Füllnerwerk

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Füllnerwerk was originally a mechanical engineering plant specializing in paper machines in Warmbrunn and the immediately neighboring Herischdorf in Lower Silesia ; Herischdorf was incorporated into the neighboring town, renamed Bad Warmbrunn in 1925, on October 1, 1941, and in 1975 Bad Warmbrunn was incorporated into Jelenia Góra (formerly Hirschberg in German).

history

Founding years (1854–1889)

In 1854 Heinrich Füllner from Breslau bought a wooden shed in Warmbrunn and set up a workshop for the repair of paper machine systems in it, which was in great demand at the numerous paper mills in the Hirschberg area . Rapidly growing demand soon made it necessary to expand the plant and for this purpose Füllner bought the glass cutting shop from the merchant JG Enge in the nearby Herischdorf on the other, southern side of the Zacken river (in Polish: Kamienna ) and directly on the western bank of the heather (in Polish: Wrzosówka ). The company headquarters remained in Warmbrunn, but the actual production facility was now in Herischdorf. The lathes installed there were powered by the hydropower of the heather. A small metal foundry was set up in the basement of the workshop , where machine parts for paper plants were manufactured, and when this turned out to be too small, a significantly larger metallurgical department was created on the factory premises. As a service provider for the paper manufacturers in the area, Füllner acquired considerable specialist knowledge, which he used from 1864 to build paper machines he designed himself.

Expansion to a global company (1889–1920)

Heinrich Füllner's eldest son Alwin, who was intended to be the father's successor, died in 1867. The second son, Eugen (born February 14, 1853 in Breslau, † May 24, 1925 in Herischdorf), who had actually wanted to be a pastor , then stepped down Joined the company in 1869, studied at the Technikum in Eckernförde after completing his apprenticeship and returned to the factory in 1877. In 1884 he became a co-owner of the company, and after the death of his father on December 7, 1889, he was the sole owner of the company until 1920. An impressive expansion of the company began under Eugen Füllner's leadership, not only expanding the production facilities, but also building a gas works to illuminate the premises and a water turbine for mechanical operation. In 1894 the annual turnover , with 150 employees, was already 1.3 million marks. All machines and complete equipment for paper , cardboard , cardboard , cellulose and wood pulp mills were built and exported to almost all paper-producing countries in the world . In the course of the following 20 years, among other things, further workshops, an administration building, a boiler house with two double boilers , a steam engine system , an electrical center and a model carpentry were built . The largest paper machines built by Füllner at this time were up to 100 m long and weighed up to 1000 tons, had a 5 m wide screen and could produce up to 100 tons of paper per day. In 1908 about 600 people worked in the plant, and in 1913 the plant employed about 800 people and had an annual turnover of 6 million marks. The Füllnerwerk had become one of the largest and most renowned paper machine manufacturers in the world. His machines were in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia (including Finland and Poland), Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria-Hungary, Romania, Greece, France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela, Canada, Japan and china.

With considerable effort, Füllner also built machines for feeding large industrial exhibitions such as B. the Berlin trade exhibition in 1879 , the Saxon-Thuringian industrial and trade exhibition in Leipzig in 1897 , the world exhibition in Paris in 1900 and the world exhibition in Turin in 1911 .

Years of crisis and changes in ownership (1920–1939)

When he fell ill in 1920, Eugen Füllner, who had no children, sold the plant to "Linke-Hofmann-Werke AG" from Breslau, which continued to expand the plant. A warehouse built in 1915 was enlarged to a length of 100 m and set up as a large turning shop and a roller and cylinder grinding shop. A storage and loading hall with a siding and an 8 t crane was built at the Warmbrunn station . In 1929 around 1,100 workers were employed in the filling plant, but the global economic crisis forced drastic layoffs in the following years, down to only a quarter of this number.

In 1932 the plant left the association of the joint stock company, which had meanwhile changed to "Linke-Hofmann-Busch" (LHB), and was initially continued as Füllnerwerk GmbH, which previously operated with the Maschinenfabrik AG, which also produced plants for paper and cellulose production . Wagner & Co. , formed an interest group in Köthen so that the factories could be used by both partners. When LHB was broken up into sub-companies in 1934, the Füllnerwerk was sold to Maschinenfabrik AG, formerly Wagner & Co., which had been largely owned by Otto Dörries since 1932 , and which then relocated its headquarters to Warmbrunn-Herischdorf in February 1935. The demand at home and abroad increased again, and this made an expansion of the company possible and necessary. From the in liquidation located "iron and Emaillierwerke AG" in Sprottau the foundry was Kotzenau , the former Marienhütte purchased and put into operation immediately.

War years (1939-1945)

As a result of the incorporation of further plants, acquired by him especially in the course of the so-called Aryanization , Dörries acquired the majority in Maschinenfabrik AG, formerly Wagner & Co., which was then renamed "Maschinenfabriken Wagner-Dörries AG" on January 25, 1939. On July 1, 1942, the company was renamed again to “Dörries-Füllner Maschinenfabriken AG”. During the Second World War , from 1940 onwards, production was largely switched to goods essential to the war effort, in particular shell casings and from 1941 onwards the 15 cm field howitzer 18 , and from 1942 onwards, hundreds of mostly Jewish products from Poland , Hungary , Belgium and the Netherlands were also converted , Greece and Czechoslovakia , forced laborers from the Groß Rosen concentration camp , who were initially housed in a labor camp near Hirschberg , then from May 1944 in a satellite camp in Bad Warmbrunn (up to 800 inmates) set up directly next to the factory premises . Several hundred of them died in the camp during a typhus epidemic.

Post-war period: end and new beginning (1945 – today)

PMPoland, formerly Füllnerwerk

When Bad Warmbrunn was occupied by the Red Army in April 1945, the entire production facility was confiscated by the Soviet Army and in June 1945 the dismantling and transport of the machines, equipment, tools and existing raw materials to the Soviet Union began . After the Polish authorities had taken over the administration of Silesia and thus also the empty factory halls due to the decisions of the Potsdam Conference , they started to rebuild the factory with the help of the still existing construction drawings for paper machines, now as the state-owned "Fabryka Maszyn Papierniczych" (FAMPA). In autumn 1948, operations were partially resumed, with a number of the remaining German employees forming part of the core staff, and by 1949 755 people were employed again in the plant. Initially, the production of the machine was based on the tradition of German pre-war production, but then from 1964 on a license agreement with the American market leader Beloit Corp.

In 1990, after the end of socialist rule in Poland, the company was renamed a joint stock company and in 1991 Beloit acquired the majority of its shares. The mill, renamed “Beloit Poland SA”, has established a good reputation as a manufacturer of machines for the production of tissue paper . When Beloit Corp. went bankrupt in 2000, a group of Polish and American managers managed to take over the factory and continue to run it as “PMPoland”. The company, which specializes in the delivery and modernization of paper making machines and other equipment for the paper industry, now has branches in Poland, the USA, Germany, the Czech Republic and China.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Enge had been running a factory in Petersdorf for the production of paper from straw since 1853 . (Junker, p. 11)
  2. ↑ The chief engineer Anton Schloßbauer married Valeska Marie Anna Hedwig Füllner in October 1887 and thus became Eugen Füllner's brother-in-law (Junker, p. 12).
  3. ↑ In 1923 the Lauchhammer stock corporation , founded in 1725, was incorporated into Linke-Hofmann-Werke AG, which was renamed the “Linke-Hofmann-Lauchhammer” corporation (LHL); as early as 1926 the Lauchhammerwerke were spun off again, and in 1928 Linke-Hofmann merged with Waggon- und Maschinenfabrik Aktien-Gesellschaft vorm. Busch in Bautzen , to "Linke-Hofmann-Busch" (LHB).
  4. ↑ Otto Dörries, b. on January 17, 1896 in Holzminden , was chairman of the board and operations manager of the engineering works FH Banning & Seybold Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft mbH AG in Düren and managing director of Erkensator GmbH in Düren. In addition, he was head of the “Technical Subgroup Paper Making Machines” in the “Mechanical Engineering Industry Group” in Berlin. (Erich Stockhorst: Five thousand heads: Who was what in the Third Reich , Blick + Bild Verlag, 1967)
  5. ↑ Their premises in Köthen were sold to Junkers Motorenbau GmbH , which started up their engine manufacturing branch in Köthen (MZK) there in April 1935.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Junker, p. 12
  2. ↑ Junker, p. 16
  3. ↑ Marienhütte Kotzenau, near Lüben - pictures, stories, documents
  4. ↑ a b Junker, p. 18
  5. ↑ Raimund Wolfert: Duplicates in the dragon style
  6. ↑ PMPoland SA, Producent Maszyn Papierniczych

Coordinates: 51 ° 51 ′ 39 "  N , 15 ° 41 ′ 4"  E