JH Bachmann

The former headquarters of JH Bachmann an der Schlachte in Bremen (right, 2007)

JH Bachmann (JHB) was a Bremen- based trading company as well as a transport and logistics company that existed from 1775 to 2006. Under the name JH Bachmann GmbH , the family-owned company changed hands several times from the mid-1990s , joined the Danish logistics group DSV A / S in 2005 and became the air and sea freight division of the DSV Air & Sea Division of global active transport and logistics service provider.

Today is the former headquarters of JHB in Bremen's Old Town , the built in 1913 and 1948, "Bachmann house" rebuilt at the Schlachte , the Germany headquarters of from the beginning of 2007 so named episode company DSV Air & Sea GmbH .

history

1775-1862

The company history of the original family business J.H. Bachmann goes back to the year 1775, when the merchant Johann Christoph Bachmann (1748–1814) founded a trading house for English manufactured goods in Bremen and from then on mainly imported silk goods .

View of the Schlachte with the quay wall on the Weser (around 1862)

When trade with England came to a standstill as a result of the continental blockade imposed by Napoleon in 1806 , the import and trading company turned into a forwarding company and also entered the wine trade ; The focus was on red wines from Bordeaux in southwestern France , followed by southern wines and spirits . After the death of the company founder in 1814, his son Johann Hinrich Bachmann († 1832) took over the company and in 1825 gave it the name JH Bachmann (JHB), which existed until the end .

After Johann Hinrich Bachmann's early death in 1832, ownership passed to his cousin Johann Christoph Dubbers , who later married his widow and did not change the company name. The company remained in the possession of the "Bachmann / Dubbers" family for over 160 years. In 1842 the company moved within Bremen to Schlachte, which was located directly on the Weser , at that time the most frequently used berth for commercial sailing ships .

1862-1945

The forwarding and trading company JH Bachmann took advantage of Bremen's advantage as an up-and-coming port and trading city , benefited from the establishment of the “Vorhafen” Bremerhaven (1827) and the local free port (from 1827) as well as from the Bremen free port (1888–2007) and developed to a seaport shipping company . The first foreign branch was founded in Bremerhaven in 1862 , followed by a branch in Hamburg in 1887 and a few years later in Antwerp and Rotterdam in the Netherlands as well as in Lübeck, Gdansk, Stettin and Königsberg, but also inland such as Berlin and Hanover .

Former warehouse of JH Bachmann on the east quay of the Bremen Holz- und Fabrikenhafen (built 1896)

In 1896, own quayside facilities with associated sheds and warehouses were built at the Holz- und Fabrikenhafen in the Bremen port area (see picture).

From 1909 the Bremen businessman August Dubbers (1873–1959) was the sole owner of the shipping and wine trading company and also took over the management of the company for almost five decades, until 1937 in sole management.

In 1913 the company moved into its own office building on the Bremen Schlachte, which was built according to a design by the Berlin architects Bielenberg & Moser (see section The "Bachmann House" on the Bremen Schlachte ).

After the First World War , a new beginning began with the “smallest beginnings”, which was possible again very quickly thanks to the “good long-term contacts at home and abroad [...]”. So JHB decreed in 1925 in Bremen and Hamburg a total of 70 warehouses and sheds, 16 electrically powered cranes and its own tugboats , barges , rail - freight cars and electric cars .

In 1937 the Bremen freight forwarder and nephew of August Dubbers, Eduard Nebelthau (1902–1971), became a partner in the company and joined the company's management alongside his uncle. Nebelthau had completed a commercial apprenticeship in his uncle's company from 1921, after which he undertook several study trips abroad and then started in 1931 as an authorized signatory at JH Bachmann. Under their joint management “the company survived the losses during the Second World War and successfully mastered the reconstruction in the post-war period ”.

1945-1996

After the Second World War, the company was rebuilt and expanded into an international forwarding company. In 1948, the headquarters on the Schlachte, which had been destroyed in the war during air raids, were rebuilt in its old form and most of the facilities at all seaport locations were (re) commissioned. In 1950 JHB entered the growing airfreight business and founded JH Bachmann Luftfracht GmbH .

After August Dubbers' death in 1959, Eduard Nebelthau took over sole management of the company. From 1960 the establishment of international representative offices, for example in Argentina , Brazil and South Africa . Later, the clerk Rita Dubbers-Albrecht joined the company and, as a descendant of Johann Christoph Bachmann, took over the management of the family business in the sixth generation.

After Nebelthau, who died in 1971, was still opposed to such plans, the first foreign subsidiary was founded in Brazil in 1970 . Responsible for this was the forwarding agent Wolfgang Kulenkampff , who was then employed by JHB in South America , who had completed his commercial apprenticeship at JHB from 1960 and then undertook training and further education abroad. This was followed by the founding of other JHB foreign companies in Argentina , Colombia , the USA and Canada, among others . The long-standing managing director of JHB at the time was Emil Meiners , who left "at Bachmann" in 1979 after 60 years and went into retirement. After JHB had been represented in Hong Kong since 1978 , the company began expanding into Asia in 1980 .

In the expansion of the previous focus of activity, such as wine trade , coffee and cotton transport and storage , the commercial forwarding company was now "active in all markets of the world on land, sea and air in the transport sector" and had a correspondingly large domestic and international organization. Since the end of the 1970s / beginning of the 1980s, JHB has been introducing decentralized IT systems to improve operational organization and rationalize operational processes, particularly in the air freight sector.

The logistics company, JH Bachmann GmbH , now managed in the legal form of a GmbH , was sold to Krupp Hoesch International in 1996 by the owner Rita Dubbers-Albrecht . The annual turnover of JHB at that time was around 350 million  DM . After the company had been family-owned for more than 220 years , this era now ended with the sale.

1996-2006 / 07

Entrance portal of the "Bachmann House" in Bremen, with the former company name (2011)

Current company sign on the "Bachmann House", today u. a. German headquarters of the DSV (2011)

Under the new owner, JHB continued to operate as an independent company with its own name and under the previous management, but as one of the subsidiaries of the nestrans group , in which - under the umbrella of nestrans Logistik GmbH  - the activities of the Krupp group in the logistics segment are combined were.

Following the merger of Thyssen and Krupp to ThyssenKrupp which acquired South African Imperial Holdings Limited in 1999 by ThyssenKrupp Materials & Services AG all the shares in nestrans Logistik GmbH and led the logistics group under new company name as Imperial Logistics International GmbH & Co. KG , headquartered in Duisburg . In October 1999, JH Bachmann GmbH also joined Imperial Holdings, which wanted to expand its global logistics business and primarily relied on the Bremen company.

Around 2000 the JHB Group was represented with around 750 employees on all continents with more than two dozen foreign companies. The JH Bachmann GmbH supervised in 2000 by Bremen from 41 offices in Germany and abroad and generated sales of 450 million DM. Chairman of the Board of JHB group was from 2000 to 2005 the former forwarding apprentice and employee Wolfgang Kulenkampff , who now Careers as a manager and was a member of the executive board of Imperial Logistics International. Kulenkampff increased the foreign activities of JHB and built alongside the traditional corporate areas sea and air freight consolidated transport, the "Project transports" and the Automotive Logistics further out -. True to the Bachmann motto "We act globally since 1775" (dt We act globally since 1775 ).

On June 1, 2005, Imperial Holdings sold JH Bachmann GmbH to what was then DFDS Transport Air & Sea Holding (now DSV Air & Sea ); a wholly owned subsidiary of the Danish logistics group DSV A / S , which is divided into the three divisions “Air & Sea” (air and sea freight), “Road” (freight forwarding) and “Solutions” ( contract logistics ). In the same year DFDS Transport Air & Sea Holding A / S bought the company Häring Aircargo GmbH & Co. KG through its subsidiary JH Bachmann GmbH . This had its headquarters in Hof, as well as branches in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Munich and Cologne. It was said to have an annual turnover of around 14 million euros with 40 employees. The takeover was intended to strengthen the DFDS / JHB presence in Germany. However, only some of the employees followed the takeover. Almost everyone else, with the exception of the Cologne office, left the company in the following months. The DSV Air & Sea Division , in which JHB was merged and which also took over the Belgian ABX Logistics in 2008 , has its German headquarters today in the former JHB administration building in Bremen. The so-called shared services are also located there ; a service area that is responsible for all three divisions of the DSV group in Germany.

The successor company of JHB was renamed DSV Air & Sea GmbH on January 1, 2007 . This ended the era of the traditional name "JH Bachmann", which existed for more than 230 years.

The "Bachmann House" on the Bremen Schlachte

The middle tail gable of the office building, with weather vane with the company initials "JHB" (2011)

In 1913, the trading company JH Bachmann moved into a new building located directly on the Weser in Bremen's old town at Schlachte  15-18. That according to the plans of architect Richard Bielenberg and Josef Moser built office building with a facade of brick stands now under monument protection .

Today the German headquarters of DSV Air & Sea GmbH is located in the "Bachmann House" on the Schlachte, which belongs to the Altstadt district of the Mitte district of Bremen . In addition, the office building currently houses the Royal Danish Consulate and other companies such as Dubbers-Albrecht Holding GmbH & Co. KG . There are several restaurants on the ground floor that belong to the “ entertainment mile ” on the Schlachte, which was redesigned in the 1990s.

See also : List of cultural monuments in Bremen-Mitte

Web links

Commons : JH Bachmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Company website ("Germany") of DSV A / S

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Information about JH Bachmann  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Employee and customer magazine Imperial News , No. 1/2000, pp. 4–9; PDF file, 3.94 MB, accessed June 1, 2011.  
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Corinna Laubach: "For us, Bremen is the center of the world" . In: Die Welt from August 17, 2000; Retrieved May 29, 2011.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Annemarie Struss-von Poellnitz: The branch of General Motors. DSV Air & Sea organizes European parts logistics for the American car company from Bremen. In: Kurier am Sonntag of May 29, 2011, p. 20.
4. ↑ Company → Group → DSV Air & Sea → DSV Air & Sea GmbH: Company development ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On: website of DSV A / S ; Retrieved May 29, 2011.  
5. ↑ Peter Kuckuk (ed.): Bremen large shipyards in the Third Reich. Edition Temmen, Bremen 1993, ISBN 3-86108-203-9 , pp. 44, 112 ( contributions to the social history of Bremen , vol. 15; online at Google books ).
6. ↑ ^{a b} The namesake ( memento of the original from September 19, 2011 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. . On: Website of the Nebelthau-Gymnasium Friedehorst Foundation , Bremen; Retrieved June 1, 2011.  
7. ↑ Decentralized handling of transports in the network: Faster transported by air  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Computerwoche , issue 49/1980, from December 5, 1980; Retrieved June 2, 2011.  
8. ↑ ^{a b} Krupp takes over forwarder JH Bachmann  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On: Europolitics.info of January 17, 1996; English, accessed June 2, 2011.  
9. ↑ ^{a b c} The history of the company ( Memento of the original from September 6, 2009 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. . On: Imperial Logistics International corporate website ; Retrieved May 29, 2011. 
10. ↑ Company → Group → Imprint → Sea & Air Freight ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On: website of DSV A / S; Retrieved May 29, 2011.  
11. ↑ "We are DSV, but Bachmann is in there" . In: Logistics Pilot , magazine for economy and transport, No. 1, February 2007; PDF file, 163.82 kB, accessed June 2, 2011.
12. ↑ DSV Air & Sea GmbH - Head Office ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On: website of DSV A / S; Retrieved May 29, 2011.