Contigas German energy

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Contigas German energy
legal form Corporation
founding 1855
Seat Munich
Branch power supply

The Contigas German Energy AG (until 1979: German Continental Gas Company ) is a 1855 in Dessau based companies of the energy industry . Today the company performs holding functions within the E.ON Group.

founding

Priority obligation of the Deutsche Continental-Gas-Gesellschaft dated March 1, 1884 for 1000 marks

The company was licensed on March 12, 1855 in Dessau by Duke Leopold IV. Friedrich von Anhalt-Dessau . The constituent general assembly of the company, capitalized with 500,000 thalers, took place on May 7, 1855, also in Dessau. The founders included the entrepreneur Hans Victor von Unruh and the Dessau banker Louis Nulandt, both of whom were elected chairmen of the company. Dessau was chosen as the place of foundation because von Unruh, who had been politically active during the German Revolution of 1848/49 in Prussia, had to reckon with difficulties that could not arise in Anhalt-Dessau, which was independent of Prussia.

The company first built a gas works in Dessau and from 1856 supplied the city with town gas for street lighting. Gasworks followed in several dozen cities at home and abroad, for example in Mönchengladbach , Magdeburg , Frankfurt (Oder) , Mülheim an der Ruhr , Potsdam , Warsaw and Lemberg .

Unruh, who was also a member of the Prussian House of Representatives and was often absent from Dessau due to this activity and to initiate contacts for new gasworks locations, resigned the chairmanship as early as 1857 because he believed that he could not adequately control his partner Nulandt. Unruh therefore brought in the engineer Wilhelm Oechelhäuser , who was mayor of Mülheim an der Ruhr at the time and was known to him from his parliamentary work, as his successor in the company.

Holdings

After Nulandt was forced out of the company in 1859 on suspicion of unfaithfulness , Wilhelm Oechelhäuser became sole director general. Under his leadership, Contigas continued its rapid growth and also went over to both the devices for selling gas, such as gas meters , as patented devices with coin insertion, as well as the gas-consuming devices such as lamps, stoves, motors and much more produce more in-house or in newly founded subsidiaries. The Centralwerkstatt Dessau was founded in 1871 , both to convert existing gas meters after the standardization of dimensions and weights in Germany and to produce new ones. The Centralwerkstatt merged in 1921 with the company Carl Bamberg Werkstätten für Präzisionsmechanik in Friedenau near Berlin to form the Askania works . Further new foundations were in Dessau in 1872 the Berlin-Anhaltische Maschinenfabrik AG ( BAMAG ) for the production of the vertical furnaces used in the gas works and also in Dessau the Deutsche Gasbahngesellschaft for the production of gas-powered trams .

The Contigas thus became an essential engine for the change of the city of Dessau from a residential to an industrial city, but also took a large number of investments in coal mines or similar, but also partly non-branch companies, such as the broadcasting works in Stassfurt.

Power generation

The emerging competition for town gas from electricity prompted Oechelhäuser to enter the electricity business from 1886. In that year Dessau received the second power station in Germany after Berlin. The generators required for this were manufactured in the company under the direction of Wilhelm von Oechelhäuser jun. developed. For further development he brought Hugo Junkers into the factory in 1888 ; From 1892 both succeeded in using powerful opposed piston engines .

Wilhelm von Oechelhäuser jun. followed his father as general manager of the company in 1889. In the years that followed, Contigas expanded its position in the electricity market and, under Oechelhauser's successor, Bruno Heck, achieved a dominant position in Central Germany in 1917 with the establishment of the Sachsen-Anhalt electricity works in Halle (Saale) .

Further development

In the first half of the 20th century, Contigas was one of the largest companies in Germany with a leading market position on the gas and electricity market and a dense network of holdings. During the Second World War, the company employed around 60,000 people, including foreign forced laborers .

When the property in the Soviet occupation zone (and further east) and the headquarters in Dessau were expropriated after the end of the war , the company moved its headquarters to Hagen in 1947 in order to continue to manage its plants and holdings in the western zones. The alleged transfer of assets was the cause of the first Stalinist show trial in the GDR , which was negotiated under Hilde Benjamin in Dessau in 1950 , ended with long prison sentences for leading Contigas managers and went down in history as the " Conti Affair ".

After several changes of name, the Deutsche Continental-Gas-Gesellschaft, founded in 1855, continues today in its legal successor, the listed (WKN 550400) Contigas Deutsche Energie AG , based in Munich, which has a share capital of around EUR 117 million (2004).

Merger with Thüga

At the end of 2000, the supervisory boards of Thüga and Contigas Deutsche Energie-AG approved a management board concept that brought the companies together. The background to this was the merger of VEBA and VIAG to form E.ON AG in the summer . Thüga used to belong to the VEBA group, Contigas to the VIAG group.

restructuring

In 2001, Contigas spun off essential parts of the business operations to Thüga AG in return for a capital stake of 18.9% and became a partner in Thüga.

Remunicipalisation

On December 1, 2009, the shares previously held by E.ON in Thüga were acquired by 50 municipal companies organized in the Integra and Kom9 consortia .

Web links

swell

The company history of the German Continental Gas Company (DCGG) is in the Dessau department of the Saxony-Anhalt State Archives . ( [1] )