Hagen battery

Hagen Battery AG
legal form	Corporation
founding	April 1, 1910
resolution	July 22, 1994
Reason for dissolution	Takeover of the company
Seat	Soest , Germany
Branch	Battery manufacturer

The Hagen Batterie AG was a German battery manufacturer . The company, which was founded in 1910 as Accumulatorenfabrik Wilhelm Hagen KG in Soest , produced, among other things, large batteries, starter batteries and batteries for electric vehicles , submarines and ships . In 1988 the company shares were sold by the Hagen family to the Spanish Tudor Group. In 1995 the US company Exide Technologies took over the shares in the Spanish company, so that Hagen Battery only existed as a brand name for Exide.

drysafe HDS 1220

history

Company history up to the First World War

On April 1st, 1910, the accumulator factory Wilhelm Hagen KG was founded by Wilhelm Hagen in Soest. The company was founded by selling the rights to use the patent plate for a large surface battery - DRP 189175 from Wilhelm Hagen and an inheritance from his wife Martha. Wilhelm's brother-in-law, George König, helped found the company with 10,000  marks . The initially primitive production facility was built in the agriculturally unused stables of the father's estate at Thomästraße 29, within the Soest city wall. In contrast to the simple production facility, the in-house designs of the casting molds for large surface panels stood. These were of the most modern design with an ejector according to our own patent. The panels were formed in the old cattle troughs in the pigsty by connecting them directly to the city network. The company's first major order was to manufacture a battery for the Märkische tram in Witten. Despite a tense financial situation, sales of 80,000 marks were achieved in the first year. This was not least due to the personal work of the father and sister and the diverse commitment of the company founder as a technical manager, traveling salesman and draftsman. In 1913 the company employed six workers and three fitters.

In the period from late 1913 to autumn 1914, the old buildings were largely demolished and replaced by a new factory. The boiler room, foundry , blow room, mixing room, drying room and machine house found a new place. The formation building was expanded and the interior furnishings were almost completely new. At the same time as the renovation work, the production of mainly large stationary batteries for power plants had to be continued. On August 3, 1914, Wilhelm Hagen was called up for military service, which is why he was unable to attend the completion of the new plant. The manufacture of stationary accumulators declined or was delayed under the influence of the war. The delivery of a battery of 140 cells, which was large for the time, to the Kassel electricity company was postponed by a year due to the outbreak of war.

At the beginning of 1916 Wilhelm Hagen designed a portable headlight with a 12 V battery that was housed in a knapsack while on holiday at home. This construction found the interest of the German army command, whereupon Wilhelm was released from military service in order to convert the production to various transportable batteries for army purposes. In 1917 the company was badly damaged by fire. So that production could continue, the buildings of the malt factory in Lütgengrandweg were rented and later bought. The number of employees had meanwhile increased to 75.

In the middle of 1918 there was a shortage of fuel for automobiles due to the war, which is why trucks and cars were equipped with appropriately developed batteries. In the course of this, Wilhelm Hagen developed various transportable batteries and acquired several patents. At the end of the war, the production of accumulators collapsed and finally had to be stopped completely because huge stocks of batteries of various types were still in stock and could only be slowly dismantled.

Between the wars and the Second World War

The number of employees, which had increased to 75, had to be reduced to 15 after the First World War because only small batteries were manufactured at that time. In the crisis year 1923, wages were paid daily due to inflation. This posed some problems for the company because it was difficult to get the amount of paper money it needed. The procurement of the required lead had also become difficult, as this could only be bought against stable foreign currency, but the batteries were paid for in paper money, which lost many times its value every day.

In 1924 the market for stationary accumulators improved. The brother-in-law Fritz König joined the company as laboratory manager and held this position for 40 years. Another fire on November 1, 1926 caused great damage, but production was maintained with a delivery delay of only 10 days. The destroyed building was replaced by a modern reinforced concrete structure. The company subsequently received large orders for batteries as an emergency reserve for power failures, such as from BEWAG in Berlin and for the cities of Kassel , Leipzig , Basel , Bremen and others. At that time, direct current was still generated in the power plants, so that the batteries also compensated for peak loads . The distribution of production over two locations became problematic as a result of the large orders, so that in 1928 the entire production was centralized on Lütgengrandweg. This production facility was referred to as Plant I in the subsequent company history.

George Hagen, Wilhelm's son, joined the company in 1934 after completing his degree in electrical engineering. His first task was to set up a starter battery production facility at the Osthofentor . The property at the Osthofentor was bought back in 1923, a lead smelter was initially built there, later a shaft furnace , a flame furnace and a refining furnace system . This production site was referred to as Plant II in the subsequent company history. The first starter batteries for automobiles rolled off the assembly line there in 1936. Batteries for electric carts , forklifts , mail parcel trucks etc. and special batteries for aircraft followed. The number of employees rose to over 400, including foreign workers .

The range of production during the Second World War was entirely determined by arms production. Plant II was damaged by a minor bomb attack on Soest on September 9, 1944 and was later almost completely destroyed in a major attack on December 5, 1944. In the latter attack, Plant I was also hit by an incendiary bomb , and on February 28, 1945, it was severely damaged in another attack.

Occupation time

Immediately after the Second World War, batteries were again manufactured on a small scale in the rubble. The factory was controlled by a British officer. The reconstruction and production was stopped at the end of 1945 by a production ban imposed by the British occupation authorities. Company founder Wilhelm Hagen died on September 1st of the same year. Georg Hagen was now solely responsible for the company. Wilhelm Röpke, the head of the Hella -Werke Lippstadt , supported him in the management of the company. After Georg received a production permit from the Americans in Kassel, he founded the sister company Hessische Accumulatorenwerke GmbH in the Bettenhausen district . There, in 1946, the production of starter batteries began in a rented building of the former engine construction plant in Kassel of Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke . On January 8, 1947, the production ban at the production facilities in Soest was finally lifted. The war damage was then repaired as quickly as possible.

Economic boom

Dieter, the younger brother of George Hagen, returned from Soviet captivity in 1949 and also joined the company. In the same year, the production of small accumulators, train lighting and ship batteries was started, batteries for mine locomotives and ship propulsion systems followed later. In 1953 Dieter Hagen took over the management of the Kassel plant, which was rebuilt and expanded in 1956. On January 31, 1961, the first submarine battery was delivered. In 1968 a new factory for industrial batteries was put into operation on Coesterweg in Soest. This production facility was referred to as Plant III in the subsequent company history. The entire production of the other Soest locations was gradually relocated here. In the same year, the Kassel plant set up a branch for starter batteries in Berlin .

1970s and 1980s

HAGEN Battery AG share from 1983

The two companies Accumulatorenfabrik Wilhelm Hagen KG and Hessische Accumulatorenwerke GmbH were merged in 1970 to form the stock corporation Accumulatorenfabriken Wilhelm Hagen AG with its headquarters in Soest. The company became increasingly active abroad, planning and building turnkey production plants for batteries in Iran , Algeria , Portugal and South Africa, among others . In 1983 the name of the company was changed to Hagen Batterie AG . In November of the same year, shares in HAGEN Batterie AG were admitted to trading on the stock exchanges in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main.

Acquisitions

At the end of January 1989, the Spanish Sociedad Española del Acumulador TUDOR SA , based in Madrid, took over 75% of the share capital worth DM 20 million from the Hagen family through its German subsidiary MANOS Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH . At the end of the year, CEO Gert Hagen was the last family member to leave the company. The majority of shares in TUDOR SA and thus also in HAGEN Batterie AG was taken over on July 22, 1994 by the US battery group EXIDE Corporation. As a result of the takeover, extensive restructuring within the group meant that production in Soest, the founding place of the Accumulatorenfabrik Wilhelm Hagen KG company , was discontinued and relocated to other locations in Germany. After that, HAGEN Battery only existed as a brand name from EXIDE Technologies .

literature

• HAGEN Battery AG (Ed.): 75 years of HAGEN Battery AG. HAGEN contact EDITORIAL, Münster 1985, DNB 860777693 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Becker: Accumulatorenfabrik Wilhelm Hagen KG - energy storage from Soest In: Birgit Bedranowsky, Wilhelm Becker (Ed.): A century of public power supply in Soest 1899 - 1999. In: Soester contributions to the history of natural sciences and technology. Issue 7, 1999, pp. 158-162.
2. ↑ Horst Köhler: Founding and development of HAGEN Battery AG. In: HAGEN Battery AG (Ed.): 75 Years of HAGEN Battery AG. HAGEN contact EDITORIAL, Münster 1985, pp. 9-18.
3. ^ Gert Hagen: The Wilhelm Hagen family. In: HAGEN Battery AG (Ed.): 75 Years of HAGEN Battery AG. HAGEN contact EDITORIAL, Münster 1985, p. 29.