Grain silo at the city harbor

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The grain silo from 1949 (right) on the premises of Müller's Mühle (then Müller & Co. ) in Gelsenkirchen-Schalke , around 1955 - view from the city harbor

The grain silo Am Stadthafen is a silo system of the milling company Müller’s Mühle in the Gelsenkirchen district of Schalke , Am Stadthafen 42 . It is located on the premises of the company founded in 1893 and now part of the GoodMills Germany mill group and is located directly on the company's own quay in Gelsenkirchen city ​​harbor . The tower silo system in 1949 from non-delivered submarine built -Rümpfen and from now on as grain - or rice warehouse used or for peas used.

The silo facility, which is now used exclusively for rice, contains three chambers with a total storage volume of around 2000  tons and, according to the company, is still the nationwide record holder for the storage of rice.

history

Müller's mill

Müller's Mühle, 2012 - View from the Gelsenkirchen city ​​harbor to part of the company premises (the silo from 1949 is covered by the solid construction silo that was added later)

In 1893, Adolf Müller senior founded a trading agency for rice and legumes in Gelsenkirchen , five years later the first mill to be put into operation was a peeling mill . In 1913, the current location in the Gelsenkirchen port area was moved to directly on the Rhine-Herne Canal in order to use the waterway network, which is cheaper than road transport and more interesting for large transport volumes. In the 1920s, Müller's Mühle (formerly Erbsen-Müller ) established its rice and legumes products through uniform production standards as branded items of constant, high quality and at constant prices. After the end of the Second World War in the spring of 1945, primarily staple foods were produced. In the 1960s and 1970s the company expanded its range, including a. There were also fitness and diet products from the Schneekoppe brand, as well as products that were quick and easy to prepare, such as 5-minute rice or boiled rice, soups and stews.

For a long time the company operated under the name of the company founder, later as Müller & Co. and finally as Müller's Mühle GmbH . In 1989 the Gelsenkirchen-based company was taken over by the then milling group VK Mühlen AG in Hamburg , which renamed GoodMills Deutschland GmbH in 2014 and whose milling group has been Müller's Mühle GmbH since then. In 1993/1994, the company invested at its headquarters in Gelsenkirchen in what, according to the company, was the most modern rice mill in Europe and put a fully automated high-bay warehouse into operation. Today Müller's Mühle is a quality brand for rice and pulses, which are mainly sold under their own brands . In addition, the company is considered the leading rice refiner in Europe and the market leader in legumes, as well as the largest processor and processor of peas, beans and lentils in Northern Europe. The company also provides packaging services for third parties ( co-packing ).

Plant in Gelsenkirchen-Schalke

The Müller's Mühle plant is located in Gelsenkirchen-Schalke in the Schalke-Nord district on an area between the street Am Stadthafen and the Gelsenkirchen city harbor and has been continuously expanded, supplemented, rebuilt and modernized since moving to the location in 1913. Today the “grown large mill operation” represents an “architectural hodgepodge” of several storage buildings , peeling and mill buildings for rice and legumes of all kinds and silos. The oldest silo is the grain silo from 1949, which for decades was the highest building and plant part of the mill was.

Supply situation after the Second World War

After the end of the Second World War, supplying the population with food had priority in the first post-war period , with the daily rations for normal adult consumers initially being 1200  kilocalories . In order to get the declining economy going again after the collapse of the German Reich in the spring of 1945 and to enable reconstruction , coal and steel were needed above all . So it came about that in many cities in the Ruhr area, the miners quickly received heavy workers' allowances in order to be able to do their heavy work with a consumption of up to 7000 kilocalories a day. A lot of food had to be brought into the Ruhr area from outside.

The company Müller's Mühle or, at that time, Müller & Co. , as a long-established and experienced milling company in the Ruhr metropolis of Gelsenkirchen, was predestined to increasingly produce staple foods for the region and beyond. In addition, the company was conveniently located directly at Gelsenkirchen harbor, as bulk goods such as food were mainly transported via inland waterways and canals at that time.

The grain silo from 1949

During the Second World War, the city of Gelsenkirchen and its industry were extensively destroyed in air raids by the Allies , and the port area and the mills operated by Müllers's Mühle were also damaged. The company, which is important for the supply of the population, began shortly after the end of the war in 1945 with the repair and reconstruction of its most important production facilities; there was also a lack of silo capacity. So the idea came up to use existing steel submarine hulls to build a large grain silo.

These were the hull sections of the Type XXI submarine , which were stored on the immediately adjacent site of the Orange boiler factory and came from their armaments production during the war. The Orange boiler factory in Gelsenkirchen-Schalke, founded in 1873, had belonged to the United Kesselwerke (VKW), based in Düsseldorf , since 1927 . In 1938 the Gelsenkirchen part of the business was transferred to the Dortmunder Union Brückenbau AG (a subsidiary of the Dortmund Union part of the VKW), which continued to operate it as a factory for bridge construction and other steel construction . This later became Rheinstahl-Union Brückenbau AG and , after the war, Rheinstahl-Union Maschinen- und Stahlbau AG .

Hull section 6 of the submarine type XXI (as a raw section) at a shipyard, probably 1944/1945
(Photographer: unknown)
photography

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

From 1943/1944 the Orange plant was involved in the construction of the Type XXI submarines , which were commissioned by the Navy High Command . The planned use of a large number of these technologically advanced submarines should lead to another turning point in the submarine war . In order to shorten the construction time of the new submarines, their production should be carried out as series production based on the model of car production using the tact and section method. The final assembly of Type XXI was to be carried out from nine individual sections in three different large shipyards in Bremen , Hamburg and Gdansk , with each section being equipped by at least two shipyards. Numerous production facilities were planned for the raw sections, distributed across the Reich , including at inland locations, from which the raw sections were to be transported by inland waterway vessels . In the Orange plant of the Dortmund Union in Gelsenkirchen, numerous submarine hull parts of the so-called Section 6 (“front living spaces”) were manufactured as raw sections, but these were no longer for further equipment and ultimately planned finishing in the submarine bunker Valentin in Bremen- Rekum and which have now been stored on the factory premises since the end of the war.

At the end of 1945, the steel structure created a construction plan and a static calculation for the creation of a silo system using existing submarine hull parts at the neighboring mill of Müller's Mühle . The body parts should be placed vertically on top of one another, connected to one another and canned on the inside and prepared for silo purposes. Müller's Mühle submitted a corresponding building application ; The Upper President of the Province of Westphalia , State Food Office, endorsed the project and the urgency of the application. However, the start of construction was delayed because the Gelsenkirchen building authority initially did not recognize the proof of stability and requested improvements. In addition, due to suspected duds, approval by the inspector for bomb disposal from Münster was required directly on the construction site . In September 1948, the city of Gelsenkirchen finally issued the permit and the partially prepared construction and assembly work could then be carried out quickly. On February 14, 1949, the building authorities approved the new silo building with its unique construction.

The silo system was created from a total of 76 submarine parts and is 37 meters high. It comprises three chambers, two of which have the same storage volume of 780 tons each for rice; a slightly smaller chamber has a storage volume of 500 tons for rice. The chambers can be sealed off from one another so that three different types of grain, rice or legumes can be stored. The grain silo from 1949 was used for a long time by Müller's Mühle for grain or rice as well as for legumes such as peas, depending on operational requirements . It is now only used for rice and, according to the company, represents the “largest rice warehouse in Germany” with a total capacity of 2060 tons.

public perception

The regional vernacular quickly found a name for the cereal silo, which had been visible from afar and had towered over everything for decades , from the mill in the Gelsenkirchen district of Schalke, which used to be the pea miller : “Schalker Erbsenturm”.

In addition to the height, the uniqueness of the submarine hull construction attracted public attention. For example, the newsreel Welt im Film , produced by the US and British occupying powers , which was mostly shown as a supporting program in cinemas and reached millions of people as a result of the cinema boom in the post-war period, reported on the construction of the grain silo: In der Welt at the turn of the year 1947/1948 -in the film weekly newsreel from January 1, 1948, which covered the event period from December 26 to December 31, 1947, was under the title Gelsenkirchen: U-Boats become grain silos a contribution to the ongoing construction, assembly and welding work shown at the "giant silo" at Gelsenkirchen harbor. The corresponding individual contribution ('No. 07') in the Welt-im-Film-Wochenschau edition ('WFD 0136') is archived not only at the German Federal Archives in Berlin, but also at the film archive of Deutsche Wochenschau GmbH in Hamburg. a. In addition to the key words “ direct recycling ” and “ conversion ”, the biblical expression “ swords to plowshares ” is used, which is occasionally taken up in reports about the silo.

In the press, such as B. in the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), the Recklinghäuser Zeitung or, more recently, on the online news portal DerWesten.de , the "very special [silo] story" and the "[Gelsenkirchen] anecdote " were repeatedly reported which is still familiar to the older population in the region in particular.

At the end of 2014, the WDR broadcast a radio report on “NRW's largest rice storage facility” in its radio program WDR 5, as well as an accompanying online report on the WDR website.

media

On-line

radio

Cinema newsreel

Web links

Commons : Müller's Mühle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b See the company >>  history . On: Website of Müller's Mühle GmbH , Gelsenkirchen; accessed on December 16, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b c Janna Cornelißen: Industry instead of mill idyll . On: DerWesten.de (WAZ) from June 28, 2014; accessed on December 16, 2014.
  3. ↑ See information on the company at the end of the newspaper article: (Editor): Brand bei Müller's Mühle . On: DerWesten.de (WAZ) from January 5, 2009; accessed on December 16, 2014.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h See NRW in recordings. NRW's largest rice storage facility ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2014 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. . Program information and accompanying text on the WDR website (as of November 25, 2014), as well as the corresponding radio report in the radio program WDR 5 : Peter Lautsch: Gelsenkirchen has NRW's largest rice storage facility ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was used automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Radio feature in the Westblick series NRW in records in the radio program WDR 5, broadcast on December 9, 2014, length: 4:20 minutes ( audio stream ; requires Flash Player ); each accessed on December 16, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wdr5.de
     @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wdr5.de
  5. ↑ a b c World in Film 136/1948 - 01.01.1948 >>  Modern technology . Contribution Gelsenkirchen: U-boats as grain silos in the cinema - Wochenschau Welt im Film from January 1, 1948; on the online database of the German Federal Archives (excerpt from minute 5:38; freely available online as a video stream ); Retrieved December 24, 2014.
  6. ↑ a b c d Gelsenkirchen: U-boats turn into grain silos. Contribution to the cinema - newsreel Welt im Film from 1 January 1948 event period 26 December 31st December 1947 (archived in the film archive of Deutsche Wochenschau GmbH , Hamburg, signature: WFD 0136/07, short description and photos of the scene ( memento of the original from January 4, 2015 in the Internet archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check Original and archive link according to instructions and then remove this note. Freely available online; accessed on December 17, 2014). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deutsche-wochenschau.de
  7. ↑ Cf. Union Orange, above. Schalke Association for Boiler Manufacture . Company history on the private website Steam engines and locomotives , published by Albert Gieseler, Mannheim, status: 2009; Retrieved December 24, 2014.
  8. ↑ Eberhard Rössler: U-boat type XXI. 7th edition. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 2008, ISBN 978-3-7637-6218-7 .
  9. ↑ See submarine type XXI . Info page on the online database WaffenHQ (www.whq-forum.de), status: October 3, 2007; Retrieved December 24, 2014.
  10. ↑ Martina Möller: “We open doors”, part 4: Lentils, rice and heavy steel . In: Recklinghäuser Zeitung from August 14, 2013; Retrieved December 24, 2014.
  11. ↑ Nikos Kimerlis: A hidden pound . In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of August 11, 2012; PDF, 855 kB; Retrieved December 24, 2014.

Coordinates: 51 ° 31 '52 "  N , 7 ° 4' 22"  E