercial artists and a designer furniture store were housed; the company went bankrupt in 2001. Today the site is primarily a location for artists, crafts and services, but it also houses holiday apartments. The Dresden Art Association is also located in the building. The Dresden painter Max Uhlig also lives and resides here .

literature

  • The large-scale industry of the Kingdom of Saxony in words and pictures . Eckert & Pflug, Leipzig 1892, 1893
  • The chemical factory Helfenberg - family company and stock corporation . In: Elbhangkurier, edition February 2001, p. 10
  • Georg Edmund Then: Eugen and Karl Dietrich. Founder of scientific and industrial galenics . Helfenberg 1969

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ortschaft Schönfeld-Weißig: Palaces, churches, architectural monuments ( Memento from August 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: dresden-und-sachsen.de.
  2. ↑ Eugen Dieterich. In: dresden.stadtwiki.de.
  3. ↑ ACTEGA Rhenania. In: actega.com.
  4. ↑ Location with history. ( Memento from October 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: dresden-werbeagentur.com.
  5. ↑ Teens - holiday homes, apartments and aparthotel at FEINWOHNEN Dresden . ( Memento from July 29, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) In: feinwohnen-dresden.de.
  6. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Dresdner Kunstverein@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.dresdner-kunstverein.de

Coordinates: 51 ° 1 ′ 53 ″  N , 13 ° 51 ′ 12 ″  E