Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein
The Hessen-Nassauische Hüttenverein (HNHV) was founded in March 1883 by the Jung entrepreneurial family by merging their three companies JJ zu Ludwigshütte , JJ Jung zu Steinbrücken and JJ Jung zu Amalienhütte near Laasphe as a stock corporation based in Steinbrücken. The founders' crash hit the iron and steel industry in the Lahn-Dill area particularly hard and prompted the family to streamline the structure and management of the company. With a stronger concentration of the production lines on individual locations, synergies should be used. Up until then, the three companies had operated their own corporate policies and often competed with the same products.
Jung family
The nucleus of the economic activities of the Jung family from the Siegerland region in the Dillenburg area was the company "JJ Jung zu Steinbrücken", consisting of the Steinbrücker and Teichhammer and the Eibelshäuser Hütte. Johann Jakob Jung , the younger brother of Johann Heinrich Jung (1761–1832), leased it from the government of the Duchy of Nassau in 1822/1824 . The Jung family was able to buy it in 1865. The father of the brothers was the mountain and smelter commissioner Johann Helmann Jung (1734–1809) from Müsen. Her grandfather Johann Heinrich Jung was chief miner in Littfeld . Her great-grandfather was the church elder Johan Eberhard Jung (1680–1751), called Ebert Jung, for today's reason (Hilchenbach) .
Johann Heinrich Jung (1711–1786)
Johann Jacob Jung (1779–1847)
Amalie Jung (1782-1850)
Five guys
Gustav Jung (1859–1929)
JJ Jung union
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Company history
The name "Hessen-Nassauischer Hüttenverein" was obviously chosen based on the earlier "Upper Hessian Hüttenverein zu Ludwigshütte".
Locations of the Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein
The Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein (HNHV) comprised the Amalienhütte near Bad Laasphe , the Ludwigshütte near Biedenkopf , the Neuhütte (Ewersbach) near Straßebersbach , the Steinbrücker Hütte and hammer works near Steinbrücken (Dietzhölztal) and the Eibelshäuser Hütte near Eibelshausen, as well as the extensive ownership of iron stone mines these huts. The Puddel- und Walzwerk zu Wetzlar JJ Jung-Walzwerk , which was also founded by the family in 1875 - later renamed Carolinen-Hütte - remained an independent company. The mines without iron stone, copper and metal ore received their own company in Dillenburg, which operated under the old company name JJ Jung.
Company form and management
The share capital of the Hessen-Nassauischer Hüttenverein (HNHV) amounted to 2,100,000 marks (1871) and was divided into 2,100 restricted shares of 1,000 marks each in order to ensure the continued existence of a family business. The restricted transferability prevented the individual family members from freely negotiating their shares on the market because their marketability compared to bearer shares was severely restricted. Each of the seven lines of the Jung family descended from Johann Jakob Jung received 300 shares: 1. Pastor Friedrich Vogel (1800–1887) in Feudingen near Laasphe, married to Marianne Jung (1807–1878), 2. Ferdinand Jung (1811–1883) to Dillenburg, 3. Jakob Jung (1814–1890) to Steinbrücken, 4. Friedrich Jung (1820–1902) to Steinbrücken, 5. Julius Jung (1822–1892) from the Amalienhütte, 6. Gustav Jung (1824–1904) from the Amalienhütte and 7th Julius Conrad (1839–1894) to Steinbrücken as the son of Amalie Jung (1812–1860) and Friedrich Conrad (1805–1841).
The bodies of the Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein consist of a management board , a supervisory board and a general assembly . The management existed after the death of the oldest partner Ferdinand Jung senior. (1811–1883) from the board members Julius Conrad (1839–1894), Emil Hecker (1848–1902), Ferdinand Jung jun. (1867–1928) and Gustav II. Jung (1859–1929). The company was represented and the name was drawn by Gustav August Jung (1824–1904) from the Amalienhütte; because due to his age, his reputation and his experience, he nominally held the overall management of the company. Gustav I. Jung was also the chairman of the supervisory board , which was responsible for appointing the members of the management team, overseeing the entire company, auditing the balance sheet and passing resolutions on major transactions and business changes. The general meeting of shareholders elected the members of the supervisory board and two auditors for the annual financial statements. This body also had to decide about new acquisitions and expansions that exceeded a value of 50,000 marks.
However, concentrated management of the entire company, as originally intended when the HNHV was founded, ran counter to the decentralized corporate structures. The individual plants within the Hüttenverein developed more and more into independent units with their own commercial and technical management at a time when a strong process of concentration was taking place in the German coal and steel sector towards efficiently structured operating forms. In some cases, the individual plants of the Hessen-Nassauischer Hüttenverein continued to compete with their products rather than appearing on the market together with their competitors such as Frank'sche Eisenwerke, Haas & Sohn or the Buderus group.
Expansion course of the Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein
After the founding of the Hessian-Nassau Hüttenverein (HNHV), the Jung family continued their growth policy undiminished. As the heiresses of the Wilhelmshütte near Wolfsgruben in the Biedenkopf district - the Countess Amélie von Reichenbach-Lessonitz (1838–1912) from Frankfurt am Main and the Princess Pauline von Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, nee. Countess von Reichenbach-Lessonitz (1858–1927) - having announced their intention to sell, Gustav I. Jung of the Amalienhütte managed to acquire this hut in December 1897 after lengthy negotiations. The Wilhelmshütte was taken over less to expand the foundry production of the Hessen-Nassauischer Hüttenverein; rather, a competitor should be knocked out of the field and the purchase by another competitor prevented. In order not to have to compete with its previous products within the Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein, Wilhelmshütte specialized in the manufacture of accessories for the increasingly widespread use of central heating . With the construction of a new foundry plant in Breidenbach (1914), the Hessen-Nassauische Hüttenverein rounded off its company property. The plant went into operation in 1915 with a cupola furnace and steel mill .
Abandonment of the charcoal blast furnace and construction of the Oberscheld blast furnace
The further entrepreneurial development of the Hessen-Nassauischer Hüttenverein (HNHV) was initially characterized by the abandonment of its own charcoal blast furnaces to a pure foundry based on cupola furnaces. The traditional technology of charcoal smelting was no longer competitive with the cheaper coke smelting and the advances in the use of iron on the basis of coke ovens in foundries. The Amalien- and Ludwigshütte closed their charcoal blast furnaces in 1883. The last charcoal blast furnace of the Hessen-Nassauischer Hüttenverein and the Lahn-Dill area was blown out in April 1898 on the Neu- und Eibelshäuser Hütte. The HNHV was now on the one hand a pure foundry company and on the other hand a pure mining company. The previous intermediate production stage of smelting was now completely missing. He sold the iron ore obtained in his mines to foreign coke oven works and obtained the cast iron required for the cupola from outside, partly from competitor Buderus.
Without its own smelting facility, the HNVH was now heavily dependent on the market environment. Finally, in 1903, the Hüttenverein decided to build its own blast furnace again based on coke smelting in Oberscheld , the Oberscheld blast furnace , in order to become independent of the fluctuations in the market for cast iron. In addition, in 1872 put into operation enabled Schelde Talbahn the supply conveyor of bituminous coal from the Ruhr for the preparation of the necessary for the blast furnace operation coke . The first tapping took place in 1905. A second blast furnace went into production in 1908.
Hessen-Nassau overland headquarters
The Jung family also acted with far-sighted entrepreneurship in a different direction when planning and building the blast furnace plant. They connected the blast furnace systems with an electrical power station in order to profitably use the surplus furnace gas to generate electrical energy. The power center went into operation at the end of 1905. The electricity was initially used to electrify the pits in the Scheldt Forest and, after the construction of an overhead line, supplied more and more communities in the Lahn-Dill region with electricity. The expansion of the electricity business made it necessary to separate the entire management of the line network with its ancillary and auxiliary systems as well as the commercial administration from the blast furnace plant and to transfer it to an independent company. The Jung family founded this new company at the end of 1913 as "Hessen-Nassauische Überlandzentrale GmbH" based in Oberscheld. Until the outbreak of the First World War, she built the Hessen-Nassauischer Hüttenverein with its nine locations - the Amalien-, Eibelshäuser-, Wilhelms-, Ludwigs, Neu- and Breidenbacherhütte, the mining administration in Dillenburg, the blast furnace Oberscheld and the Hessen-Nassauische Überlandzentrale GmbH - to a thoroughly quick-witted group of companies based on the division of labor. Its production range encompassed the entire sanitary sector , cast iron stoves and ovens , cast iron stove plates , boiler stoves for central heating systems and a range of other products made of cast iron . After the Buderus works, the HNHV was the second largest industrial company in the Lahn-Dill area.
The end of the Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein
With its branched corporate structure, the family company Jung was able to operate relatively well in the prosperous German Empire ; but in the economically difficult times of the Weimar Republic and especially in the world economic crisis , the great disadvantages of this decentralized organization became apparent. In spite of the fact that companies were stored in the same way, it was hardly able to use cost-saving synergy effects. The blast furnace plant in Oberscheld only ran with one blast furnace and due to the lower blast furnace gas emissions, the Hessen-Nassau overland center could not produce enough electricity. The Hessen-Nassauische Hüttenverein (HNHV) has suffered from a considerable lack of capital since the end of the First World War. Therefore, in 1925, he sold the Hessen-Nassauische Überlandzentrale GmbH to the Wiesbaden district association .
In the Great Depression after 1929, the HNVH got more and more into economic and financial difficulties. In 1933 they forced him to enter into an interest group with Buderus . Finally, on December 1, 1935, the Hesse-Nassau Hüttenverein was completely transferred to the Buderus Group. After 53 years of existence, the company name was deleted from the commercial register in 1936 . The individual HNHV locations were now part of the Buderus Group. A few former HNVA companies such as the Eibelshäuser Hütte or the Breidenbacher Eisengießerei still exist today despite multiple changes of ownership. Other companies have settled at locations such as Neuhütte.
literature
- Michael Fessner : The greens. An entrepreneurial family in Hessen-Nassau . Kiel 2013. ISBN 978-3869352053 .
- Michael Ferger: Blast furnaces on Lahn, Dill and in Upper Hesse. From forest smithy to global player . Petersberg 2018. ISBN 978-3731905929 .
- Rudolf Reinhardt: Structural change in the iron industry of the Lahn-Dill area 1840-1914. From iron production to pure iron processing in foundries , Diss. Univ. Frankfurt 1999.
- Georg Schache: The Hessen-Nassauische Hüttenverein, GmbH, Steinbrücken, later Biedenkopf-Ludwigshütte , in: Hans Schubert, Joseph Ferfer, Georg Schache (Ed.): From the origin and development of the Buderus'schen Eisenwerke Wetzlar , vol. 2. Munich 1938 , Pp. 183-338.