Steelworks and mines in Rheinhausen

Steelworks and mines in Rheinhausen
legal form	AG
founding	1897 as the Rheinhausen ironworks
resolution	1993
Reason for dissolution	merged with Friedrich Krupp AG
Seat	Duisburg (Rheinhausen)

Krupp Hüttenwerke Rheinhausen at the beginning of the 20th century

The Hütten- und Bergwerke Rheinhausen AG was a company within the Krupp company empire. She operated a steelworks in Rheinhausen on the Lower Rhine , which has been a district of Duisburg since 1975 .

history

The Krupp rings

Official housing estate Bliersheim

From the beginning to the First World War

On the initiative of Friedrich Alfred Krupp , planning for a new iron and steel works began in 1893. The decisive factor for choosing Rheinhausen was undoubtedly its location on the Lower Rhine , the existing rail connections and the coal mines in Moers and Homberg. The then head of the technical office, Gisbert Gillhausen , planned a blast furnace plant with five furnaces, a Thomas plant with three converters, a block rolling mill , a rail, sleeper and billet line and the necessary ancillary systems in 1894 .

Construction work began in April 1896. The first two blast furnaces were blown on as early as December 18, 1897, and the third followed on November 28, 1898. This completed the first stage of expansion. The blast furnaces were each 23 meters high and 60 meters apart. They each had a volume of 400 cubic meters and could each produce 200 tons of Bessemer and hematite pig iron. The blast furnace 4 was blown on June 7, 1904, the blast furnaces 5 and 6 were put into operation in 1905, the remaining blast furnaces 7 to 10 followed in the years 1907 to 1913. This increased the total production of crude steel to four times the original plan, from 303,000 to 1,138,000 tons. The factory site covered 255 hectares and was expanded to 382 hectares by 1913.

Two Siemens-Martin ovens , each with a capacity of 25 tons, began trial operations in 1900, and were expanded in 1907 by two more ovens, each with a capacity of 40 tons.

With four converters and a pig iron mixer, the Thomasstahlwerk started production in January 1905 . It was expanded to include two more converters and a mixer by the First World War . The converters had a capacity of 25 t each, the mixers 500 t. The production of the Thomaswerk increased from 312,000 t in 1906 to 680,000 t in 1913.

In 1905 the production of railroad tracks began . Further parts of the business were opened: benzene and briquette factory , wire mill since 1904 and cement factory in 1912, cinder block factory in 1921. The in-house coking plant consisted of two groups of 60 ovens with a total coking of 800 tons per day; it was expanded to 180 ovens in 1911/1912. The coke oven gas was used with the gas from the blast furnaces for heating and power generation. In 1912 the wire rod mill started operations. It was intended for an annual production of 100,000 t of wire rod.

In the years before the First World War, the plant was considered the largest in Europe. The products included rails, bars and sections , semi-finished products , sleepers and wire rod. 1,138 million tons of pig iron per year could be produced.

In 1913 construction began on a second Martin factory, which was equipped with tiltable ovens. In its final expansion during the First World War, the plant had ten blast furnaces, two shaft furnaces , two large cupola furnaces , the Thomasstahlwerk with six converters, two Martinstahlwerke with a total of eight furnaces and the rolling mill ; in addition, since December 1907, an iron construction workshop for bridges and iron structures, from which an independent company, the " Fried. Krupp Maschinen- und Stahlbau Rheinhausen ”, later“ Krupp Industrietechnik ”, emerged. Before it was erected on the Krupp site, the iron construction workshop was on display as the Krupp pavilion at the Düsseldorf industrial exhibition in 1902.

The port facility became increasingly important . The port, which ran parallel to the Rhine and the blast furnace works at Rhine kilometer 773.6, was initially 600 m long with an average width of 60 m. Incoming ships unloaded on the western bank of the harbor, outgoing ships were loaded on the east. The total throughput rose from 880,000 t in 1905 to 2,000,000 t in 1913/14. The company's own track network increased to 80 km of normal and narrow gauge in the same time .

During the First World War, the production of the blast furnaces fell (from 94,000 t in July 1914 to 49,000 t), mainly due to a lack of coke. The production of railway superstructure material was almost completely stopped, but started again from 1917 due to the war-related demand.

During the war, French prisoners of war were used as slave labor at the plant .

Weimar Republic and National Socialism

After the First World War it was occupied by Belgian occupation troops . It was forbidden to transport goods across the Rhine. Production was severely restricted for years due to a lack of raw materials. From October 1923 to mid-January 1924, production came to a standstill as a result of looting as a result of the occupation of the Ruhr . 1924 was the year of major strikes, a ten-day general strike in January and a coal workers' strike in May. After the currency reform, six blast furnaces were put back into operation by September 1924. From 1929 onwards there were repeated massive production restrictions as a result of the global economic crisis . By the end of 1930 there were only two blast furnaces in operation and there were major layoffs. In 1931/32 production was limited to twelve days a month.

When the National Socialists came to power , a previously non-existent form of state economic control began, which also affected the Rheinhauser iron and steel works. By the beginning of the Second World War , the production figures rose to a previously unknown level. The year 1936 brought production records. In the same year, the construction of 28 air raid shelters began, which could accommodate around 6,300 people. On April 1, 1941, steel construction became independent (later Krupp Industrietechnik). From the summer of 1941 the Allied air raids increased , but production never came to a complete standstill. It was not until the end of the Second World War that production fell significantly due to increasing aircraft damage and a lack of workers. At the end of 1944 it was just under two percent of pre-war production. Many prisoners of war and forced labor were also used in the Krupp ironworks . American troops occupied the plant on March 5, 1945. Production was de facto idle until April 17, 1945, as staff members were not allowed to enter the plant in order to limit the risk of sabotage.

New beginning from 1945

Cross-section through a railroad track with the HWR logo, around 1950

160 Pf postage stamp of the definitive series Industry and Technology of the Deutsche Bundespost (October 15, 1975)

On November 16, 1945, the British military government allowed production to be restarted after the entire plant was confiscated; Lieutenant Colonel Bennie was appointed as controller. Under Allied supervision, production began on November 26, 1945 when a blast furnace was blown. On September 29, 1947, the Rheinhauser Hüttenwerk was unbundled from the Krupp Group and then removed from the list of reparations ; later it was included again in the group. On October 1, 1947, the company was taken over by “Hüttenwerk Rheinhausen AG”. The company was initially provisional and, from 1951, also formally subject to the new coal and steel co-determination of employees . A member of the board of directors ( labor director ) was appointed by the employee side, as was some of the supervisory board members .

The plant returned to profitability by the end of 1950. The systematic modernization as well as the new construction and expansion of all systems made progress in great strides. In 1952 the research institute moved into a spacious new building. On December 18, 1953, the workforce celebrated the inauguration of the training workshop, which was set up according to the latest criteria. The railways and the road network were expanded, the bottom of the harbor was lowered and the harbor basin was widened and equipped with additional cranes due to the rapidly increasing handling volumes.

The holding company "Hütten- und Bergwerke Rheinhausen AG", founded on August 31, 1953, brought together iron and steel production in Rheinhausen (11,836 employees) and the Essen-Rossenray mines, which had not yet been developed, as subsidiaries. The new company, whose shares were 100% owned by Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach , was to be sold at the request of the Allies and the Fried. Krupp will be transformed into a pure processing company.

However, this sale never came about due to corporate policy tactics that continued until 1967 and sustained interventions by the federal government and the Federation of German Industries (BDI). On June 10, 1954, the smelter was released from the control of the victorious powers . In the spring of 1959, the holding company "Hütten- und Bergwerke Rheinhausen AG" took over 63.1% of the shares in the Bochumer Verein für Gußstahlfabrikation AG. In 1965 it was merged with the Bochumer Verein to form Krupp Stahl AG. With the death of the owner on July 30, 1967 and the transformation of the group into Friedr. Krupp GmbH on January 2, 1968, this chapter of the company's history ended. In 1969 the mines were spun off from the group, they came to Ruhrkohle AG .

In the decades after the restart, various technical innovations were made. In 1960, 2,228,062 tons of crude steel were produced. Krupp Rheinhausen, like all other German coal and steel companies, accepted the economic advantages of the economies of scale and expanded: 1971 new construction of the continuous caster I, 1972 new construction of the blast furnace I, the sintering plant and the LD steelworks I, 1973 new construction of the large blast furnace II, 1975 new construction of the LD steelworks II - with two 300-ton converters, which corresponded to a monthly tonnage of 350,000, as well as the continuous caster II.

After the British order for the unbundling, Krupp involuntarily gave up the name “Friedrich-Alfred-Hütte” in 1947, which the plant had been using since its renaming in 1904.

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  Aerial view of the iron and steel works with harbor, 1953

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  View from the steelworks over the Rhine, 1976

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  Rheinhausen iron and steel works in March 1976

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  Rheinhausen iron and steel works in March 1976

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  Rheinhausen iron and steel works in March 1976

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  Blast furnace tapping

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  Blast furnace tapping

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  Furnace control station

Effects on the municipalities and the population

With the settlement of the Krupp company at the end of the 19th century, a period of economic prosperity began in the area of ​​the villages, which merged in 1923 to form the rural community of Rheinhausen and which are now a district of Duisburg . However, the period of severe pollution also began . The whole village of Bliersheim disappeared under the factory premises, which was conveniently located on the left bank of the Rhine opposite Duisburg and had its own port.

At the end of the 19th century the villages had around 5500 inhabitants, at the beginning of the Second World War Rheinhausen, which was elevated to a town in 1934, had around 46,000 inhabitants. They had moved here in several large batches, mainly from the Upper Silesian mining area, to find work in the Diergardt and Mevissen collieries , but above all in the Krupp steelworks. After the Second World War the population was around 40,000. In 1949 the 50,000. Registered residents.

The work

Up to 16,000 people found work at Krupp in the 1960s, many of them came from the city of Duisburg and the hinterland of the Lower Rhine. Therefore, the RB31 railway line on the Lower Rhine route , which runs from Kleve via Xanten , Rheinberg and Moers to Rheinhausen, is traditionally still called the "Hippeland Express" (official name: The Lower Rhine ), because at that time this line transported industrial workers from the agricultural district Kleve to the iron and steel works with its traditional goat breeding .

The Krupp company played an important role in the urban development of Rheinhausen for a long time: Krupp had a model settlement built for steel workers ( Margarethensiedlung ), a small stop at Factory Gate I ( Rheinhausen Ost ) and a hospital that bore the name of his daughter Bertha . The Krupp company also created numerous social institutions for its employees, especially in the first half of the 20th century. From consumer stores , in which initially only employees and their families could shop, to Krupp's own kindergarten , a library, the aforementioned Bertha hospital, its own bathing establishment (at Kruppsee ), large-scale laundries for the families of the employees, to health resorts at climatic health resorts . Employees at the Krupp company stayed there for life and, above all, the sons began to work there, and the daughters married the sons of other Kruppians. The union membership rate of Krupp employees in IG Metall was almost 100 percent.

Thanks to Krupp's trade tax income, the city administration was able to set up many social facilities, such as six youth centers, five day-care centers for the elderly , 19 kindergartens, outdoor and indoor swimming pools, as well as an internationally recognized sports hall (Krefelder Straße) and a large event hall in the 1960s and early 1970s (Rheinhausenhalle). The Rheinuferpark and the Volkspark Rheinhausen (Rheinhausen's green lungs) were founded as early as the 1950s and avenue trees were planted on many streets, giving the district a park-like appearance, especially from the 1980s. However, the influence of the Krupp company also ensured that no competing companies could set up that could have access to the local labor pool. This resulted in an extreme monostructure in this city .

The decline

With the decline of coal and steel, Rheinhausen's economic decline began. Two mines called Diergardt and Mevissen had already been closed in 1967 and 1973. Most of the laid-off workers were taken on by the Krupp company, which continued to expand. In the 1980s, the Krupp ironworks made headlines across Germany. The "Krupp-Stahl AG" was founded on June 18, 1980. The new establishment initiated the gradual shutdown of individual production areas and parts of the company in Rheinhausen.

On December 3, 1982 Krupp Stahl AG announced the closure of its rolling mill in Duisburg-Rheinhausen. Several thousand workers are said to lose their jobs. Krupp justifies this with the lack of competitiveness of the rolled steels from Rheinhausen on the global, subsidized market. A steel crisis had set in everywhere by the mid-1970s. There were sales difficulties and several plants in Germany had to close. A total of 200,000 jobs were threatened in the steel industry. There were even more in mining.

The end from 1987/1988

Krupp site in demolition

The company Krupp and Mannesmann decided end of 1987, the merger of its two locations in Duisburg steel Hüttenheim and Rheinhausen on the premises of the steelworks in Duisburg-Hüttenheim . In 1987, Rheinhausen received a large media presence through resistance to the closure of the then existing steel mill .

On November 26, 1987, it was announced that the group was planning to close the plant by the end of 1988, over 6000 jobs were at risk. After a speech by Helmut Laakmann, the works manager, which received a lot of attention, a labor dispute began . In Rheinhausen on December 10, 1987 Krupp workers occupied the Rhine bridge leading to Duisburg as a protest against the plans. They renamed the bridge the Bridge of Solidarity , a name that was later officially adopted by the city of Duisburg. In protest, a driveway to Autobahn 40 was blocked and Villa Hügel in Essen was occupied. Month-long vigils accompanied these clashes.

The conflict ended on May 3, 1988 with a Pyrrhic victory for the workforce. The factory was not closed. But the compromise ("Düsseldorf Agreement") found through the mediation of the then North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Johannes Rau clearly indicated the end that could no longer be averted: the rolling mill and blast furnace II (from 1972) ceased operations. Thyssen took over the rail production, the main product of the Rheinhauser Hütte. Part of the steel production was relocated to the Hüttenwerke Krupp Mannesmann community smelter in Duisburg-Huckingen , which had been established in the meantime (on December 5, 1988) . The district was badly damaged in the 1990s.

At the same time, the Düsseldorf contract partners agreed to set up a center for training and further education on site. In addition, the corporate management of Krupp and Mannesmann committed to approx. 1500 new jobs to be created at the site.

Despite all the protests, almost 100 years of industrial history ended on August 15, 1993 at 9:44 a.m. after the final tapping in the LD II steelworks with the final closure of the Krupp steelworks. By 1987 the hut had already cut 10,000 jobs. When the plant was finally closed in 1993, only 2,252 people were working on the site. The fact that they produced 2 million tons of crude steel a year, almost as much as the 16,000 steel workers in 1960, documents the tremendous surge in modernization over the past three decades.

The steelworks was one of the last large building complexes on the Krupp site to be blown up on February 12, 1999, the last two blast furnaces on April 2 and September 23, 2000. The villas of the former executives in Bliersheim and the casino are still preserved with the charm of the 1950s as well as the listed factory gate 1. The unprotected, heavily neglected gate 1 located and temporarily privately owned gatehouse was demolished on November 19, 2012.

On the site of the former Krupp steelworks, a center for logistics companies with 2300 jobs was created under the name Logport I , which belongs to Duisburger Hafen AG . Container terminals and large parking spaces for new vehicles delivered by ship now determine the appearance of the site.

In the autumn of 2013, Duisburger Hafen AG donated a memorial with a completely new design, including the striking prestressed concrete gate, at the former factory gate 1. A plaque commemorates the industrial history of Rheinhausen, the industrial action and the rededication as a logistics center.

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  The listed factory gate 1, built by Peter Neufert 1957-1958, is the only remaining evidence of the ironworks today. The neglected gatehouse has meanwhile been torn down.

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  Renovated factory gate 1 (Sept. 2015)

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  New memorial plaque at Gate 1

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  Aerial view of the former factory premises, today logport I

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  Autoterminal in logport I

See also

• Administration building Krupp-Industrietechnik Duisburg

literature

• Friedrich-Krupp AG: Friedrich-Alfred-Hütte Rheinhausen 1939. Graphic institute of Fried. Krupp AG, Essen 1939
• Paul Dammberg: The Friedrich-Alfred-Hütte - the heart of the city of Rheinhausen ; in: Yearbook 1996/97 or 1997/98 (Part 2) of the districts of the city of Duisburg on the left bank of the Rhine. Ed. Freundeskreis Lively County ISSN  0931-2137
• H. Groeck: The Friedrich-Alfred-Hütte. In: Journal of the Association of German Engineers. Volume 52, No. 3, January 18, 1908, pp. 91ff. according to a publication in Stahl und Eisen from October 9, 1907 (detailed technical report with photos and site plans).
• Friedrich Albert Meyer: The land acquisition of industry in the Rheinhausen area (= series of publications of the city of Rheinhausen, 3) 1965
• Friedrich Albert Meyer: From the Ruhr over the Rhine. Rheinhausen's heavy industry. (= Publication series of the city of Rheinhausen, 4) 1966
• Nelli Tügel: Strike, Solidarity, Self-empowerment? Negotiation processes in the context of the wildcat strike at the Cologne Ford works in 1973 and the occupation strike at Krupp in Duisburg-Rheinhausen 1987/1988, in progress - movement - history . Ed. Association for research on the history of the labor movement. 15. Vol. 1, 2016 ISSN  2366-2387 pp. 73 - 90
• Gert van Klaas: Steel from the Rhine. The history of the Rheinhausen ironworks. Archive for Economics, Darmstadt 1957
• Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Landscape Protection: The former exhibition hall of the Krupp company in Duisburg-Rheinhausen. Rheinische Kulturstätten, 396. Cologne 1994 ISBN 3-88094-747-3
• Contemporary witness exchange Duisburg: Duisburger Hüttenwerke. Erfurt 2014 ISBN 978-3-9540036-4-8 (numerous images)
• Arne Hordt: Buddy, coal and riot: Miners' Strike and Rheinhausen as a riot in the mining region. V&R , Göttingen 2018

Web links

General

• Entry on Krupp Stahlwerk Rheinhausen (Friedrich-Alfred-Hütte) in the database " KuLaDig " of the Rhineland Regional Association
• Report on the decline of coal and steel using the example of the Rheinhausen ironworks
• Description of this sight on the route of industrial culturehttp: //vorlage.rik.test/~22~12218
• SPIEGEL article from April 25, 1988 about Krupp Rheinhausen
• SPIEGEL interview with Gerhard Cromme on September 26, 1988

Photos of the steel mill

Commons : Hütten- und Bergwerke Rheinhausen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Photos from the Krupp steelworks Rheinhausen
• Blasting of the two Krupp blast furnaces (youtube video)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach-Stiftung Historisches Archiv Krupp - Archives. ThyssenKrupp AG, accessed on November 21, 2011 . 
2. ^ Source in Gallica , Scan; In the source book there are further mentions of the work on this matter
3. ↑ First day sheet 21/1975.
4. ↑ Post by Martina Gelhar to Krupp steelworks Rheinhausen - Friedrich-Alfred-Hütte in the database " KuLaDig " of the Regional Association of the Rhineland
5. ↑ Laakmann's speech in: Klaus Tenfelde , Thomas Urban Ed .: Das Ruhrgebiet. A historical reader. Vol. 2, pp. 930ff. Klartext-Verlag 2010; Doc. 22. Following this, another 2 docs. (Position of the employer / women's initiative, 1 year later)
6. ↑ Gate 1 gatehouse will be demolished. RP-Online, accessed July 2, 2014. online

Coordinates: 51 ° 23 ′ 51.2 "  N , 6 ° 43 ′ 40.6"  E