Fries & Höpflinger

Fries & Höpflinger AG
legal form	Corporation
founding	1890
resolution	1929
Reason for dissolution	Incorporation into SKF
Seat	Schweinfurt
Number of employees	1900 (1929)
Branch	roller bearing

The Fries & Höpflinger AG was a company for the production of rolling bearings in Schweinfurt and was among the world leaders in this industry. The company was founded in 1890, was one of the Big Three in Schweinfurt and was taken over by the SKF Group in 1929 .

history

founding


Fries & Höpflinger 1913, automatic ball grinding shop		like left

In 1890 Wilhelm Höpflinger went into business for himself with Engelbert Fries. They founded the company Fries & Höpflinger, which manufactured balls and ball bearings and sold them worldwide. Höpflinger was in charge of technical management and Fries of commercial management.

In 1896 the company was renamed Deutsche Gußstahlkugel- und Maschinenfabrik AG when it was converted into an AG . In parlance, however, the company was still predominantly named after the two founders, and in 1927 it was officially given back the old name Fries & Höpflinger . The main shareholder was the banking house Gebrüder Arnhold in Dresden .

boom

In the first boom phase, the company employed around 700 workers in 1896/97. The company's first dividend was 30%. Due to the high profits, financiers all over Germany became aware of the sphere industry as an attractive capital investment, and new sphere companies were founded everywhere. The subsequent overproduction led to a collapse of the market. The number of employees fell again to 120. The close cooperation with Fichtel & Sachs , the company of Höpflinger's son-in-law Ernst Sachs, was decisive for the company's resurgence from 1903 .

On the eve of the First World War, Fries & Höpflinger AG employed almost 2,000 people. During the war, production was switched to grenades and bullets. The dividend was up to 25%.

takeover

The ball and roller bearing industry was dominated by a cartel that enabled the company to maintain its position as one of the market leaders in the 1920s, but profits remained meager. The company has been the subject of takeover speculation several times. In 1929 the Swedish SKF group acquired the majority of the shares and merged the company together with five competitors to form Vereinigte Kugellagerfabriken AG (from 1953 SKF GmbH).

Successor buildings

Corner of Schrammstr./Sattlerstraße today: The dark red corner of the Stadtgalerie
corresponds to the corner building on the top picture

The company's production facilities were all in Schweinfurt.

The main plant was on the southwestern edge of the city center , on the railway line and Main , but without a siding. A second plant was located in Oberndorf , with a rail connection to the main train station . It is the area of today's SKF Plant 2 south of Ernst-Sachs-Straße and possibly also the smaller area of SKF Plant 4 north of Ernst-Sachs-Straße. This former work by Fries & Höpflinger remained almost undamaged during the Second World War .

The main plant was located between the Wilhelminian-era district and the Main, in place of the central area of the later VKF and SKF plant 1. At that time, Sattlerstrasse and Cramerstrasse ran south across Schrammstrasse to what was then Schultesstrasse (today's Gunnar-Wester-Strasse) on the banks of the Main . The main plant took up almost the entire street block between Schrammstrasse in the north (upper right picture: Längstrasse), Sattlerstrasse in the east (ibid .: Querstrasse), Gunnar-Wester-Strasse in the south and Cramerstrasse in the west. Before and after the First World War, there was a perimeter block development around the northwest corner (Schrammstrasse / Cramerstrasse) in this street block, with apartment buildings. After the First World War, the plant was almost completely rebuilt into a new, modern factory, which was almost completely destroyed in the Second World War as the middle part of VKF Plant 1.

The fountain in the city gallery is at the former western end of the factory

After the Second World War, Sattlerstrasse and Cramerstrasse were integrated in their areas south of Schrammstrasse into the VKF plant as internal works streets. The area of the former main factory of Fries & Höpflinger was rebuilt a few years after the war in the style of the 1930s, with tall clinker buildings. With legendary wooden paternoster elevators , which were still in operation until the factory complex was demolished in 2006, as one of the few of its kind in Germany. A gatehouse from around 1960 marked the entrance to the plant from Cramerstraße into Werksstraße. The perimeter block development with the residential houses was replaced by factories.

Today, the 300 m long Stadtgalerie Schweinfurt shopping center, which opened in 2009, replaces the main Fries & Höpflinger AG factory . Namely with its eastern section, between the extension of Sattlerstraße, which is now again publicly usable as a footpath, and the entrance to Schrammstraße / Cramerstraße. Today, two striking points mark the end of the former factory: in the east a translocated Art Nouveau factory gate of the former Fichtel & Sachs factory 1 (later VKF or SKF factory 1) on the above footpath and in the west the fountain in the city gallery.

literature

Klaus Merkle: The German American Steel Ball Company, Numismatic Society Schweinfurt eV, 29 p., Revised version January 2012.

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Peter Hofmann: Schweinfurt Guide. Fries & Höpflinger
↑ Video, chronoshistory: Flight over the destroyed Berlin (0:00 to 2:00) and the destroyed Schweinfurt (2:00 to 6:00; in color). At 4:19 minutes, south (left) of Ernst-Sachs-Straße, you can see the almost undamaged area of the former second Fries & Höpflinger plant. Retrieved May 2, 2018 .
↑ Sattlerstraße according to the picture in the above info box. Cramerstraße according to picture in: Peter Hofmann: Schweinfurtführer, Schultesstraße
↑ Video, chronoshistory: Flight over the destroyed Berlin (0:00 to 2:00) and the destroyed Schweinfurt (2:00 to 6:00; in color). In minute 2:42 you can see the almost completely destroyed factory area of the former main factory of Fries & Höpflinger. Retrieved May 2, 2018 .

50.04008 10.22567Coordinates: 50 ° 2 ′ 24.3 " N , 10 ° 13 ′ 32.4" E

[1] Peter Hofmann: Schweinfurt Guide. Fries & Höpflinger

[2] Video, chronoshistory: Flight over the destroyed Berlin (0:00 to 2:00) and the destroyed Schweinfurt (2:00 to 6:00; in color). At 4:19 minutes, south (left) of Ernst-Sachs-Straße, you can see the almost undamaged area of the former second Fries & Höpflinger plant. Retrieved May 2, 2018 .

[3] Sattlerstraße according to the picture in the above info box. Cramerstraße according to picture in: Peter Hofmann: Schweinfurtführer, Schultesstraße

[4] Video, chronoshistory: Flight over the destroyed Berlin (0:00 to 2:00) and the destroyed Schweinfurt (2:00 to 6:00; in color). In minute 2:42 you can see the almost completely destroyed factory area of the former main factory of Fries & Höpflinger. Retrieved May 2, 2018 .