Wöllersdorf works

Fireworks between Wöllersdorf and Bad Fischau

The Wöllersdorfer Werke (historically: Raketendörfl , Feuerwerkanstalt ) are today a factory settlement in the area of Wiener Neustadt , Bad Fischau and Wöllersdorf . Previously, there was a large munitions factory in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy .

Ammunition factory

• The military facilities near Wöllersdorf around 1873 (recording sheets of the state survey )
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  Wöllersdorf with the "Art (illerie) Laboratorium Raketendörfl" (center above) and the "KKFeuerwerk-Anstalt" south of it

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  The "KK Artillery Firing Range" on Steinfeld

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  The firing range extended to Siegersdorf in the east

From 1815, the establishment of laboratories and facilities for powder production and processing began on the sparsely populated heath between Wiener Neustadt and Wöllersdorf to the north-west .

As a specialty, simple rockets , similar to fireworks, were made, which were fired in bundles by launchers. The factory was called Raketendörfl , and the KK fireworks corps was set up for the military use of the new rocket artillery . This gave rise to the place name Feuerwerkanstalt, which is still used today, as a part of the municipality of Wöllersdorf. To accommodate the staff working there, the water barracks , which was later named Babenberger barracks , was built near the factory building around 1830 .

Between 1860 and 1870, the rocket batteries were converted into conventional gun batteries due to their high dispersion and low accuracy.

From 1868, the steady expansion began to produce artillery and rifle ammunition for the army and navy . The name was KK Artillery Main Laboratory and from 1895 Kuk Munitionsfabrik Wöllersdorf .

Standard gauge factory railway (1902), the first electric three-phase high-voltage railway in Austria in regular operation

The plants (right) were integrated into a network of railway connections (special map of the land survey, status 1915)

During the entire duration of the First World War , the Wöllersdorfer Feuerwerkanstalt was the focus of the Kuk armament plants in and around Wiener Neustadt, with further plants in Berndorf , Hirtenberg , Enzesfeld , Blumau and Theresienfeld . The Wöllersdorf plant alone extended over almost 3 km², on which 635 buildings were available. Around 40 km of standard gauge tracks, over 70 km of narrow-gauge railways and over 26 km of concrete roads made the facilities accessible. The workforce rose from 5,000 in 1914 to over 40,000 in 1918, each of whom had to work 70 hours per week.

In 1902, a standard-gauge, electrically operated factory railway, which was powered by three-phase alternating current , was built on the factory premises from the Feuerwerkanstalt ( ⊙ ) station of the Schneeberg Railway . The voltage was 3,000 volts. The then new system became Kálmán Kandó (1869–1931), the chief designer at Ganz & Comp. developed in Budapest.

On September 18, 1918, a fire broke out in the munitions factory in which 423 people were killed, most of them women and girls.

Interwar period

From the end of 1918, under the supervision of the Allied Council , the new state of Austria administered the area. At the end of 1919, most of the facilities in the Wöllersdorfer Munitionsfabrik were incorporated into the “State Industrial Works” . The buildings were empty from 1922, but were maintained and cared for with the hope of subsequent use and settlement by new industrial companies. Except for the settlement of a few smaller companies, several large projects failed due to the corrupt, speculative machinations of those involved and the onset of the global economic crisis . A metal goods factory for agricultural machines and a glassworks (from April 1922) are known as peace projects of the Wöllersdorfer Werke.

As a holdover, a little further north, the Hirtenberger cartridge factory continued to produce ammunition and was completely destroyed by fire in 1920 and rebuilt in 1924. After a checkered history, this resulted in Hirtenberger Defense Systems, Hirtenberger Automotive Systems and Hirtenberger Präzisionstechnik.

In 1933, the Hirtenberg cartridge factory gave its name to a major domestic political event: the Hirtenberg arms affair , a large-scale smuggling of Italian arms via Austria to Hungary. It involved 40 wagons with 84,000 rifles and 980 machine guns, which were temporarily stored on the factory premises and with which the Hungarian Horthy regime and the Austrian Home Guard were to be equipped. The owner of the cartridge factory Fritz Mandl at the time was a close friend of Heimwehr leader Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg .

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  Product catalog for agricultural machinery (cover sheet), approx. 1920

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  Glass bar, April 1922

Stopping camp of the Austrian corporate state

→ Main article : Wöllersdorf detention camp

From October 1933 the government of the corporate state ( Austrofascism ) set up a detention camp based on the English model of the internment camp for critics of the regime and exponents of the banned parties NSDAP and KPÖ from 1933 and from 1934 of the Social Democratic Party (another detention camp was in Kaisersteinbruch ).

In October 1933 the first prisoners - nine National Socialists and one Communist - were brought to Wöllersdorf. From February 1934, hundreds of Schutzbündler and social democratic functionaries were deported to Wöllersdorf in the days after the bloody suppression of the February uprising .

Memorial on the site of the former detention camp in Wöllersdorf (unveiled 1974)

On May 1, 1934, there were 831 political prisoners in the camp - 508 Social Democrats and Communists and 323 National Socialists. After the July coup of July 1934, the Wöllersdorf detention camp was again filled with thousands of newcomers; in October 1934 the highest level was reached with almost 5,000 people (of which 4,256 were National Socialists, 538 were Social Democrats and Communists).

The amnesty of 1936 reduced the number of prisoners to around 500 people. Shortly before it was closed, 114 people were still in Wöllersdorf (including 45 National Socialists, 11 Social Democrats and 58 Communists). After Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg's interview with Adolf Hitler in February 1938, the camp was finally closed.

In March 1938, however, the barracks were used again for the temporary detention of functionaries of the corporate state. On April 2, 1938, the Wöllersdorf camp was closed and the barracks burned down. The remaining Austrian prisoners were transferred to the Dachau concentration camp .

Second World War

At the time of annexation to the German Reich on March 12, 1938, almost all of the buildings were still there and, like almost the entire infrastructure, in pristine condition - so that the site was an ideal location as an air park for the nearby Wiener Neustadt air base .

Thus, following a decision by the Reich Aviation Ministry in the summer of 1938, work began on adapting the facilities for Air Park XVII Wiener Neustadt - Wöllersdorf .

The facilities were largely destroyed in a major bombing raid by the American Air Force on May 29, 1944, the remains were blown up in the last week of March 1945 and destroyed during the ensuing fighting with the Red Army .

post war period

Switching house of the power plant - today MABA office building

The large rubble field was of no importance to the Soviet occupying forces either, everything that was still usable was recycled as building material. Larger building fragments as well as several chimneys that had become functionless were blown up in the late 1940s. A few companies have settled in the western part of the site and the former power station's switchgear building was one of the few remaining buildings that has been renovated and has served the precast concrete company MABA as an office building since 1925 . Built in 1916 by the architect Ludwig Müller - a pupil of Otto Wagner's - it is today one of the last impressive examples of industrial architecture of the time. Another part of the area near today's motorway exit Wöllersdorf was built with residential buildings.

In the eastern part, in the direction of the Wiener Neustadt-West airfield , the modern barracks and training facilities of the Austrian anti-terrorist unit, Einsatzkommando Cobra , have been located within a small pine forest since 1992 . The rest of the area in between is overgrown with scrub, furrowed by trenches , shell and bomb craters. Sometimes the overgrown foundation walls of buildings can still be seen. Gravel is mined in some places.

To the north-east of Wiener Neustadt, the well-preserved ruins of the powder tower testify to the formerly widespread production facilities.

In the presence of Bruno Kreisky , Anton Benya , Rosa Jochmann , Rudolfine Muhr and Otto Probst , among others, a memorial was unveiled on February 10, 1974 in view of the 40th anniversary of the February uprising in memory of those imprisoned in the detention camp.

literature

• Fritz Golwig: The electric three-phase high-voltage train in the kuk ammunition factory in Wöllersdorf . In: Maximilian Zinner (Red.): Journal for electrical engineering . Volume 20.1902, Issues No. 11 and 12/1902, ISSN  1013-5111 . Spielhagen & Schurich ( Commission ), Vienna 1902. - Part 1/2 (pp. 133-138) online , Part 2/2 (pp. 150-153) online .
• Eva Wald: The beginnings of industry in the Vienna Basin and its geographical basis. Dissertation. University of Vienna, Vienna 1954.
• Gertrud Gerhartl-Buttlar (Red.): Wiener Neustadt. Fortress, residence, garrison. Magistrate of the City of Wiener Neustadt, Dept. 10, Wiener Neustadt 1972.
• Johann Witz: Between Wöllersdorf and Blumau. The military tugs on the Steinfeld. In: Railway. ISSN  0013-2756 ZDB -ID 162227-4 . Issues 12/1974, pp. 181-184 and 1-2 / 1975, pp. 4-6.
• Gerhard Meißl: The change in social relationships in the Austrian war industry 1914-1918 using the example of the kuk Munitionsfabrik Wöllersdorf. Dissertation. University of Vienna, Vienna 1975.
• Rudolf F. Marwan-Schlosser : Barracks and military facilities in Wiener Neustadt, Bad Fischau, Wöllersdorf, Katzelsdorf, Felixdorf-Grossmittel-Blumau. Weilburg-Verlag, Wiener Neustadt 1983, ISBN 3-900100-09-8 .
• Manfred Hoesch: Location typology of industrial companies in the district under the Vienna Woods until 1850. Dissertation. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna 1984.
• Helene Maimann (Hrsg.), Siegfried Mattl (Hrsg.): The cold of February. Austria 1933–1938, An exhibition of the Austrian Society for Cultural Policy together with the Meidlinger Kulturkreis, Straßenbahn-Remise Wien-Meidling, Koppreitergasse, February 12 to May 1, 1984. Junius (inter alia), Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-900370-98 -2 .
• Karl Flanner : Wöllersdorf-Steinabrückl. History and work. Market town, Wöllersdorf-Steinabrückl 1988.
• Paul, Friedrich and Josef Otto Slezak : Canal, nostalgia, railroad. (about the function of the Aspangbahn and the Schneebergbahn for military transports). Slezak publishing house , ISBN 3-85416-153-0 . Vienna 1990, pp. 134, 136-137, 139
• Klaus-Dieter Mulley (Ed.): Storeys - Scandals - Barbed wire. Workers and armaments industry in Wöllersdorf, Enzesfeld and Hirtenberg. Self-published by the union of railway workers, local group Ebenfurth Pottendorfer Linie, Ebenfurth 1999, ISBN 3-9500563-1-6 .
• Karl Flanner: The concentration / detention camp Wöllersdorf. Documentation of the "Industrieviertel-Museum" Wiener Neustadt, Volume 129, old: ZDB -ID 694615-X , new: ZDB -ID 2290769-5 . Association Museum and Archive in the district under the Vienna Woods, Wiener Neustadt 2008.

Web links

Commons : Wöllersdorfer Werke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Golwig: The electric three-phase high-voltage railway , p. 134.
2. ↑ Trifase Storia. (Section E 360: The first “large” three-phase electric locomotive in Italy, on the Veltlinbahn and Simplon ). 
3. ↑ orf.at: Wöllersdorf 1918: 423 dead accuse . Article dated September 28, 2018, accessed September 29, 2018.
4. ↑ schlot.at : Wöllersdorfer Werke - metal goods factory and glassworks around 1920
5. ^ Gerhard Jagschitz (1975). The detention camp in Austria. In Ludwig Jedlicka & Rudolf Neck (eds.), From the Justizpalast to the Heldenplatz. Studies and Documentation 1927 to 1938. (pp. 128–151). Vienna: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, p. 149.
6. ↑ 1934 - an act of resistance. SPÖ memorial rally in Wiener Neustadt and Wöllersdorf - memorial unveiled . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 12, 1974, p. 2 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).

Coordinates: 47 ° 50 ′ 48.2 "  N , 16 ° 11 ′ 31.4"  E