Sussmuth glassworks
The Süßmuth glassworks was a glassworks in Immenhausen in Northern Hesse . The founding of the glassworks dates back to 1897 and was headed for a long time by the eponymous glass artist Richard Süßmuth until it was converted into an employee company in 1970. In 1996 the company was shut down; In 1987, the Immenhausen City Council set up the Immenhausen Glass Museum in the generator house, which was also closed , and it still exists today (2017).
history
Beginnings
In 1897, the general representative of the Lords of Buttlar , director Ludwig Burhenne from Hedemünden , acquired a property in Immenhausen. The 2 hectare area was transferred to Baron Rudolph von Buttlar on November 26, 1897 by the city of Immenhausen for a purchase price of 8468.64 gold marks for the construction of a glassworks. The location was chosen for economic reasons, because Immenhausen offered a rail connection to the rail network over the Kassel – Warburg line of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Nordbahn-Gesellschaft, which was absolutely necessary for operation . This enabled the coal required for the melting and tempering furnaces (they were initially operated with coal gas heating ) and the quartz sand and lime required for glass production to be delivered at low cost. The glass products produced in the glassworks could also be transported cheaply by train. Burhenne had a first phase of seven building units built for 45,205.28 gold marks in just nine months. This resulted in smelter building I with a glass melting furnace, two duct, two glass cooling and two tempering furnaces for heating the melting ports as well as adding and installing the space for the gas generator, the sand store and the sorting room with the binding room. The glass warehouse with the grinding shop, the chimney, the office building with the director's apartment and four workers' houses were also built. Robert Dralle was hired by the Klein Süntel glassworks as a drawing architect . Since the gas generator system caused difficulties from the beginning, the construction of a generator building began as early as 1900, which was completed in 1901 - together with a toilet facility. In March 1902, the melting furnace, auxiliary furnaces and the machine house had to be rebuilt because they showed defects. Production had to be stopped because the ovens were taken out of operation, which not only caused economic problems for the company, but also led to considerable economic difficulties, especially for the day laborers employed . An expansion of the company was planned in a hurry, presumably due to the unexpected production losses. The building application for smelter building II with melting furnace for ten ports and associated cooling and tempering furnaces is dated October 30, 1902. In the same application, a generator building for gas production with four generators on the railway side with a corresponding coal shed and a grinding shop behind the smelter was added projected on the east side of the site.
The difficulties resulting from the bad planning in the first construction phase and the technical deficiencies that repeatedly hindered production continued even after Burhenne left the company. In an attempt to stabilize the operation, the legal status of the glassworks was changed on April 1st, 1900 from "Glashütte von Buttlar" to "Rudolph von Buttlarsche Glashütte Immenhausen" and on April 1st, 1901 to "Hüttengesellschaft von Buttlar with limited liability". This went hand in hand with a change in management. In the meantime, one F. Weyrauch and one A. Luckmann were responsible, and after switching to the limited liability company , Ferdinand Haderer from Kassel was managing director. This, however, probably lacked the necessary metallurgical qualification because on March 21, 1903, the city council of Kassel was notified that Otto Hirsch from Weißwasser would take over the management. In 1905 and 1906, three more residential buildings were built on Kohlenweg (today's Poststrasse), with significantly better equipment than the previous four buildings. This should create good living space so that qualified workers can be recruited. Despite all efforts, complicated bankruptcy proceedings that began in 1906 could not be prevented. It was revealed that the glassworks had not been profitable since it opened in 1898. A bankruptcy estate of 109,000 gold marks stood against 199,000 gold marks in creditor claims. The company was therefore offered for sale for 60,000 gold marks. Among the initially seven prospective buyers at the time were well-known companies such as the Rex-Conservenglas-Gesellschaft from Homburg vor der Höhe, the Sahnke company from Halle an der Saale and the Ernstthal glass factory near Lauscha in Thuringia. The buyer was ultimately (in December 1907) the glass technician and furnace specialist Herrmann Lamprecht from Gnarrenburg near Bremervörde, who acquired the company for 53,000 gold marks .
Together with the Immenhausen merchant Christian Zoerb, who was already part of the Buttlar staff and worked as an accountant in the glassworks , Lamprecht managed to bring the glassworks into production within a short time. To secure or improve the ability to work, Lamprecht started further construction measures. Changes were made to the generator system and the melting furnace. In 1908 a conveyor belt for transporting the coal from the railway site to the generators was put into operation. The conveyor belt had a capacity of 40 t and was manufactured by Beck & Henkel. In addition, Hut II, which was under construction at the time of purchase, and the outbuildings were completed. The company now had two melting furnaces that were equipped with Siemens regenerative firing, so that if one furnace failed, one furnace was available, or, if necessary, both furnaces could be used at the same time. Lamprecht also disliked the machine house, which had already been improved once and which, in addition to the equipment for driving the grinding machines, contained the generator built in 1902. The generator not only supplied the glassworks, but also the households in the city of Immenhausen with electricity. On December 12, 1908, the company received approval to build a new building. This was created, equipped with a " lying locomobile " from Heinrich Lanz AG from Mannheim, on the south gable of the grinding shop of Hut II.
After Heinrich Lamprecht's early death in 1909, Christian Zoerb became the company's general manager. Zoerb held the position for almost 30 years. During this time he relocated the administration of the general management from Gnarrenberg first to Immenhausen, later to Kassel (Bremerstrasse and later Ruhlstrasse). He also had more company apartments built, which increased to 32. During the First World War , during the hyperinflation in 1923 and during the Great Depression of 1929/1930, the company suffered severe sales losses because it was predominantly export-oriented . As a result, operations in Immenhausen were discontinued in the late 1920s.
time of the nationalsocialism
In 1940 the area was taken over by the German Reich . However, no glass was produced here, instead it was made available to the Kassel Fieseler Flugzeugwerke as a storage facility for material and spare parts. This outsourcing took place due to the decentralization of the armaments manufacturers, as they were threatened by air strikes. Due to its current importance for the defense industry, the area was the target of an air raid on October 8, 1944 by four American Lockheed P-38 Lightning , each of which dropped two bombs. Hut II and the adjacent buildings were destroyed or badly damaged.
Post-war development, reconstruction and operation under Richard Süßmuth
After the Second World War , in June 1946, Richard Süßmuth, who was a displaced glass designer and finisher and had lost his business in Penzig in Silesia , took over the site in order to rebuild a glassworks there. After the end of the war, as a glass refiner, he couldn't buy raw glass and therefore decided to produce it himself. He decided on the Immenhausen glassworks because he expected that production could be resumed there quickly and without great effort. However, the war damage turned out to be much more serious than initially assumed. As a result, extensive construction work had to be carried out every year between 1947 and 1964. For example, the grinding shop was expanded five times from August 1951 to May 1956 and, between summer 1954 and spring 1957, three roofs were installed between the steelworks, the packing department and the cardboard warehouse. The director's house was also expanded into a modern administration building between 1954 and 1955.
Richard Süßmuth's goal was to rebuild profitable production as quickly as possible. To do this, the grinding shop first had to be put back into operation in order to produce utility glass from the raw glass from the Penzigian era. The designs from Penzing were also used to meet post-war requirements. In order to restore operations, four working groups were set up in addition to a commercial department that was busy with the procurement of money and building materials. The so-called "wooden column" cleared out the site and poorly prepared some buildings. Group II was busy building a furnace for melting glass in hut I - which had been spared war damage. Group III renewed the generator building I, the gas generator system and the chimney. The fourth group set up the grinding shop and was busy with the first work from flat glass scraps and armored prisms. As early as July 1, 1946, marketable glass products such as pen bowls, soap dishes, beer glass coasters and cake and tart platters were produced. Exactly one year later, on July 1, 1947, glass production began from the newly built furnace. It was made possible by the restoration and expansion of the gas generating plant, a construction project that requires approval. At the beginning of December 1948, the port furnace north of the tub was put into operation, which enabled the amount of raw glass to be increased significantly. In addition, the basement and the ground floor of a building were rebuilt on the foundation walls of Hut II, which was destroyed in the war, in which the flat glass studio and his own apartment would later be housed. First, however, the etching workshop was temporarily housed in the basement and the engraving workshop and hollow glass painting on the ground floor. Due to the expansion of production through the port furnace, the number of employees had to be increased, so that Süßmuth had to create new living space. In 1949, therefore, the construction of emergency apartments began on the upper floors of the various production buildings. The apartments consisted of a kitchen-living room and a bedroom; the residents had to use the toilet facilities of the plant, since no sanitary facilities were provided.
In 1949 the hut had 170 workers, 140 of whom were displaced . That year the company was represented at the Hanover Fair .
In the summer of 1951, the joinery, forge and locksmith's shop were relocated to the building, which was built on the foundations of Hut II. This measure had become necessary due to the expansion of the grinding shop. In the spring of 1952, the extension of a steelworks hall with a second harbor furnace was put into operation. In 1954 the main entrance was redesigned and built with a porter's house with a waiting room and bicycle and motorcycle shelters.
From May 1955, the former generator building of the war-torn hut II was converted into hollow glass painting. The building received a freight elevator and since then has also housed the etching and engraving workshop, both of which had previously been temporarily housed in the flat glass studio. In 1956/1957 an expansion of the administration and the construction of a new exhibition house and in 1958 an expansion of the steelworks hall and the neighboring workshops were carried out. Despite the increasing economic problems, a hotel was built in 1964 by Richard Süssmuth on the site of the former train station restaurant . Guests and customers as well as the company's own representatives should be accommodated there and catering for the numerous visitors should be ensured.
Employee society and decline
Since the competition offered machine-made glass and the taste of the time changed at the end of the 1960s, the glassworks, which only offered hand-made products, ran into economic difficulties. At a works meeting in March 1970, Richard Süssmuth transferred the glassworks to the employees in the form of an employee company in order to avert the threat of bankruptcy . Franz Fabian, Hessian district manager of the chemical, paper, ceramics industrial union , was committed to the "Süssmuth experiment", which he wanted to develop as a company in workers' self-management - similar to simultaneous projects in Italy and France. The workers and employees managed to build a new smelting furnace in unpaid weekend shifts, which went into operation at Christmas 1971; as well as a new cooling line. By 1973 DM 1.1 million had been invested in new technology, the product portfolio tightened, and sales increased again. The Süßmuth Employee Foundation later took over the administration. Various companies invested capital in the foundation. In 1990 two entrepreneurs from Hamburg took over the glassworks, which was now called the Süßmuth glass factory . In 1996, however, no profitable operation could be carried out and the hut was shut down.
The buildings have been partially demolished over the years. What will happen to the other buildings, some of which are listed , has not yet been decided (2018). Housing units for seniors are under discussion.
Immenhausen Glass Museum
The Immenhausen Glass Museum was established in 1987 in a former generator building of the factory by the city of Immenhausen. The exhibitions show the North Hessian- South Lower Saxony glass tradition in the Middle Ages and early modern times , but also the history of the Immenhäuser Hütte and its predecessor in the Kaufunger Forest . Furthermore, the entrepreneurs Herrmann Lamprecht and Richard Süßmuth are considered, as well as the development of utility glass since 1890 and modern international studio glass art .
Immenhäuser Glass Prize
Since 2000, the city of Immenhausen has announced the Immenhausen Glass Prize every three years in a competition for contemporary glass art . A maximum of two new works by more than 70 glass artists based in Germany, which should have been created within the last three years and have not yet been presented to an audience, may be submitted.
literature
- Friedrich-Karl Baas, Dagmar Ruhlig-Lühnen: Glass from three Hüttenherrn - A century of production in Immenhausen, self-published by the Society of Friends of Glass Art Richard Süßmuth eV, 1998
novel
In 2004, the writer Erasmus Schöfer described in the novel Twilight , the second part of his novel cycle Die Kinder des Sisyfos , the visit of two communist- inspired journalists around 1972 to the glassworks of Süßmuth, which was then self-managed by workers and employees .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Germany's concern in Der Spiegel of April 30, 1949
- ↑ Heinz Michaels: The experiment Süssmuth. The workers' hut. Die Zeit January 5, 1973, online . About Italy and France: Ulrike Baureithel: We own the factory. Friday May 31, 2018, online
- ↑ HNA: Age-appropriate residential complex is to be built on the Süßmuth site , accessed on January 6, 2018.
- ^ City of Immenhausen: Profile of the Immenhausen Glass Museum
- ↑ Immenhäuser Glass Prize will be awarded in HNA-online on May 11, 2015
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 25 ′ 40.2 " N , 9 ° 27 ′ 56.7" E