Cast steel plant in Witten

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The cast steel plant in Witten was a German company in the coal and steel industry based in Witten .

history

The company was founded in 1853/54 under the company Etablissement Berger & Co. by Carl Ludwig Berger (1794–1871), who had developed a production process for high-quality cast steel . Co-founders and donors were the Dutch Jan Jacob van Braam (1805-1884) and Gerrit Vriese (according to other sources, Cornelius Jacob Arnoldus den Tex ), who, like other Dutch people, invested in several mines and steelworks in the Ruhr area . The company quickly became known as a specialist in the manufacture of gun barrels and exported to all of Europe.

A few years after it was founded, Carl Berger's sons, Carl Berger junior (1824–1897, joined in 1857) and Louis Constanz Berger (1829–1891, joined in 1859), joined the company and soon took over the business themselves.

In March 1873 a general assembly took place for the formation of the stock company Gußstahl- und Waffenfabrik Witten, formerly Berger & Co. , in which the sale was notarized. Partners were Wilhelm Dulheuer (Harkorten), Berger & Co. (Witten), Deutsche Union-Bank (Berlin, taken over by Deutsche Bank in 1876), Jan Jacob van Braam (Arnheim) and Friedrich Ritter von Martini (Frauenfeld). Louis Constanz Berger retired from active company management. Carl Berger resigned in June 1874.

After the company went bankrupt in September 1881 after several unsuccessful attempts at restructuring , the liquidation of the company Gußstahl- und Waffenfabrik Witten AG, formerly Berger & Co. , was decided at a general meeting. In the last three fiscal years, the losses were 1.2 Mikkionen Mark summed. Banker Hermann Fischer bought the plant for 2.93 million marks and incorporated it into the newly founded "Gußstahlwerk Witten AG". The production of rifle barrels was terminated; instead, guns , cast steel and steel forgings as well as sheet metal were produced, and from 1890 also bullets .

In 1899, the Germania smelter of the company Gabriel, Bergenthal & Co. in Warstein , located near Grevenbrück (today part of Lennestadt ), was taken over, and in 1907/08 a new steelworks was built using the Siemens-Martin process .

During the First World War , the factory was used to produce armaments. In 1917 the facilities and properties of the Wittener Glashütten-AG , the brickworks in Witten-Heven and the Dolomitkalkwerk GmbH in Fretter were acquired. In 1920 the company Albert Klincke Heinr , which had existed since 1885, came into being. Son in Altena added. In 1922, the Bredt & Co. company and the cast steelworks signed a contract to build the Ruhr power plant on the Timmerbeil .

In 1922 the majority of the shares in Gussstahl-Werk Witten AG were transferred to Gebr. Stumm GmbH in Düsseldorf, which they held until 1926.

In 1923 the company Gustav Brinkmann & Co. , founded in 1849, was taken over. Due to the Belgian-French occupation of the Ruhr area , production had to be stopped from July 1923 to February 1924.

In 1926/28 the plant was temporarily incorporated into Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG (VSt), and in 1930 into its new subsidiary Ruhrstahl AG .

After the Second World War the VSt was unbundled . By order of North German Iron and Steel Control , in the course of the unbundling and reorganization of the West German coal and steel industry, the Gelsenkirchen, Oberkassel and Witten cast steelworks were spun off from the Ruhrstahl AG group and made legally independent. The cast steel Witten AG was independent again and was renamed in 1965 into stainless steel Witten AG .

In 1964 the company acquired the Mark steelworks in Wetter-Wengern to expand its production facilities. After the Siemens-Martin furnace there was shut down , the drawing mill production moved from Witten to Wengern in 1965.

In 1975, a control and profit transfer agreement was concluded with August-Thyssen-Hütte AG . The German steel works AG (DEW) in Krefeld, which was 100% owned by the August-Thyssen-Hütte AG, had their company in April 1974 in Thyssen Edelstahlwerke AG changed and moved its headquarters to Dusseldorf. The stainless steel Witten AG leased from May 1, 1975 all of its plants and facilities to the Thyssen Edelstahlwerke AG and changed its name from now on as Thyssen Edelstahlwerke AG Witten . The company shell Edelstahlwerke Witten AG remained as an unemployed company.

In 1992 the merger of Thyssen Edelstahlwerke AG and Thyssen Stahl AG took place , the Witten plant was renamed Thyssen Stahl AG Werk Witten and belonged to the business field of semi-finished products, steel bars, forged products .

In 1994 Thyssen Stahl AG made the business field of semi-finished products, steel bars, forged products independent . The newly founded Edelstahl Witten-Krefeld GmbH was assigned the entire Witten plant as well as the forge, the processing plant, the remelting steel plant and the associated ancillary operations such as dressing, heat treatment, maintenance and quality control of the Krefeld plant of the former Thyssen Edelstahlwerke AG . The company was based in Witten.

Since 2005, this company has been part of the largest Swiss steel group, Schmolz + Bickenbach AG (formerly Swiss Steel AG ) - under the merger with Edelstahlwerke Südwestfalen GmbH as of January 1, 2007 as Deutsche Edelstahlwerke GmbH , later renamed Deutsche Edelstahlwerke Specialty Steel . Its main shareholder is again Schmolz + Bickenbach KG , based in Düsseldorf . Around 1700 employees work at the Witten site.

In 2011, the historic location was included in the Route of Industrial Culture.

literature

  • Ralf Stremmel, Wilfried Reininghaus (editing): Company archive Gussstahl-Werk Witten and family archive Berger. Inventory for the holdings F 81 and N 24. (= publications of the Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv Foundation , Volume 23.) Dortmund 1999, ISBN 3-88474771-1 .
  • Willi Rinne: The Ruhrstahl-Aktiengesellschaft Witten. The development of the Ruhrstahl-Aktiengesellschaft and its six plants. o. O. 1937. (unpublished typescript, available in the Westphalian Economic Archives )

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 26 ′ 4.9 ″  N , 7 ° 19 ′ 31.5 ″  E