FW Quist
FW Quist was a metal goods factory in Esslingen am Neckar .
history
Quist goes back to an operation in 1866 by Jakob jun Swiss., A turner and metal turners, at Martinstrasse 1 as painting and Metallwaarenfabrik founded and into a corporation named 1872 Actien- Plaqué -Fabrik was converted.
In 1872 a total of 178 shares with a value of 700 guilders each were subscribed, which resulted in share capital of 124,600 guilders. Jakob Schweizer only held twelve of these shares at the time; the rest was divided almost equally between four shareholders from Stuttgart .
Friedrich Wilhelm Quist (1831–1903) was one of these main shareholders. He became director of the Actien-Plaqué-Fabrik and moved from Stuttgart to Esslingen. In 1885 there were a total of 200 shares, which were evenly distributed among all five shareholders. Jakob Schweizer jun. so had increased his shareholding significantly. A dividend of seven percent is documented for the business year 1884.
After Jacob Schweizer's death in 1886, the AG was dissolved again in 1887. The liquidator was Friedrich Wilhelm Quist with a three-person supervisory board. The company passed into the hands of the former shareholders Quist and Robert Eisenmann, who in the meantime had acquired all 200 shares, each worth 1200 marks. The latter sold his share in the oHG in 1890 to Quist. Nevertheless, the company continued to use the name "Quist & Eisenmann" until around 1895.
Friedrich Wilhelm Quist handed the business over to his sons Edmund and Fritz Quist by 1899 at the latest and decreed in his will that whoever would continue the company would have to pay the other son 126,000 marks. Power struggles between Edmund and Fritz Quist had already begun during the father's lifetime, which made such a provision seem advisable. After Friedrich Wilhelm Quist died in 1903, Fritz Quist continued to run the company as the sole owner from 1904. He remained managing director until his death in 1951, but the company was converted into a GmbH in 1936. Fritz Quist's three sons Hans, Werner and Walter all also worked for the company. Hans and Walter were mainly active abroad, Werner was increasingly involved in the management in Esslingen from the 1930s and took over sole management of the company in 1951. The GmbH was converted into a KG in 1959. In 1965 Gerd Quist joined the company management, which was now in the fourth generation in the hands of the Quist family.
In the second half of the 20th century, the company got into trouble due to several wrong decisions. The attempt to buy a lucrative stake in WMF failed. Quist succeeded in buying up more than a quarter of WMF's common shares between 1965 and 1971, but such a stake in the box did not have a sufficient say and the hoped-for positions on the supervisory board for Werner and Gerd Quist could not be achieved by buying shares. This attempt cost Quist around 18 million DM up to 1971, while the annual turnover at this time was around 22.7 million DM.
The attempt to set up a plant in Malaysia failed in 1973 when unsuitable land was purchased. The change in contemporary taste was also fatal for FW Quist. Silver-plated table utensils and gift items were no longer popular with customers, cheap imports from Asia intensified the competitive situation and in design at Quist, unlike Alessi , for example, you couldn't commit to a new, successful line: Susanne Feldmann came up with an essay about the company's history to the devastating conclusion that in the last few decades Quist has only been “an indiscriminate mess, which with the high-quality Art Nouveau and Art Déco items [sic!] or the solid but trendy metal goods of the 1950s is only brand names in common ”produced.
Rationalization measures and a restructuring in 1980 could no longer save the company: In 1981, Quist filed for bankruptcy .
The brand was bought by the BMF, including the utility models, tools and machines. Some of the articles continued to be produced under the Quist name after this takeover.
In Esslingen, the high factory chimney with the name “Quist” still indicates the former company location in Weststadt.
Products
Quist produced tableware and table accessories in the respective style of the time. Until the time of the First World War, the focus was entirely on the area of table utensils; from 1916 steel helmets and other army supplies were made, and after the First World War also aluminum dishes.
In the interwar period, FW Quist returned to armaments production in 1935 and submitted a patent for the production of steel helmets, which was greatly admired by the inventor of the steel helmet, Professor Schwerd , during a company visit in 1936. FW Quist was one of four steel helmet manufacturers for the German Wehrmacht, but from 1938 onwards it also manufactured fire and air raid helmets. Z. were produced. B. the types M1935, M1940 and M1942. During the Third Reich these helmets were bought by the Waffen-SS , later by the Bundeswehr and the field police in Germany. In addition to helmets, other armaments such as housings for bomb detonators were also produced during the Second World War . In 1942, 97 percent of the items Quist manufactured were intended for use in the war. Silver-plated metal goods were only allowed to be produced for foreign currency procurement abroad.
Even after the Second World War, the helmets were part of the product range until around 1960. Plastic eventually turned out to be serious competition for light metal. The double cones for the overheating seals of steam locomotives, the production of which had started during the Second World War, were no longer needed after the electrification of the railway. Drawn and pressed parts for industry were also part of the range in the second post-war period.
Individual design objects from the 1960s and 1970s later became collector's items: for example, the spherical Smokny ashtray , which came on the market in 1970 and was modeled on the Ball and Bubble chair by Eero Aarnio presented in 1966 and 1968, respectively, became famous .
For most Quist products, no particular designer can be identified with certainty, but there are a few exceptions. For example, the French designer Paul Follot provided designs for FW Quist. Max Joseph Gradl , August Oesselmann , Johannes Bartel and Carl Nies also made designs for the Esslingen company. In the 1930s Emil Kitzenmeier worked as a permanent employee for FW Quist. One of the main designers of Quist products after the Second World War was Eugen Stegmaier and from 1954 Oswald Pörner was employed by the company as a designer.
The Esslinger Stadtmuseum owns numerous pieces from the Quistschen production. Some of them were shown as part of an exhibition on metal goods production in Esslingen in 2004.
Buildings
FW Quist was based in Esslingen Weststadt. Jakob Schweizer jun. was the first resident of Martinstrasse in 1866. In 1892 the company was located in the buildings Martinstrasse 1, 3 and 5; In 1897 building permission was granted for a new factory building, which was built in two construction phases between 1897 and 1903 further out of town, also in Martinstrasse. The building, including the machine and boiler house, was designed by Philipp Jakob Manz . The extensions in 1911, 1912 and 1914, which resulted in a three-wing complex on the corner of Martinstrasse and Schlachthausstrasse, were also planned by Manz and Otto Junge ; Junge raised the building by one mansard storey to four storeys. The ground floor is set apart from the other floors by its purple brick design. These are made of exposed brickwork made of yellow bricks and are decorated with reddish brick patterns and cornices. The façades are symmetrical and structured by pillars; The entrance gate and main entrance are in the central axis of the facade facing Martinstrasse.
The three-wing open complex was closed in 1936/37 by a connecting building. In 1962 a new building was added, which doubled the work area. After the bankruptcy, the building complex was rented from 1981 to various tradespeople and to the then Art & Culture Association of Esslingen (KuKoZe). After a major fire of the building in December 1983, which lasted seven hours and caused around 2 million property damage, a possible demolition was discussed, which fortunately was rejected. The building at Martinstrasse 44, which has now been fully renovated and is now used commercially, was later listed as an outstanding example of contemporary industrial architecture.
Web links
literature
- Esslingen City Museum (ed.), SilberSachen. The Esslingen metal goods industry from 1815 to 1981 , Ostfildern 2004, ISBN 3-935293-45-3
- Quist acquired over 25% of WMF ordinary shares , Hamburger Abendblatt 219, September 21, 1971, p. 19
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Little ball ashtray "Smokny", FWQuist, 1970, Germany. Retrieved September 9, 2012 .
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Susanne Feldmann, “Selected for you”. On the history of the metal goods factory FW Quist. A workshop report , in: Stadtmuseum Esslingen (ed.), SilberSachen. The Esslinger Metallwarenindustrie from 1815 to 1981 , Ostfildern 2004, ISBN 3-935293-45-3 , pp. 53–86, here p. 73
- ↑ Andrea Steudle et al., Monument Topography Federal Republic of Germany. Cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg. Volume 1.2.1. City of Esslingen am Neckar , Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0834-6 , p. 188 with ill. 455
