Carl Heinrich Forcke
Carl Heinrich Forcke was the name of a factory founded in Hanover in the 19th century for bicycle parts that were initially mainly made of wood. Internationally, the company also received media attention as the Forcke Brothers by building the largest wooden bicycle rim in the world.
history
The Forcke family came with the mill builder Karl Forcke from Altenhagen am Deister to the village of List outside the city of Hanover. Since mill construction had declined in the country, Forcke looked for and found a new job as a master with the " Plockflötjern ".
Karl Forcke had six children. During the founding period of the German Empire, the trained wheelwright Paul Forcke and his brother Heinrich Forcke († January 12, 1922, full name Carl Heinrich Forcke) acquired their initially jointly operated company Gebrüder Forcke in 1890, while their brother Carl Forcke ( * 1844) set up his own mechanical engineering workshop in Kronenstrasse and developed machines there, for example for the biscuit manufacturer Hermann Bahlsen or the chocolate manufacturer Sprengel . A machine temporarily used by Forcke at the baked goods manufacturer Bahlsen later found its way into the bread museum near Göttingen .
Also at the end of the 19th century, master bricklayer Georg Harke and his sons built the - preserved - residential building at Bothfelder Straße 3 , from where a daughter married into the Forcke family. The house is part of the " monument preservation area of interest" of the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation .
Carl and Heinrich Forcke, on the other hand, first bought a plot of land in the List at Podbielskistraße 304 , in order to then operate a sawmill powered by steam engines and a bending shop. They used them to produce wooden parts and blanks for chair factories - sometimes bent into metal molds by steam and pressure, for example bentwood chairs and chair backs like the Thonet company , but also for the Hannoversche Waggonfabrik (HAWA) or the Hanoverian tram , for which the curved wagons, for example - Roofs were prefabricated. The cartwright also produced “all types of wagons, handcarts, handcarts, etc.”. Soon there were three tall chimneys behind the Listhof block on the corner of Immengarten and Uelzestrasse; a chimney for the steam engine, one for the boiler and one for the painting equipment, later also for enamelling and stove- enamelling, for example of steel rims in large drying ovens.
Still as “Gebr. Forcke ”or, in French,“ Forcke frères ”, the two brothers constructed “ the largest wooden rim in the world ” for a giant tandem of the aviation pioneer Karl Jatho and his sister, with a detachable“ bead pneumatics ”and a diameter of 2.60 m covered 8.16 each turn. Mounted on the giant bike named after Jatho was an Excelsior pneumatic tire from the Hannoversche Gummi-Kamm-Compagnie, Act. Ges .; the colossal high- bike tandem was "[demonstrated] at larger hall driving festivals and parade rides and evokes the greatest admiration on all sides".
From the beginning, Heinrich Forcke had specialized in the design of machines and the manufacture of bicycle parts. In addition to the production of bicycle frames, the company's product portfolio also includes the manufacture and sale of rims, fenders, handles and handlebars as well as wooden chain guards.
During the First World War , the two brothers parted company; the previous company name was dissolved at the beginning of the Weimar Republic on July 1, 1919. But in the same year Heinrich Forcke acquired the building of the bed spring factory Gramann at the - then - address Immengarten 8 , from where bicycle parts made of metal such as mudguards, mudguard struts or steel rims or, for example, protective net guides were soon exported internationally. Paul Forcke continued to run his sawmill.
In the 1920s, the factory buildings at Immengarten received additional extensions, but from the living room the family could still look out over undeveloped land to Günther Wagner's factories and further to the Orion factory for photographic equipment at 23 Bothfelder Strasse. The family lived in the first one and second floor above the offices at Immengarten 8; Chickens were still being fed in the courtyard, there was also a large laundry area, and in front of the house there was a meadow for the horses: As the company did not yet have any trucks , the goods were transported away by a carriage drawn by the company's own Oldenburg horse to the freight yard on Weidendamm . 60 percent of production was exported; in particular the very brightly designed fenders, which were initially painted by hand with fine hairbrushes, found their buyers in the Netherlands and made their way to India and the rear of India , which later became Indonesia .
After Heinrich Forcke's death in 1922, the company was continued by his eldest son Heinrich Forcke junior, born in 1891, a trained mechanic. Under him, the export of bicycle parts increased all over the world, but this development stopped due to the political situation at the time of National Socialism in the mid-1930s.
During the Second World War Forcke had to produce material essential to the war effort for the United Light Metal Works, also located in Hanover . During the air raids on Hanover that soon followed, the house on Paul Forcke's property where the sawmill was located was "completely wiped out" by an aerial mine , but the family survived during their stay in the holiday home in Kirchdorf am Deister . The buildings at Immengarten, however, were largely spared from aerial bombs, only a few workshop rooms that were previously provided with “ shet roofs ” and then damaged were later given a flat roof.
While up to 50 people worked at Carl Heinrich Forcke at times, the number of jobs steadily declined in the course of mechanization. But the cooperation with the United Light Metal Works, which had been developed during the war, developed into Forcke one of the first producers of rims and fenders made of aluminum and soon employed 20 workers again. But as early as 1955, production was completely discontinued because " cars got out of hand and nobody wanted to ride bicycles". In those years around 160 bicycle factories in Germany closed their operations.
The company Carl Heinrich Forcke was deleted from the commercial register at the Hanover District Court under the number HRA 14257 on July 31, 1956. The company buildings at Immengarten were temporarily used by "Draht-Meyer" and leased to the car seat manufacturer Kunststoffverarbeitung Gesellschaft mbH . Paul Forcke also closed his sawmill and emigrated to Australia. In the address book of the city of Hanover from 1968, however, the advertisement was found:
Paul's Auto-Wash, Inh. Paul Forcke jun.
5-minute car wash
Podbielskistr. 115 B…
petrol station car care service Teroson underbody protection "
literature
- Wolfgang Leonhardt : The Biester family from the List reports on Forcke , with some historical photographs in this: "Hanoverian stories". Reports from different parts of the city. Working group district history List . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2009/2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-5437-3 , pp. 148-159; Preview over google books
Web links
- Albert Gieseler: Aug. Forcke and references to Hanomag with the question "[Reichs-Adreßbuch (1900) 1530]: only" Gebr. Forcke, Sägewerk, Klein-Buchholz, Höfestr. 37, Inh. Heinr. And Paul Forcke "- identical? ”in his database on the power and steam engines
Individual evidence
- ^ Ludwig Hoerner : Fahrradteilhandlungen , in ders .: Agents, Bader and Copisten. Hannoversches Gewerbe-ABC 1800–1900 . Ed .: Hannoversche Volksbank , Reichold, Hannover 1995, ISBN 3-930459-09-4 , p. 131; Preview over google books
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wolfgang Leonhardt: The Biester family from the List reports on Forcke , in which: "Hannoversche Histories". Reports from different parts of the city. Working group district history List. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2009/2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-5437-3 , pp. 148-159; Preview over google books
- ↑ a b c d e f g Walter Euhus : Forcke , in Karin Brockmann, Stefan Brüdermann, Walter Euhus: Hannover goes by bike. History - Sport - Everyday life , accompanying document to the exhibition in the Historical Museum Hannover, Braunschweig: Kuhle Buchverlag Braunschweig, 1999, p 36f.
- ^ A b c d e f Paul Siedentopf (chief editor): Carl Heinrich Forcke, Hanover / bicycle parts factory. Immengarten 8 , in this: The book of the old companies of the city of Hanover in 1927 , with the assistance of Karl Friedrich Leonhardt (compilation of the image material), Jubiläums-Verlag Walter Gerlach, Leipzig 1927, p. 95
- ↑ Ilse Rüttgerodt-Riechmann: Ortkarte 8/16 List , in: Monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany , architectural monuments in Lower Saxony, City of Hanover , Part 1, Volume 10.1, ed. by Hans-Herbert Möller , Lower Saxony State Administration Office - Institute for Monument Preservation, Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Braunschweig 1983, ISBN 3-528-06203-7 , p. 44f.
- ↑ Walter Euhus : Karl Jatho , in Karin Brockmann, Stefan Brüdermann, Walter Euhus: Hanover goes cycling. History - sport - everyday life , ... p. 11ff.
- ↑ oV : Carl Heinrich Forcke / Official Company Registration ( Memento of the original from September 22, 2017 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. on the commercial website compadoc.com [ undated ], last accessed on September 18, 2017
Coordinates: 52 ° 23 '50.6 " N , 9 ° 45' 57.2" E