G. Kuhn

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G. Kuhn, machine and boiler factory, iron and brass foundry
legal form Company with limited liability
founding 1852
resolution 1902
Seat Stuttgart , Germany

G. Kuhn, machine and boiler factory, iron and brass foundry, Stuttgart-Berg was a machine factory in the Berg district of Stuttgart . As the first steam boiler factory in Stuttgart, the company is considered a pioneer of industrialization . The company existed independently from 1852 to 1902.

Company history

Stuttgart-Berg, city map with “Maschinen-Fabr. v. Kuhn ”.
Advertising poster around 1900.

The factory was founded by Gotthilf Kuhn . The trained blacksmith artisans came to his training and by then more usually travels with it earned money to Stuttgart to in Gaugerschen beer cellar (Swan) in Stuttgart-Berg rent space and to start a company there. At the end of the year when the company was founded in 1852, the company, which had opened as a workshop, was expanded to include a boiler shop. Kuhn was one of the first larger metalworking companies in Württemberg and grew quickly. Kuhn already had 36 employees in its founding year.

In 1857 the company expanded to include its own foundry. Until then, cast products were obtained from sources from third-party companies, mostly from Wasseralfingen . The G. Kuhn, machine and boiler factory, iron and brass foundry was created . Ten years later, a large part of the company burned out, which Kuhn used to redesign his company and make it less prone to failure. In addition, representative branch offices were opened in Berlin , Cologne , Munich and Frankfurt am Main by the turn of the century . Internationally, the company founded a branch in Saint Petersburg . At the turn of the century there were almost 1,300 workers in the company. Since industrial companies, breweries, distilleries, brickworks and sugar factories sprang up everywhere, they were supplied with operating machines from the Kuhn company. Prominent buyers of machines in Stuttgart were, for example, the court book printing company Greiner & Pfeiffer , the leather factory CF Roser or the chemical company G. Siegle & Co.

Even before the First World War , a number of Berger companies collapsed as inflation worsened . From 1902 the business of the Kuhn company also deteriorated and the company got into trouble. The anniversary year 1902 (fifty years of company history) ultimately led to the loss of independence. Ernst Kuhn , the son of the company founder, had already taken over management of the company in 1890 . Efforts were made to maintain the high level of expertise and to save large parts of the workforce. Despite the transfer of ownership to Maschinenfabrik Esslingen AG (ME) , Ernst Kuhn initially remained managing director. The construction and the productive execution of steam boilers were combined in Esslingen. The rest of the production facilities in Stuttgart-Berg were completely abandoned when the new ME plant in Esslingen-Mettingen was opened in 1912–1913.

During the First World War, prisoners of war, mostly French, were housed in the buildings of the Kuhn factory, which had been closed a good ten years earlier. After the site was repeatedly leased to various companies in the following years, parts of the facility were ultimately demolished. In 1960 it was completely demolished.

architecture

The buildings of the G. Kuhn factory could be assigned to the buildings of historicism . The main focus of the time was on unplastered open brick buildings, which, however, fell under the local building statute of Stuttgart, which regulated the prohibition of other construction methods.

Products

A Woolf balancing machine from 1858 is in Dornbirn .
A manhole cover by G. Kuhn in Stuttgart

Kuhn manufactured and supplied complete factory equipment, steam engines and steam boilers. With ten to fourteen horse-drawn towing devices, the company transported the goods to the freight yard in Cannstatt . Kuhn kept separate lists of factory numbers for the machines and boilers. The company also manufactured locomotives . With the spread of the steam engine, Kuhn made a major contribution to industrialization.

  • The oldest delivery (No. 4) registered in the machine number directory went to Bardilli, a local brewery in Stuttgart.
  • The machine with the serial number 1 was a steam feed pump for the Reutlinger Bruderhaus.
  • A mobile locomobile with the serial number 127 (boiler 220) was delivered to the Württemberg State Railways (General Directorate of the State Railways).
  • The Süddeutsche Eisenbahnbaugesellschaft commissioned Kuhn with the delivery of three identical narrow-gauge construction locomotives, which were entered in the order book as earth transport locomotives.
  • The first locomotive went to the Schöttle & Schuster company in Berlin.
  • From 1887 Kuhn supplied Gottlieb Daimler with automobile engine cylinders made of special gray cast iron and in 1890 the world's first four-cylinder block designed by Wilhelm Maybach .

In addition, Kuhn, like Gottlieb Daimler, experimented with the gas engine . The company manufactured water motors for small businesses.

In the 1870s and 1880s, Kuhn manufactured the cast iron pipes required for Stuttgart's water supply , which replaced the former clay and stone pipes. The Kuhn company even took on the construction of the entire water supply network for Ludwigsburg .

Market environment in Stuttgart

Until the middle of the 19th century, the machine and apparatus manufacturing industry was mainly in foreign hands. A competitive situation could not initially be created because the production conditions, such as the cramped raw material location and the poor transport connections, were unfavorable. A promotion of heavy industry in the narrow sense was out of the question. Instead, manufacturing companies for simple machines emerged. The growing diversification of the industry in the electrotechnical and precision engineering sector, as well as among the special machine manufacturers, increasingly required mechanical support from boiler factories, foundries and other metal factories. The high space requirements of such companies could be guaranteed in Stuttgart-Berg, in Stuttgart-Heslach , but also in the central urban area, which is why companies such as G. Kuhn, Hildt & Metzger , the "Heinrich Kurtz bell foundry", the "H. Kuhn iron foundry" or the "Steam boiler factory M. Streicher " were able to establish and flourish.

Social facilities

Kuhn was involved in some social areas of the pension system for his workforce.

  • In 1855 he set up his own company health insurance scheme, which he subsidized .
  • In 1865 a savings bank was set up, which granted 4.5% interest on credit balances - with free account management.
  • In 1872 the worker - friendly eight-hour day was introduced.
  • Long-term employees were exempted from contributions to old-age insurance .

Trivia

  • The men's choir Stuttgart Berg 1856 eV was founded as the Vulkania factory choir .
  • The state women's clinic (state midwifery school) resided on the former company premises from 1926 to 1928.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Gabriele Kreuzberger, pp. 178 ff, 187 f, 192, 200, 204 (see lit.)
  2. ↑ Company history
  3. ↑ a b Hartmut Ellrich, p. 202 f.
  4. ↑ Hans Christoph Graf von Seherr-Thoß:  Kuhn, Gotthilf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 259 f. ( Digitized version ).
  5. ↑ http://www.muse-o.de/geschichte-s-ost/geschichte-gablenberg/ Brief history of Berg.
  6. ^ Deutsches Museum, Wassermotor Collections
  7. ↑ Werner Skrentny, Rolf Schwenker, Sybille Weitz, Ulrich Weitz, p. 202 (see lit.)

literature

  • E. Brösamlen: The beautiful Stuttgart mountain. A home book. Stuttgart 1939, pages 32-35.
  • Ulrich Gohl: Made in S-Ost: manufacturing companies in the east of Stuttgart from the beginning until today. Stuttgart: Verlag im Ziegelhaus, 2016, pages 134–144.
  • Gabriele Kreuzberger, Factory Buildings in Stuttgart, Their Development from the Middle of the 19th Century to the First World War , Klett-Cotta 1993, ISBN 3-608-91629-6 , pages 179-188, 49, 51.
  • Paul Sauer : Becoming a big city: Stuttgart between the founding of an empire and the First World War; 1871-1914 , Stuttgart 1988, pages 174-177.
  • Werner Skrentny, Rolf Schwenker, Sybille Weitz, Ulrich Weitz: Stuttgart on foot . Silberburg-Verlag , ISBN 978-3-87407-813-9 , pages 203-205.

Web links

Commons : G. Kuhn  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files