Howaldtswerke Hamburg
The Howaldtswerke Hamburg were one of the major shipyards in the former Elbinsel Ross in the district Steinwerder in the port of Hamburg . It was created in 1930 during the Great Depression by buying up parts of businesses of the insolvent shipyards volcano and Janssen & Schmilinsky by the Kieler Howaldtswerke . Until 1939 the shipyard was called Howaldtswerke AG Kiel, a department previously Vulcan, part of the Kiel company. After the German Reich bought the Kiel shipyard in 1939, Hamburg became the headquarters of Howaldtswerke AG . This took over the Kiel operation again in mid-1943 (Howaldtswerke Kiel). In 1952 the two locations were separated. The Hamburger Werft operated as Howaldtswerke Hamburg AG until 1968 , after the merger with Deutsche Werft on January 1, 1968, it became part of the Howaldtswerke - Deutsche Werft AG , Hamburg and Kiel (HDW) part of the Ross plant . This was acquired by Blohm + Voss in 1985 and continued as Ross Industrie GmbH until its final closure in 1988 .
history
Preconditions
With the increasing space requirements of the Hamburg port towards the end of the 19th century, western Steinwerder was included in the port expansion plans. On the Elbe island of Ross , located between Reiherstieg and Köhlbrand , both connecting arms of the Süderelbe and Norderelbe, the port basins Kohlenschiffhafen , Ellerholzhafen and Rosshafen were created around 1900 . After the opening of the Hamburg branch of the Stettiner Werft AG Vulcan in 1909, the quays of the coal ship port, renamed Vulkanhafen , were used to equip the ships built there. With the third Köhlbrandvertrag specified hydraulic engineering measures of the mouth area of was from 1908 to 1911 in parallel Köhlbrand moved by 500 meters down the Elbe and the former Köhlbrandmündung as a new coal shipping port used.
Rosshafen and Travehafen functioned as inland shipping ports for the connection of the Hamburg hinterland.
founding
Between 1911 and 1926 the Vulkan shipyard was the second largest shipyard in Hamburg after Blohm & Voss . After a significant decline in the order situation in the mid-1920s, the company became part of the Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau Aktiengesellschaft (Deschimag) founded in 1926 . Two years later, the Bremen group sold the shipbuilding part to Howaldtswerke Kiel ; the mechanical engineering halls of the shipyard located on the eastern area at the Hachmannkai of the Rosshaven were demolished in the early 1930s. From 1938 onwards , the MAN subsidiary, Motorenwerk Hamburg GmbH , set up a modern company in six large workshops. In addition to the shipyards of the former Vulkan shipyard, Howaldtswerke Kiel took over the insolvent Janssen & Schmilinsky shipyard on the northern Ross at Tollerort . Both companies continued to operate jointly as Howaldtswerke AG Kiel, formerly Vulcan department .
In National Socialism
After the seizure of power of Hitler and the Nazi Party in late January 1933 Hamburger major shipyards came to a special meaning. On the one hand, jobs in structurally weak Hamburg were to be secured; on the other hand, the armament of the Wehrmacht was pushed. Already in 1934 the production of the Howaldtswerke was financed almost 75 percent by state subsidies. The main owner of the two Howaldts factories , Heinrich Diederichsen , sold his shares to the state-owned Deutsche Werke in March 1937 , making the German Reich the sole shareholder. The company's headquarters were relocated to Hamburg in 1939 and both parts of the company were subordinated to the Navy until 1943 .
The most important construction up to 1939 was the order from the German Labor Front for the KdF cruise ship Robert Ley , which was launched in March 1938. After that, the shipyard focused solely on armaments construction and specialized in submarine construction of the types VII C and VII C / 41 . From 1940 the submarine bunker Elbe II was built on the shipyard at the south-western end of the Vulkanhafen , which, after its completion in 1941, served to equip the new ships before their commissioning and was used by Howaldt together with Blohm & Voss .
From 1941 the Howaldtswerke began to use forced labor ; altogether there were well over a thousand people from all over Europe. There is evidence of accommodation in eight camps operated by the company or their participation in them, three of which were accommodation in the city (in Övelgönne , in St.Pauli-Hafenstrasse and in Kirchenallee), participation in camp Waltershof IV together with Blohm & Voss , the participation in the camps in sheds 43 and 44 on O'Swaldkai , a company-owned camp on Long Morning , Hohe Schaar in Wilhelmsburg and participation in the Gestapo labor education camp , also on Long Morning .
Towards the end of the war, the shipyard was badly hit by bombing, in particular the submarine bunker received several hits and was partially destroyed on April 8, 1945. Shortly before the German surrender , four submarines of the latest type XXI were sunk in or in front of the bunker by their own crew due to the rainbow order from Admiral Dönitz .
After the end of the war, the British Royal Engineers blew up the facility including the three submarine wrecks still lying there. The bunker ruins and parts of the wrecks remained visible in the area, especially at low tide, until the volcanic harbor was filled in in 2003.
post war period
Reconstruction of the shipyard began in 1948, and in 1952 the Hamburg and Kiel shipyards became independent companies: the Ross site became Howaldtswerke Hamburg AG (HWH); the other operation became Kieler Howaldtswerke AG, Kiel . In the years of the economic boom , the HWH recorded considerable growth; by the end of the 1950s, around 10,000 workers were employed there. In addition to the shipyard business, mechanical engineering and the construction of tank systems were operated. In particular, the company was known for its large-scale construction of tankers such as the world's largest Tina Onassis (launched July 23, 1953) and Al-Malik Saud Al-Awal (launched June 3, 1954).
Merger to form HDW
The relocation of shipbuilding to Asia led to a massive decline in orders in the 1960s, the so-called shipyard crisis , which hit Howaldt's works. In November 1967, the Federal Treasury, as the owner of Howaldtswerke in Hamburg and Kiel, and Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH) as owner of Deutsche Werft, decided to merge the three companies to form Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft AG (HDW). The Hamburg HDW included in addition to the work of Ross operational parts Finkenwerder , the former headquarters of the German shipyard, and the work Reiherstieg , the former Reiherstieg shipyard , which was acquired in 1927 by the German shipyard. In the work Ross mainly turbine tankers and were container ships built. The construction of the Transocean 4 oil rig was spectacular .
closure
But the merger did not stop the decline either. Of the three HDW locations in Hamburg, the construction of new ships was stopped as early as 1973 and the Finkenwerder plant was closed, and in 1979 repair operations at the Reiherstieg plant were stopped. The Ross plant initially remained with 4,600 workers. In 1982 and 1983, the Rebecca Wesch and the Karsten Wesch, two modern 18,750 GRT multi-purpose container ships, were built. But in March 1983 the management announced the layoff of around 2,400 employees. In 1983, the construction of the new ship was finally stopped and the yard area was reduced by 100,000 square meters. Numerous protests accompanied this process, culminating in a spectacular occupation of the company premises from September 12 to 20, 1983.
On October 1, 1985, the Ross plant was the last Hamburg operation of the Howaldtswerke to be spun off from the shipyard network and was to become independent. But on November 21, 1985, HDW was sold to Blohm + Voss retroactively to October 1, 1985, i.e. the date of the spin-off, and rededicated to its subsidiary Ross Industrie GmbH . At that time, around 2,200 workers were still employed at the shipyard. In the period that followed, there were further layoffs and, from January 1986, short-time work. In October 1987 the company was finally closed.
Post-history
For decades, the bunker ruins and submarine wrecks in the volcanic harbor were visible at low tide. It was not until the container port was expanded in October 1995 that the boxes were washed up with Elbe sand and, from 1999, the entire basin of the volcanic port was filled. In the summer of 2003, the last still visible remains were covered with a layer of earth and a storage area for containers at the neighboring Tollerort container terminal was created.
Shipbuilding by Howaldtswerke Hamburg
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In the course of its existence, the Howaldtswerke Hamburg have mainly built cargo ships and tankers up to a size of around 10,000 GRT, from 1953 also some larger turbine tankers from 25,000 GRT, as well as some fish steamers and passenger ships. Between April 1941 and 1945 the shipyard worked exclusively for the Navy. In the 1960s she built 22 landing craft for the German Navy.
A selection of well-known ships is listed below.
As Howaldtswerke AG Kiel, formerly Vulcan department :
- Bathing ship Queen Luise , 1934, for the Hamburg America Line
- Passenger ship Robert Ley , 1938, for the German Labor Front
- 33 Type VII C submarines , 1940 to 1944, for the German Navy
As Howaldtswerke Hamburg AG :
- Turbine tanker Tina Onassis , 1953, for AS Onassis, New York
- Turbine tanker AI-Malik Saud AI-Awal , 1954, for AS Onassis, New York
- Motor cargo ship Cap San Nicolas , 1961, for the Hamburg-Südamerikanische DG, Hamburg, scrapped in Gadani in 1982
- Motor cargo ship Cap San Antonio , 1961, for the Hamburg-Südamerikanische DG, Hamburg, scrapped in Huangpu in 1986
- Passenger ship Helgoland , 1963, for HADAG, Hamburg, was in Vietnam as a hospital ship
- Passenger ship Wappen von Hamburg , 1965, for HADAG, Hamburg, scrapped in Esbjerg from November 2010 to January 2011
- 22 landing craft class 520 , 1965 to 1966, for the German Navy
As Howaldtswerke - Deutsche Werft AG, Hamburg and Kiel (HDW)
- Transocean 4 drilling rig , 1977, for Transocean Drilling Co.
- Passenger ship Max Brauer , 1980, for HADAG , Hamburg, scrapped in Papenburg from April 2015
- Passenger ship Adolph Schönfelder , 1981, for HADAG, Hamburg, since 2007 as Adler Vineta in Peenemünde
- Passenger ship Astor , 1981, for HADAG, in cruise operation since 2013 as Saga Pearl II
- C-class multi-purpose container ships
literature
- Herbert Diercks : The Port of Hamburg under National Socialism. Economy, forced labor and resistance ; published by the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg 2008 (The booklet is based on the exhibition The Port of Hamburg under National Socialism in the Hamburg City Hall from January 25 to February 17, 2008 and other dates.)
- Arnold Kludas , Dieter Maass, Susanne Sabisch: Port of Hamburg. The history of the Hamburg free port from the beginnings to the present , Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-8225-0089-5
Web links
- Howaldtswerke Hamburg in the 1950s. In the foreground the volcanic harbor with the blown up submarine Bunker Elbe II on the right edge of the picture
- Howaldtswerke Hamburg Private homepage of a former HWH / HDW employee with many photos and complete construction lists
- Video: We weren't winners - but we fought and a. Holger Mahler, the chairman of the works council at the time, reports on the occupation in 1983
Individual evidence
- ↑ Klaus Weinhauer: Trade crisis and armaments boom. The economy . in: Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (Ed.): Hamburg in the Third Reich , Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-903-1 , page 195
- ↑ Kiel City Archives: Howaldtswerke ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 22, 2011
- ↑ Eberhard Rössler: The German submarines and their yards , p. 216, Bernard & Graefe Verlag Koblenz 1990, ISBN 3-7637-5879-8
- ↑ see in detail and with many pictures: Christel Grube: Geschichtsspuren.de (formerly lostplaces.de). Submarine bunker in Hamburg [1] , accessed on May 14, 2009
- ^ Ralf Lange , Henning Rademacher: Hafenführer Hamburg, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-932844-31-9 , page 147
- ↑ Christel Grube: U-Boot-Bunker in Hamburg , April 9, 2008, Homepage Geschichtsspuren.de (formerly lostplaces.de), accessed on December 29, 2009
Coordinates: 53 ° 31 ′ 31 ″ N , 9 ° 57 ′ 1 ″ E