Christoph & Unmack

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Christoph & Unmack AG
legal form Corporation
founding 1882 (as Doecker's barracks manufacture Christoph & Unmack )
Seat Niesky , Germany
Number of employees about 4000 (1922)
Branch Timber construction , steel and mechanical engineering , rail vehicle construction , prefabricated house manufacturers

Christoph & Unmack was a company active in the fields of timber construction , steel and mechanical engineering as well as wagon construction with its headquarters in Niesky in Upper Lusatia .

history

Share for RM 300 in Christoph & Unmack AG dated June 2, 1932
Advertising poster for the company Christoph & Unmack from 1935

The company was founded in 1882 by the Danish carpenter Christoph and the architect Unmack as Doecker's barracks factory Christoph & Unmack in Neuhof near Niesky. Initially, the company dealt with the manufacture of collapsible, transportable barracks for the Prussian military based on Rittmeister Doecker's patent. In 1885 it received first prize in a competition for a newly developed hospital barracks. Two years later, the company started manufacturing simple wooden houses, for which branches were established in Poland, Bunzendorf , Bohemia (1891) and France. In 1893 the one thousandth barracks left the factory.

The economic success of the company led to the conversion into a stock corporation in 1899 . Around 1900, country and family houses made of prefabricated wooden parts in panel and block construction were added to the production program. A new type of panel construction proved to be particularly lucrative, as it made it possible to prefabricate the buildings in individual wall panels and disassemble them to their future location, where they were then assembled. In this way, wooden houses could now also be exported to the West Indies, South America and South Africa. The transportable barracks factory in Bunzendorf burned down on June 21, 1915 , and the company then relocated the factory directly to the Reichenberg-Seidenberg railway line to Tschernhausen , where the required wood could be delivered directly by rail from the Jizera Mountains .

Forced laborers came from Tormersdorf who had to do forced labor at Christoph & Unmack. Picture of the memorial in Tormersdorf, where up to 700 Jews had to live in a camp during the Nazi era.

During the First World War, the need for wooden barracks increased sharply, which led to an expansion of the company. Up until now the company had devoted itself exclusively to wood processing, but a wagon factory was added in 1917, which in 1922 merged with IE Christoph A.-G. Maschinenfabrik Niesky merged. From then on, rail vehicles, engines, steam engines, boilers and steel structures were also manufactured. In 1922 Christoph & Unmack AG consisted of four operational parts: the timber construction, wagon construction, steel construction and engine construction departments. About 4,000 people were employed.

In 1934, a large fire destroyed the facilities required for timber construction, which, however, could be restored and expanded a little later as part of the job creation program. In 1935 an investment in the company Schlesische Zellwolle A.-G. based in Hirschberg in the Giant Mountains . In addition, there were further company acquisitions in the following years, the acquisition of land for residential construction and the reopening of a subsidiary in the Sudetengau . On November 1, 1939, the steel and bridge construction department was spun off into an independent company under the name Stahlbau Niesky GmbH

During the Second World War, Christoph & Unmack A.-G. mainly occupied with building barracks, while the construction of houses almost came to a complete standstill. The company used forced labor, including Jews from Breslau who had been deported to the Tormersdorf camp near Rothenburg. In 1945 the Soviet occupying power had all the wood processing plants still in existence dismantled, which ended the history of the timber construction company in Niesky. The outsourced steel construction division was retained as VEB Waggonbau Niesky and is still active as a steel construction company. Since the fall of the Wall, wagon construction has changed owners and corporate form several times.

Wooden house construction

The company's wooden house in Niesky, Schenkendorfstrasse 4
Neu-Ödernitz in Niesky , designed in 1921 by the architect Albin Müller
Settlement in Adlershof: Community street, 18 semi-detached houses belonging to the Greater Berlin Housing Association

The most important line of business of Christoph & Unmack was the production of standardized, machine-prefabricated wooden houses and other wooden structures. In addition to residential houses, wooden structures for hotels, churches, schools, public buildings, industrial and aircraft hangars were also part of the production program. Thanks to the great demand, the company developed into the most important timber house manufacturer in Europe in the 1920s.

Initially, the focus was on the manufacture of inexpensive barracks, mostly for military use. From 1900 onwards the manufacture of wooden buildings for the civil sector began increasingly, as these were inexpensive but also easy to transport. The difficult economic conditions caused by the First World War and the housing shortage brought Christoph & Unmack AG a great demand for wooden houses. Under the economic pressure of the post-war period, housing problems could not be solved with expensive individual buildings, but only with rational and cost-saving construction methods. This brought timber house and type construction more into the focus of the construction industry. In this context, a model housing estate was built in Niesky, which was primarily inhabited by employees and was intended to document the efficiency of the company. For the first time, instead of a barrack-like appearance, the buildings were given steep saddle roofs with dormers and some of them were made of light half-timbered construction.

In order to increase the architectural diversity in timber house construction, the company commissioned architects such as Albin Müller to develop new house types. Even Hans Scharoun , Henry van de Velde , Hans Poelzig and Fritz August Breuhaus developed projects for the Nieskyer companies.

Another important project was the construction of the German embassy in Ankara . Germany was one of the first states to set up an embassy in Turkey after the state was founded. On September 26, 1924, the Foreign Office acquired a piece of land and had a prefabricated house built here by Christoph & Unmack AG. The building was shipped to Istanbul on July 25, 1924 in the port of Hamburg with the steamer "Stralsund" and from there transported on to Ankara by train. On February 9, 1925, the Turkish head of state Ataturk visited the building and was impressed by the equipment and technical installations. However, since the wooden house did not meet the constantly growing requirements of the embassy in the long run, it was dismantled again in 1928. It is now located on the Ataturk Orman Çiftliği recreational area .

In 1925 the company Christoph & Unmack was represented at the annual show German Labor in Dresden and presented their model houses based on designs by Albin Müller (“The bourgeois home”) and Johann Mund (“The Upper Bavarian Vacation Home”). In 1927, the company also acquired a patent for the fire-retardant "Lignat" panel for use as the interior cladding of ceilings and walls.

Einsteinhaus in Caputh

In 1926, the company hired the young architect Konrad Wachsmann as chief architect. Wachsmann developed numerous new types and designed large hall constructions for industrial buildings and private clients. The model house factory settlement of the company in Niesky, consisting of approx. 85 individual houses, goes back to his plans. These houses have largely been preserved to the present day and can now be explored by interested visitors to the city using a guidance system. The wooden director's house in Nieskyer Goethestrasse, designed by Wachsmann himself, is the only building by the architect to have survived in Germany , alongside the Einsteinhaus in Caputh near Potsdam. An exhibition is also dedicated to the history of timber house construction and the work of Konrad Wachsmann in Niesky in the city's museum.

The Caputher summer house of Albert Einstein was built in 1929 by Christoph & Unmack for the Nobel laureate. Einstein lived in the building until 1932, but then stayed in the USA. The municipality of Caputh later used the building as a residential building. It was renovated in 2005 and is now open to the public as a meeting place.

In addition to the manufacture of wooden houses, barracks have always been an important product of Christoph & Unmack's timber construction. Since 1933 it has even been generating the bulk of its income from barracks. At first they were mainly supplied to Nazi organizations such as the Reich Labor Service and the Reichsautobahnbau. The demand increased so much that Christoph & Unmack reopened its branch in Tschernhausen in northern Bohemia, which had been shut down during the Great Depression, for barrack production. In this branch factory barracks were made in 1941, which Christoph & Unmack delivered to IG Farben in Auschwitz and Heydebreck . The director of the timber structure, Friedrich Abel, launched the establishment of FOKORAD in 1933, which from then on was the central development office for standardized barracks. The main building of FOKORAD with the design offices has been preserved in Niesky to this day (Neuhofer Straße 4–6). This is where the drafts for barracks that were used in concentration and extermination camps, prisoner of war camps and forced labor camps of the National Socialists were created. The close networking of Christoph & Unmack AG with National Socialism is also evidenced by the fact that the SS general and head of the SS Economic and Administrative Office , Oswald Pohl , was a member of the company's supervisory board.

Steel and wagon construction

Wagon construction

Rail mail car , built in 1933, on loan from the Museum for Communication Nuremberg in the traffic center of the German Museum in Munich
Tram sidecar Bw260, built in 1925, in the Halle Tram Museum

In addition to the manufacture of wooden structures, Christoph & Unmack AG also began manufacturing rail vehicles in 1917 . Among other things, goods, mail and passenger cars for the Deutsche Reichsbahn as well as trams were manufactured in Niesky . The production profile also included bridges, engines, steam engines and other large steel equipment. At the end of the 1920s, the Christoph & Unmack wagon construction factory, in cooperation with Sachsenwerk Licht- und Kraft AG Niedersedlitz under the direction of Alfred Bockemühl, developed a new, pioneering tramway car, the so-called “Hechtwagen”, which came in two versions as a four-axle “ Großer Hecht ” and a two-axle "Kleiner Hecht" was used on the Dresden tram . The Küstrin tram also bought six motor coaches and two trailer cars from Christoph & Unmack.

In 1946 the company was expropriated and made public property. Under the company VEB Waggonbau Niesky , the company specialized in the production of freight wagons and freight wagon bogies . In 1978 it was incorporated into the rail vehicle construction combine of the GDR .

In 1990 Deutsche Waggonbau AG (DWA) took over the company. In 1996 it came into the possession of the US American Advent International and from 1998 belonged to the Canadian Bombardier Group , which set up its European freight wagon center here in 2001. On April 30, 2005, however, the company was separated from the Bombardier Group and, after bankruptcy in July 2008, became an independent company and was owned by Deutsche Bahn AG (DB Waggonbau Niesky GmbH). On July 16, 2014, the company announced the sale of the company to the Munich-based corporate holding company Quantum, combined with a five-year location guarantee. Since then, the company has been operating under the name Waggonbau Niesky GmbH.

At the end of December 2017, Waggonbau again filed for bankruptcy. The Munich shareholder was not able to compensate for the loss from the 2017 financial year. However, in previous years, Quantum had extracted the profits it had made and investments had never flowed. Despite the bankruptcy, the company continued to operate with 300 employees, with the permanent workforce. In September 2018 the company was sold to the Slovak freight wagon manufacturer Tatravagónka .

Steel and bridge construction

On November 1, 1939, the steel and bridge construction department was spun off from the C&U works. This was also expropriated and nationalized in 1946. From 1969 to 1990 he traded under VEB Metalleichtbaukombinat Leipzig, Werk Niesky . After the fall of the Wall, the company had different names until the last time Stahl- und Brückenbau Niesky GmbH filed for bankruptcy in October 2019 despite full order books.

literature

  • Kurt Junghanns : The house for everyone. On the history of prefabrication in Germany. Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-433-01274-1 .
  • Wolfgang Rug: 100 years of wood construction development. In: Bund Deutscher Zimmermeister in the Central Association of the German Building Trade eV, Berlin (Ed.): 100 years Bund Deutscher Zimmermeister. 100 years of association, timber construction, timber construction research. 1903-2003. Bruderverlag Albert Bruder, Karlsruhe 2003, ISBN 3-87104-143-2 , pp. 20–33.
  • Axel Doßmann, Jan Wenzel, Kai Wenzel: Temporary architecture. Barracks, pavilions, containers (= MetroZones. Vol. 7). b_books, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-933557-66-6 .
  • Wolfgang Rug: Lifespan of wooden houses using the example of Christoph & Unmack, Niesky. In: Christian Schurig (Red.): 3rd half-timbered house colloquium. Zittau, September 21 and 22, 2006 (= Zittau-Görlitz University of Applied Sciences. Scientific reports. H. 90 = No. 2227/2233, ZDB -ID 2055346-8 ). University of Applied Sciences Zittau / Görlitz (FH), Zittau et al. 2006, pp. 56–79, digital version (PDF; 3.2 MB) .
  • Christoph & Unmack Aktiengesellschaft, Niesky, Upper Lusatia: wooden houses. Sample book W 2000. Museum, Niesky 2007, ISBN 978-3-929744-24-4 .

Web links

Commons : Christoph & Unmack  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Zpravodaj Obec Černousy 2/2011. ( MS Word ; 2.6 MB) p. 4 f. , accessed January 2, 2017 .
  2. ^ Bernhard Brilling: Evacuation of the Wroclaw Jews to Tormersdorf near Görlitz, Rothenburg District, Oberlausitz , in: Communications of the Association of Former Wroclaw and Silesian Jews in Israel , 46/47, 1980.
  3. ^ List, map, database / Landesdenkmalamt Berlin. Retrieved September 2, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Prof. Dr.-Ing.Wolfgang Rug: Lifespan of wooden houses using the example of Christoph & Unmack, Niesky. FH Eberswalde, accessed on September 2, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Wachsmannhaus Niesky ( Memento from October 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). Website accessed June 20, 2013.
  6. ^ History of the German Embassy in Ankara ( Memento from January 3, 2018 in the Internet Archive ). Website accessed January 2, 2017.
  7. ↑ ARCHTHEK - database on the building and architectural history of the 19th and 20th centuries for the German-speaking area . Website accessed September 20, 2012.
  8. ↑ Niesky wooden housing estates on niesky.de ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  9. ↑ Einstein's summer house in Caputh website accessed on September 20, 2012.
  10. ^ Kai Wenzel: architecture industry. Timber house construction in Saxony in the age of modernity . In: Katja Margarethe Mieth (Ed.): Industrial architecture as a facet of Saxon industrial culture. Industrial monuments in the townscape . Chemnitz 2013, ISBN 978-3-942780-04-9 , pp. 128-138 .
  11. ↑ Kai Wenzel: The FOKORAD in Niesky - A planning authority for the Barackenbau . In: Konstantin Hermann (ed.): Führerschule, Thingplatz, "Judenhaus". Places and buildings of the National Socialist dictatorship in Saxony . Dresden 2014, p. 198-201 .
  12. ^ Kai Wenzel: The factory as a possibility horizon. Christoph & Unmack and the architects of the new building . In: Beate Störtkuhl, Rafal Makala (ed.): Not only Bauhaus - networks of modernity in Central Europe . Berlin 2020, p. 159-180 .
  13. ^ Official sale of Waggonbau Niesky - job and location guarantee , in: Lausitzer Rundschau from July 16, 2014.
  14. ↑ Waggonbau Niesky surprisingly files for bankruptcy. (No longer available online.) In: mdr.de. January 2, 2018, archived from the original on January 2, 2018 ; accessed on January 2, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Waggonbau Niesky surprisingly files for bankruptcy. In: lr-online.de. Lausitzer Rundschau , January 2, 2018, accessed on January 3, 2018 .
  16. ^ Slovakian takes over Waggonbau Niesky. Retrieved October 16, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Steel and bridge construction website. Retrieved October 14, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Stahl- und Brückenbau Niesky files for bankruptcy. Retrieved October 14, 2019 .