Imhausen chemistry

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Imhausen chemistry

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1912
resolution 1980s
Seat Lahr / Black Forest , Germany
management Jürgen Hippenstiel-Imhausen
Number of employees 500
sales 70 million DM (1988)
Branch Chemistry, chemical plants

The Imhausen-Chemie was a group of companies with plants in Witten and Lahr / Black Forest , dealing with colloid - chemical and later employed the chemical plant. The foundation stone was laid in 1912 with the takeover of the Märkische soap industry by Arthur Imhausen and Clemens Stallmeyer, the company of the company changed several times over the years.

history

Shortly before the Second World War, Imhausen-Chemie succeeded in producing artificial fats from by-products of coal hydrogenation , which made its production facilities in Witten important to the war effort due to the National Socialists' efforts to become self-sufficient . In 1944, part of the production was therefore relocated to Lahr.

Karl-Heinz Imhausen (born July 11, 1911 in Gelsenkirchen; † 1983), doctor of chemistry and son of the company's founder, pushed Imhausen & Co. GmbH to move to the second location in Lahr after the Second World War , although the location in Witten was already there 1947 was able to put its production facilities back into operation. One of the reasons for the move - and the construction of new plants - was that the production of synthetic fats and soaps was not economical under the competition of the world market prices that were now free again. In 1952 a substantial share of the Imhausen works in Witten went to Westfalenbank , from which Harpener Bergbau AG bought the shares. The Witten plant was renamed Chemische Werke Witten .

The Witten chemist Ewald Katzschmann, who was hired shortly after the war, patented important processes for the air oxidation of xylene for Imhausen in 1951 . The dimethyl terephthalate accessible through this was the basic material for the new synthetic fiber production . Imhausen sold licenses for this process worldwide. Imhausen was also active in the field of wood protection : Initially, agents based on polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCN) were produced, which were then replaced in the mid-1950s by the more potent pentachlorophenol (PCP), which was produced in Witten until around 1971.

Karl-Heinz Imhausen built the Imhausen chemistry in a network of subsidiaries and investments, a (u. A. Companies Bomin , Bochako, Otto Wolff chemical plants ), which is no longer just the production, but also with the chemicals and chemical plants trade with occupied the Eastern bloc . In 1961 z. B. built an HDPE production plant for the East German Leunawerke . One of the most spectacular orders was to build a refinery for the USSR worth DM 1.5 billion in 1965 together with the Salzgitter Group . After the senior manager's death, the Witten site was sold to the Dynamit Nobel company in 1958 , as Imhausen-Chemie moved completely to Lahr and was even more active as an engineering company in the Middle East as well as trading in the East. Karl-Heinz Imhausen was hired by the Pakistani government as a petrochemical advisor.

After Karl-Heinz Imhausen's death in 1983, Imhausen-Chemie made a name for itself in 1984 together with Salzgitter AG with a research facility for carbohydrate hydrogenation , but came under the leadership of Jürgen Hippenstiel-Imhausen, Karl-Heinz Imhausen's son-in-law through the Rabita and XTC scandal repeatedly in negative headlines. Among other things, it was later suspected that the research funds for carbohydrate hydrogenation were used for the development of the Rabita plant.

Rabita scandal

Although the Federal Intelligence Service already had evidence of the involvement of Imhausen-Chemie in the planning and construction of a poison gas factory (including for Lost , Soman , Sarin ) in Libyan Rabita (also written Rabta ) under the project name "Pharma 150" in 1985, the process was completed first known in 1989 through the report by Michael R. Gordon . After that, construction and equipment materials are said to have been sent to Libya via Lahr and the Zurich branch. The management in Libya was subject to Fritz Schöffel and Steinhofer. The Imhausen subsidiary Gesellschaft für Automation supplied, among other things, electronic control systems from Siemens AG to Libya. Siemens AG assumed a delivery to Hong Kong. On January 13, 1989, the public prosecutor in Offenburg initiated an investigation against the entrepreneur Jürgen Hippenstiel-Imhausen after it became known that the company was involved in the construction of the chemical weapons factory despite the worldwide ban on chemical weapons and the War Weapons Control Act . Jürgen Hippenstiel-Imhausen and other managers involved were sentenced in 1990 to several years in prison. The Rabita scandal is still considered to be one of the most glaring cases of violations of the Foreign Trade Act , which, due to the delay in clarification, also led to considerable political damage.

Ecstasy scandal

In 1989 it was discovered that Imhausen-Chemie had manufactured and delivered several hundred kilograms of the chemicals MDMA and piperonyl methyl ketone , a precursor of MDMA, as a normal contract. MDMA is known as ecstasy and is subject to the Narcotics Act . Those responsible at Imhausen-Chemie apologized for their ignorance of the legal provisions.

Imhausen after 1990

The location in Witten on Arthur-Imhausen-Straße is now operated by the companies Evonik / Degussa and Sasol / Cremer Oleo in the form of the Witten Chemical Park . The Raiffeisenstrasse location in Lahr was taken over in 1991 by the Swiss company CU Chemie Uetikon , which sold the plant to Barclays Private Equity in October 2011. Barclays Private Equity in turn sold the plant to Novacap in 2015.

Companies, subsidiaries and holdings

  • 1937: German fatty acid works, Witten
  • 1948: Imhausen & Co., Witten
  • 1952: Chemical works in Witten
  • 1956: Galvano form GmbH
  • 1965: Bochumer Chemie Imhausen Company mbH, Lahr and Imhausen-Chemie GmbH, Lahr

there were also the following daughters:

  • Imhico Industrie Montan Handels- und Investment Co., Vaduz
  • Imhico AG, Zurich
  • Imhausen International Company, Lahr
  • GfA Society for Automation, Bochum

swell

literature

  • Poison gas factory. The evidence is there . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1989 ( online - cover story).
  • That is the Imhausen chemistry. In: Hamburger Abendblatt No. 2 of January 3, 1989, page 2.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ geschichte.evonik.de: biography of Arthur Imhausen
  2. ^ Roland Peter: Armaments policy in Baden. War economy and labor in a border region during World War II. (Dissertation) Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1995, p. 163. ( limited preview of Google books , accessed on October 20, 2015)
  3. ↑ Matriculation data of the University of Rostock, online , accessed on October 21, 2015
  4. ↑ Twenty minutes of stealing coal . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1947, pp. 6 ( online ).
  5. ↑ The triumph of the petroleum men. In: Der Spiegel from July 30, 1952, p. 10 f.
  6. ↑ From the ventures. in: Die Zeit , No. 22 of May 29, 1952.
  7. ^ Edmund Brandt: Liability for waste producers, shown using the example of the former Richter landfill in Bochum-Langendreer. Werner Verlag, Düsseldorf 1988.
  8. ↑ Joachim Wrede . In: Der Spiegel . No. 31 , 1965, p. 86 ( online ).
  9. ↑ Harald Schmidt, Dieter Schnurpfeil: Contemporary witnesses presented. One of the fathers of the 'Polymir'. Professor Dr. Manfred Rätzsch. ( online as PDF, accessed September 10, 2015)
  10. ↑ MOSCOW FAIR Red out of the box . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 1965, pp. 34 ff . ( online ).
  11. ↑ Purchase of the Chemische Werke Witten by Nobel in 1958 in the timeline of the Kunststoff-Museum Troisdorf online
  12. ↑ Handelsblatt dated 11./12. January 1963
  13. ↑ Chemical processes. In: Chemie Ingenieur Technik (CIT), Volume 57, Issue 12 (February 1985), Wiley InterScience
  14. ↑ Nothing left out . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1991, pp. 37 ( online ).
  15. ↑ Imhausen Trial. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , No. 270 of November 19, 1992, page 4.
  16. ↑ Peter Marx: Imhausen in luck. Die Zeit , March 30, 1990, accessed on February 24, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Bonn's long road to knowledge about Imhausen and Rabta. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , No. 41 of February 17, 1989, page 14.
  18. ↑ Trade as a drug. In: Die Zeit , No. 9 of February 24, 1989.
  19. ↑ Peter Schildknecht: Experienced chemistry. Review of CU Chemie Uetikon GmbH. In cph news , December 2011, p. 10. ( online ( memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove them Note. As PDF, accessed on October 20, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cph.ch
  20. ↑ http://www.uetikon.com/de/ueber-uns/zahlen-und-ffekten/ Accessed August 28, 2017