Westfalia Dinnendahl Gröppel

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WEDAG company logo around 1950
Share of RM 1000 in Westfalia Dinnendahl Gröppel AG from August 1939

The Westfalia Dinnendahl Gröppel AG ( WEDAG ) was in mechanical engineering company with headquarters in Bochum and Essen , which mainly ore, coal and water treatment plants produced. WEDAG was a merger of the Bochum ironworks "Westfalia" as well as RW Dinnendahl AG in Essen and the machine factory Fr. Gröppel C. Lührigs Nachf. In Bochum.

history

Westfalia ironworks

The Maschinenfabrik Brandenburg & Lämmerhirt , founded in 1872, was converted in 1881 into the ironworks "Westfalia" AG . It had its seat in the area of ​​today's street Hermannshöhe on the edge of the Bochum city center and on the route of the then Bergisch-Märkische railway . The production program mainly included constructions for mining such as B. Conveyor baskets .

RW Dinnendahl AG

The facade of the Dinnendahl factory in Essen has been preserved. The interior of the building was converted for residential use.

The origins of RW Dinnendahl AG go back to 1800 in the form of the company founded by Franz Dinnendahl as an engineering company and later expanded into the so-called "art worker's hut". After the death of Franz Dinnendahl in 1826, the factory was initially continued by his two sons, but in 1840 it was taken over by his son Röttger Wilhelm Dinnendahl alone and in 1890 transferred to a stock corporation , which was finally incorporated into the ironworks "Westfalia" in 1922 .

Maschinenfabrik Gröppel

The machine factory emerged from the engineering office founded by Carl Lührig (1840–1893) in Waldenburg (Silesia) in 1867 , which was very successful in transferring inventions from ore processing to coal processing. As a result of these successes, the company relocated to the Saxon coal mine in Zwickau in 1874 , and a branch office was opened in Bochum in 1877. Three years later the - meanwhile also international - activities were coordinated from an office in Dresden .

After Lührig's death in 1893, the engineer Franz Gröppel (* 1856 - March 9, 1923) , who had been employed by Lührig since 1876, inherited the company, who relocated it completely to Bochum in 1897 by taking over the repair workshop for mine II of the United Constantin the Great . By 1900, 15 workers had grown to 110 and by the beginning of World War I approx. 550. His son Karl Gröppel (born March 11, 1883 in Beuthen (Upper Silesia); † July 4, 1967 in Bochum) took over the company after his death almost 900 workers. The Maschinenfabrik Fr. Gröppel C. Lührigs Nachf. Was in the 1930 Great Depression by the AG Westfalia Dinnendahl assumed that Bidders Cologne Maschinenbauanstalt Humboldt did not come with a lower settlement offer to the shareholders for the course. Karl Gröppel became the technical director of the company, which was now renamed Westfalia Dinnendahl Gröppel AG (WEDAG) .

growth

Due to the strong urge to optimally utilize the German ore and coal deposits in preparation for the Second World War , WEDAG also continued to grow as a provider of the necessary technology; the Reichswerke Hermann Göring commissioned WEDAG, for example. B. the complete ore preparation for the Salzgitter location .

After the Second World War, the subsidiary Ekof Erz- und Kohlenflotation GmbH, founded in 1920, and the company Westdeutsche Getriebewerke Bochum were taken over. The former manufactured machines and chemicals for the process of material separation by flotation and heavy beet separation developed in the 1920s .

In 1952, WEDAG employed around 2500 people. In 1960 the number of employees had risen to 3,150 with a turnover of 90 million DM. The coal washing plant at the Nordstern mine shaft 1/2 is one of the plants built by WEDAG that can still be viewed in the Nordsternpark in Gelsenkirchen.

In 1968, together with the British Vickers Ltd. the joint venture Vickers + WEDAG Verfahrenstechnik GmbH was founded, which mainly dealt with the planning and construction of plants for cement production . Plant technology for cement production would later become the company's most important business area.

Takeover by KHD

In 1969 the Cologne-based Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz AG took over a majority stake in WEDAG, which culminated in 1972 in the complete takeover and merger with the plant construction of the former Humboldt mechanical engineering company under the name KHD Industrieanlagen . In 1979 the company was then changed to KHD Humboldt Wedag , which has remained until today. The majority of WEDAG's activities with the workforce shrunk to 300 in Bochum were relocated to Cologne in 1987 after a pump order for DM 19 million was ended with a loss of DM 20 million.

In 1996 it turned out that Humboldt Wedag AG had not secured risky foreign projects in Saudi Arabia and Jordan with reserves and had disguised balance sheets and thus put the entire KHD Group in trouble. The KHD then renamed Deutz AG in 1996 .

present

The only still active company of the former WEDAG in Bochum

After the sale of KHD Humboldt Wedag AG in 2001, it was converted into a GmbH and incorporated into the listed KHD Humboldt Wedag International . It continues to act as a plant manufacturer in the field of cement production, ore and coal refining.

On December 31, 1998, the shell of WEDAG AG, which was linked to Deutz AG by a domination agreement , was sold to Spartacus AG , which relocated its headquarters to Hamburg and renamed the company pre-IPO AG . The pre-IPO AG was as venture capitalists operated, the of the Spartacus AG separated little later.

The production halls and the WEDAG administration building in Bochum are now used by various companies in the form of the Riemke industrial park at Herner Straße 299. Some buildings at the Essen site (coordinates 51 ° 26 ′  N , 7 ° 3 ′  E ) in the immediate vicinity of the Ruhr were used by WEDAG until the 1950s, placed under monument protection in 1992 and later converted into lofts. This location is part of the industrial culture route.

swell

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Westfalia Dinnendahl Gröppel AG 100 RM Art.No. 8042. In: www.reichsbankaktien.de. Retrieved November 20, 2019 .
  2. ^ WEDAG and Vickers. in: Hamburger Abendblatt No. 198 of August 26, 1968, page 15. ( Memento of July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Commercial register at Bochum Local Court HRB 524
  4. ↑ Never in doubt . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1987, pp. 79-84 ( Online - Nov. 23, 1987 ).
  5. ↑ FOCUS Online: New billion grave on the Rhine. June 3, 1996, accessed November 20, 2019 .
  6. ^ Homepage of the KHD Humboldt Wedag International AG. Retrieved November 20, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Commercial Register Hamburg Local Court HRB 72473
  8. ^ Commercial register at Bochum Local Court HRB 106
  9. ^ Herner Strasse office building (formerly: WEDAG administration building). In: www.ruhr-bauten.de. Retrieved November 20, 2019 .
  10. ↑ baukunst-nrw : Factory building of the former RW Dinnendahl AG in Essen

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 18.8 ″  N , 7 ° 12 ′ 36.3 ″  E