Eibia GmbH for chemical products

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EIBIA GmbH for chemical products

logo
legal form GmbH
founding Oct. 26, 1938
Seat Bomlitz , Germany
management Günther Wolff
Number of employees Max. around 12,500 (1944)
sales unknown

Remnants of the groundwater filter station of the Weser plant
Residential building of the Weser plant
Blown railway bridge of the Walo II facility at the mouth of the Bomlitz

The Eibia GmbH for chemical products was a German chemical and defense companies , which in Bomlitz in the southwestern Luneburg Heath was a resident. It evolved from 1938 to the end of the Second World War, with five production plants in three locations the largest producer of the German Reich for gunpowder .

Legal form and development

Eibia was founded as a subsidiary of Wolff & Co. in Bomlitz, but was responsible to the Ministry of Defense . The current legal successor is IVG Immobilien in Bonn.

The purpose of Eibia was the (apparently purely) private-sector operation of armaments factories, which had previously been built by Wolff & Co. as the client on behalf of the Army High Command (OKH). The OKH then handed the plant over to the trust company Verwertungsgesellschaft für Montanindustrie GmbH ( Montan GmbH for short ) in Munich, which had been taken over by the Army Weapons Office , and which then leased it to Eibia for 30–50% of the profits from powder production. This legal construction, known as the Montan scheme or armaments square, served to camouflage the state intervention, but also kept the respective system builders, in this case the Wolff & Co. company, out of the later operations.

At that time, Wolff & Co. had almost a hundred and twenty years of experience in powder manufacture and had also made a name for itself in the manufacture of military explosives during the First World War . The Reichswehr Ministry was therefore aware of their technical status. The high command of the army came soon after the " seizure " of the Nazis to the firm uses to agree to a new production for the military. After a successful, extensive trial phase, Eibia GmbH was founded on October 26, 1938 . Initially it was still organizationally dependent on the parent company, but then quickly outstripped it in terms of size and production volume. The name refers to the yew tree , which is said to have a meaning in the manufacture of weapons among the Teutons.

At the end of the war, Eibia was the operating company of three large production plants; on the one hand near Bomlitz (code name: plant Walo II ), on the other hand on the Mittelweser near Dörverden (plant Weser ) and Liebenau (plant Karl ). In addition, Wolff & Co. had previously set up two smaller companies ( Waldhof and Walo I plants ) on behalf of OKH at their headquarters in Bomlitz in the trial phase that had preceded the establishment of Eibia in June 1935 . Eibia took over these smaller businesses when it was founded. A section of the Walo II facility was also located north of Bomlitz ( Löverschen ).

Production facilities

The production sites of the former Eibia are in the vicinity of the parent company in Bomlitz. The later systems are oriented towards the navigable Weser . Because of the construction of underground structures, what all locations have in common is that their subsoil is sandy (with at most a small amount of clay) and also has a large distance from the groundwater to the surface. In Bomlitz this is by the location at the top of steep slopes that the Bomlitz- and the WARNAUTAL given lead down. In the Eickhofer Heide near Liebenau and Steyerberg, the terminal moraines of the Heisterberge, rising up to 50 meters, ensure that the building site is free from waterlogging. Only the Dörverden location barely allowed any underground structures , given the few old inland dunes . In addition, the lack of a total gradient made it difficult to maintain a typical Eibia building principle, according to which the production process followed the natural gradient in order to minimize dangerous pumping processes. The individual systems were created with large safety distances, also to minimize the effects of air attacks. The approximately 1200 buildings of the five Eibia plants were mostly above ground, around 100 were underground and around 270 were walled. Almost all of the buildings, with the exception of a few administrative buildings, were erected in forest areas and received massive, protruding concrete flat roofs that were planted with trees. The paths were mostly laid out as curved ravines, sometimes also in tunnels, in order to limit the effects of explosions. The electric and handcart operation required a slight gradient and occasionally even made serpentines necessary.

The external transport infrastructure was also expanded and supplemented. A remarkable feature of the Bomlitz railway systems was a powerful one-way operation, which included the Wolff factory railway , the Heidebahn between Walsrode and Honerdingen , and the Bremervörde – Walsrode railway between Walsrode and Cordingen . In addition to the rail and road network, the facilities near the Mittelweser also received a port each. The investment costs borne by the OKH amounted to 380 million Reichsmarks.

The production facilities were later expanded selectively, but some of them were also built in a reduced form. In the absence of sufficient demand for nitrocellulose powder (NC powder), only half of the planned capacity was achieved at the Weser plant . Among other things, the further construction of the second 7500 kW power plant was stopped.

For the administration and the Eibia health service in Benefeld, building complexes with an emphatically civil architecture were built outside of the company instead of the Nonnenwald farm . The administration of the Weser complex was housed in the castle-like Heysenhof between Dörverden and Hassel , while that of the Karl complex was housed in Eickhof Castle near Liebenau. Residential camps were built for the workers, which differed greatly in their standards. They ranged from the settlement for skilled workers and engineers ( Warnautalsiedlung in Benefeld) through standardized semi-detached and terraced houses to stone barracks camps and finally wooden barracks camps.

Technical data of the Eibia systems
Location Bomlitz Dörverden Liebenau /
Steyerberg
Cover name of
the system		 Waldhof Walo I Walo II
(manufacturing)		 Walo II,
Dept. Löverschen 		Weser
(with Dept. Service Shop )		 Karl
Location Fuchsberg Fuhrenkamp Lohheide Big Löverschen Overwood Eickhofer Heath
location 52 ° 55 '  N , 9 ° 39'  E 52 ° 54 '  N , 9 ° 39'  E 52 ° 54 '  N , 9 ° 38'  E 52 ° 58 '  N , 9 ° 40'  E 52 ° 49 '  N , 9 ° 13'  E 52 ° 36 '  N , 9 ° 2'  E
Real estate
before		 Wolff & Co. local
farmers		 local
farmers		 (?) local farmers v. Eickhof-Reitzenstein,
local farmers
construction time 1935-1936 1937-1938 1938-1940 (?) 1939-1941 1939-1941
Building participants (max) (?) (?) 3000 (?) (?) 4000
Area (ha) 36 32 180 78 425 1350
Born up 67 27 168   198 250
Walled around 28 13 56   68 104
Geb. underground. 26th 11 38   7th 21st
Born unmarked       87 30th 17th
Total buildings 121 51 262 87 303 392
Power plants (kW) 5000   2 × 7500   7500 2 × 7500
Water supply Böhme Böhme Böhme (?) Weser, 40 wells Weser, 64 wells
Track body (km) 1 1.5 9 8.5 11.5 42
Road (km) (?) (?) 20th 6.5 21st 84
current
use		 Fuchsberg plant,
Dow Wolff Cell. 		Sewage treatment plant,
forest pool ,
school center
Eibia-Lohheide recreation area ,
industrial plants
Restricted area, commercial camp		 Commercial and industrial area,
Wolf Center ,
recreation area
Restricted area, military. Residual use,
chem. Industry
Settlements,
residential camps		 Benefeld: Lohheide-Nord u. -Süd , Steinlager ,
Cordingen, Vorwalsrode		 Dörverden: stone warehouse Liebenau: Stone I
Steyerberg: Stone II
Labor camp Benefeld: on Westerharler Str.,
Hilperdingen, Graesbeck		 Over there: Todt camp
Stedorf: Wiebe camp
west 		Liebenau: Liebenau I
Steyerberg: Reeser L.
and Liebenau II

Construction and operations

Originally, the three large Eibia companies Walo II , Weser and Karl were planned as "shadow works"; in other words, they should only start operating when they are mobilized. The beginning of the Second World War was before the completion of the plant, so that production was started immediately. Up to 70 companies were commissioned to build them. Then came the Reich Labor Service (RAD) and after the start of the war numerous forced laborers from various European countries. It is becoming apparent that the conditions for the construction of the individual plants differed significantly. The construction of the Bomlitz plants began before the Second World War, whereas the plants on the Mittelweser were built during this time. As a result, the construction process was characterized by forced labor from the outset. The construction of the Weser plant was largely the responsibility of the Todt Organization , for which a forced labor camp had been set up in the west, near today's B215 . At the Karl plant near Liebenau, the proportion of foreign workers was particularly high at over 80%, which was criticized by government agencies as a safety risk (in similar companies the proportion was around 50%). The extremely poor health of the assigned prisoners of war from the Soviet Union made them largely unable to work. At least 600 of over 2,000 of them died during the construction phase, mainly of dysentery , typhus and tuberculosis .

In 1940 the Hanover Gestapo set up a labor education camp for around 250 to 500 prisoners on the outskirts of Liebenau , which appeared to act not least as a disciplinary threat to the forced laborers. The camp conditions there were probably similar to those of a concentration camp. It was moved to Lahde in May 1943 . A camp outside the Eibia camp was also set up in Benefeld in 1944. From August 1944, female prisoners were admitted to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, mainly from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , some of whom were further distributed to external detachments; however, the Benefeld satellite camp set up in September 1944 only existed for six weeks.

Initially, the executives and technical specialists came mainly from Wolff & Co., which they had released for this purpose. After the beginning of the Second World War, the other workers increasingly consisted of so-called foreign workers who were initially recruited as volunteers or at least formally volunteers from the occupied countries. In the course of the war, these employment relationships became increasingly compulsory. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , Poland and the Soviet Union , employable people were forcibly recruited from the outset and fed into the German armaments industry. In accordance with the detailed specifications of the Heereswaffenamt and the associated Montan GmbH, they were also treated significantly worse than the workers from countries in Central and Western Europe and only housed in wooden barracks at their locations, such as the Eibia factories. Forced laborers as well as prisoners of war from Eastern Europe (referred to as "Eastern workers") were also used in the most dangerous production areas. Despite the structural and organizational safety precautions (one-way traffic, protective walls, blow-out walls, curved ravine systems, special extinguishing devices, clearances), there were several explosion and fire accidents in all companies, and many of them were also dead. Some workplaces presented special health hazards due to the unprotected handling of chemicals. The humanitarian situation in the Karl facility developed particularly problematic . During the construction, which was carried out under great time pressure, and the subsequent production phase, a total of around 2,000 people died from malnutrition, arbitrariness, exhaustion and illness.

Operating data of the Eibia systems
Location Bomlitz Dörverden Liebenau /
Steyerberg
Cover name of
the system		 Waldhof Walo I Walo II
(manufacturing)		 Walo II,
Dept. Löverschen 		Weser
(with Dept. Service Shop )		 Karl
Employees (approx.) 500 150 5000 200 1700 3000
Products Pilot plant
for nitrocellulose
and NC powder		 Research facility
for POL powder
and NG		 Nitroglycerin,
POL powder,
NC powder, NG powder		 Storage (3000 tons),
shooting ranges,
missile test bench		 NC powder,
A powder		 NC and NG powder,
rocket propellants,
product recycling
Capacity (to / a) 3600 1200 18000   5400 18000
1938/39 (to) (?) 377        
1939/40 (to) (?) 961 1218      
1940/41 (to) (?) 1004 6545      
1941/42 (to) (?) 915 14589   99 1161
1942/43 (to) (?) (at Walo II) 15024   1151 10429
1943/44 (to) (?) (at Walo II) 15900   1250 15600
1944/45 (to) (shut down) (at Walo II) 12500   980 13600
total (to) (?) 3257 65776   3480 40790

Reuse

Today the Bomlitz plants are either used industrially or, for the most part, as a recreation area. Very few buildings of the manufacturing facilities have been preserved. Most of the buildings were made unusable or completely blown up by the British Army at the instigation of the British military government , with the result that explosive chemicals remained in the pipelines and contaminated the underground until the dangerous clearance and rehabilitation of the company premises in 1989 . The construction of a barracks on the site, which was planned in the 1960s, was not implemented because of resistance from the Bomlitz community . Therefore, in the 1990s, the varied terrain was transformed into the Eibia / Lohheide recreation area .
The Eibia administration building in Benefeld was used from January 1, 1947 to December 31, 1948 for the Benefeld-Bomlitz court , after which it became the location of a Waldorf school . The workers' settlements in Benefeld have opened up, the other camps have been demolished.

Most of the Dörverden complex was initially taken over by the Lower Saxony barracks until it was closed in 2003. The Wolf Center Dörverden was set up on part of the site in 2010 . Large parts are freely or temporarily accessible and are provided with information boards. The accessible building stock is well preserved. The residential camps have become part of the village of Dörverden, the barracks camps have been torn down. The listed Heisenhof was many years as site management used the Bundeswehr. He was the subject of legal battles in 2008 because of the activities of right-wing extremist groups.

Most of the facilities between Liebenau and Steyerberg are still restricted areas. They were also initially dismantled as a reparation payment , but not destroyed like the other Eibia factories, as the British had already started to set up the largest ammunition depot in Germany at the time . After the site was transferred to IVG in 1951 , the facility was leased to the German and British military and mainly to armaments companies. In 1957 the Verwert-Chemie 2 , the Liebenau-Chemie GmbH and the Liebenauer Metall-GmbH (all belonging to Dynamit Nobel ) produced there. After years of severe production decline (in 1962 around 2,500 jobs, in 1974 still around 500 jobs), the Dutch company Eurometaal took over the systems in 1977 and manufactured them at this location until they relocated the grenade production systems to the Netherlands in 1994 (due to the ban on Federal Security Council to export grenades to Turkey). At the same time, the Bundeswehr maintained an ammunition depot until 1995, and a nuclear weapons depot from 1963 to 1992 . The Eibia area is currently available. Only the Stein I and Stein II camps have been preserved as housing estates . The Eickhof Castle (former administration) than Zen - monastery used the green areas are Japanese gardens have been transformed.

Historical processing

In the former municipality of Bomlitz, the Bomlitz History House Foundation collects information on the industrial and social history of the place. They are published in information letters, lectures, an Internet presence and the series of publications flashback .

In the Eibia site near Dörverden, information boards have been attached to the preserved buildings. Private internet presences represent the site and its problems.

A documentation center is being set up by an association in a building of the former Liebenau powder factory. Several local working groups with their own websites deal with the history of the Eibia plant there and its subsequent uses. A small memorial on the west side of the area near Hesterberg today commemorates the victims of forced labor between 1939 and 1945 .

literature

  • Olaf Bennefeld and others: Don't wake sleeping dogs - history of the EIBIA gunpowder factory in Dörverden . Online at Regionalgeschichte-Verden.de: (294 pages, PDF, 12 MB) .
  • Bodo Förster, Martin Guse: I was your age when they picked me up! , Liebenau, Berlin 2002 ISBN 3-00-009250-1 (on forced labor in the Eibia factory in Liebenau)
  • Andrea Hesse: "Best company" rating - Eibia GmbH for chemical products in Bomlitz (aspects of Bomlitz local history, vol. 3, published by the Bomlitz community), Münster 1995 ISBN 3-8258-2728-3
  • Helge Matthiesen : Secret Reichssache EIBIA , Walsrode 1987 (about the Bomlitz plants)
  • Thorsten Neubert-Preine : Foreign and Forced Labor in Northern Germany. Deployment and supply of foreign workers using the example of industry in Bomlitz / Fallingbostel district. In: Andreas Frewer, Bernhard Bremberger, Günther Siedbürger (eds.): The " deployment of foreigners" in health care (1939–1945). Historical and ethical problems of Nazi medicine. (History and Philosophy of Medicine, Volume 8), Stuttgart 2009, pp. 33–50, ISBN 978-3-515-09201-2
  • Thorsten Neubert-Preine : Places of History and Memory. The EIBIA powder factory and the "foreigners cemetery" in Bomlitz. An accompanying booklet for the history and remembrance trail EIBIA and the history and remembrance plaque at the "Ausländerfriedhof" in Bomlitz , Bomlitz 2012

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Johannes Böhm, dismantling of the powder and explosives works EIBIA GmbH - Bomlitz-Dörverden-Liebenau , Benefeld 1950, in: Staatsarchiv Stade, holdings 98/0540
  2. ↑ Andrea Hesse, predicate "Best company" - Eibia GmbH for chemical products in Bomlitz , Münster 1995, p. 15
  3. ↑ The name refers to whales Count of Askanien, the founder of the monastery Walsrode (in 986), whose seat before the Hünenburg in the opening angle between Warnau and Böhme south of the plant Walo II was
  4. ↑ Oxxynova, previously Degussa-Hüls AG , previously Dynamit Nobel AG
  5. ↑ A concentration camp sub-camp that had existed for six weeks was probably set up because of the need for labor when setting up the Eibia facilities in Benefeld, but it was not organizationally assigned to the Eibia camps.
  6. ↑ A police custody camp / labor education camp was set up because of the need for labor when the powder factory was being built in Liebenau, but it was not organizationally assigned to Eibia.
  7. ↑ a b Martin Guse: The Liebenau Powder Factory 1938 to 1945 - An overview , 2005 pdf version
  8. ↑ Verden public prosecutor's investigation in: Staatsarchiv Stade, inventory Rep 171 Verden acc 66/88 (in the 1960s)
  9. ↑ POL: powder without solvents
  10. ↑ NG: Nitroglycerin
  11. ↑ chemical warfare agent; NC powder mixed with the arsenic compounds azine or adamsite . Source: www.relakte.com (see external links to the facilities in Dörverden)

Web links

Commons : Eibia  - collection of images, videos and audio files