Royal Fireworks Laboratory Radeberg
The Royal Fireworks Laboratory Radeberg (FWL) was an armaments factory in Radeberg that produced from 1915 to 1919 and was owned by the Saxon state . During the First World War , detonators and detonators were mainly made. At one point over 5,000 people were employed in the factory. In 1920 the FWL was acquired by Sachsenwerk Licht- und Kraft-AG in Dresden . The preserved buildings of the factory, such as the detonator workshop, administration building, dining room building and gatehouse are under monument protection .
Emergence
At the beginning of the First World War there was a large military area in Dresden's Albertstadt with barracks complexes , training grounds , storage areas for military equipment as well as an ammunition factory and its own weapons production facility . The trouble-free supply of the troops with ammunition and weapons at the beginning of the war came to a standstill just a few months later. Since the fighting turned into ever greater material battles , the available resources were by far not sufficient to secure the supply of material for the front. The biggest bottlenecks occurred in detonators, which made it necessary to build a new fireworks laboratory (FWL) , which was mainly to produce detonators.
There was a former artillery training area in nearby Radeberg . In May 1915, the Radeberg City Council offered this area, together with purchased land (a total of approx. 110 hectares ), to the Dresden Feldzeugmeisterei for purchase by the Reich Finance Administration in order to build the new fireworks laboratory there. The city of Radeberg also assured the military administration that the factory premises would be connected to the road and rail network. Due to the serious shortage of ammunition in the theaters of war, construction of the FWL began immediately. Even before the official decision in favor of Radeberg as the location in September 1915, the first construction planning work was carried out. First, administrative and social buildings were built. The premises were provided with a square road network and a track system. The siding led from the Radeberg station to the company premises, on which a narrow-gauge factory railway connected the individual production buildings. The largest building was the fuse workshop. Further production buildings for detonators and primers , warehouses for raw materials and finished products, welfare buildings, a power station for heat and energy generation, a chemical laboratory, a plant fire brigade and residential buildings for senior administrative employees were built. The construction planning and work lasted until production of the FWL was discontinued, not all planned expansions of the company were implemented by the end of the war.
Due to the war, there was a considerable shortage of skilled workers in Germany, and there was also a lack of simple workers to build the factory. Therefore, prisoners of war and unemployed women from the area were brought in for the construction work . Due to the constant use of around 250–500 prisoners, the FWL received the status of a prisoner of war camp . German soldiers with trained construction trades were outsourced from service at the front to support the construction of the FWL. The highest number of construction workers was reached in February 1917 with 1,500 men and women. In addition to labor, there was also a lack of raw materials for the construction projects due to the war. In 1917, most of the brick factories in Saxony stopped their production due to a lack of coal, causing construction delays. The declining quality and the rising price of the building materials also prevented the construction work as planned.
production
As early as October 1915, a management team was set up for the resulting FWL, which, in addition to monitoring the construction work, was responsible for the relocation of production from Dresden to Radeberg. Due to the shortage of ammunition, production began as early as April 1916, initially in temporary rooms in the middle of the large construction site. The assembly of clauses and detonators began in the summer of 1916, followed by the production of primers and detonators. A severe explosion on December 28, 1916 in the Dresden munitions plant, which killed 17 workers and caused millions in damage, increased production pressure in Radeberg. At the end of 1916, 1,300 people were already working in the production of the FWL. In the course of 1917 another 4,000 jobs were relocated from Dresden to Radeberg. The highest number of employees was registered in March 1918 with 5,489 people (1,815 men and 3,674 women).
Ten different types of detonators were produced in the FWL Radeberg. The most common types were fire fuses for grenades or shrapnel , impact fuses for grenades with and without delay, and double fuses. Infantry primers were also manufactured in large quantities . Sentences and detonators were mainly manufactured as supply products for private armaments companies. Up until the end of production on January 31, 1919, the FWL Radeberg produced the following quantities:
- approx. 5.9 million detonators (including about 1.4 million howitzer detonators and 1.1 million head detonators for grenades)
- approx. 35 million infantry primers
- approx. 14.5 million sentences
- approx. 42.9 million detonators
In addition to the production lines, there was a fuse dismantling workshop (for the analysis and recycling of faulty fuses) and a chemical laboratory that carried out explosives analyzes and material tests for the FWL and also for external companies.
working conditions
The work in the FWL was made difficult by many factors. The pressure of production and the provisional solutions associated with it meant that work was sometimes carried out in the middle of construction activities. Due to the shortage of labor caused by the war, women in particular had to cope with the heavy physical labor in the factory, which was also poorly paid, especially in the first few years. In addition to their wages, the workers received additional payments and rewards, which, however , were negated by inflation and price increases, especially for food. The wages were paid out every 14 days in wage packets. These were valid at the same time as company ID and as authorization to purchase in-house special food purchases. The workers were not entitled to special state payments, as the FWL was counted as part of light industry and this was reserved for heavy industry . The short wage interval and the large number of employees meant that the stocks of token coins in the Reichsbank headquarters in Dresden became scarce. From 1917, the FWL therefore introduced its own emergency money .
To mitigate the ongoing food crisis, one was Werksgut furnished with 26 workers. Farm animals were bred on this property to support the procurement of food for the staff of the FWL. All open spaces on the company premises were used for agriculture. The work breaks were reduced from 90 to 30 minutes a day in order to give the workers more time to ensure their own self-sufficiency, for example by growing vegetables in their own garden.
The processing and handling of the explosive raw materials required special internal and external security measures. The high time pressure in the construction and production of the FWL meant that protective measures such as a closed fence, entrance control or security guard were only incomplete or not available at all in the first few months and were only implemented over time. A permanently manned plant fire brigade was only set up in August 1917 .
The only serious incident occurred on August 13, 1917. A FWL worker set fire to a powder store and caused 2,700 kg of black powder to explode. Besides him, a prisoner of war, a soldier and a civilian employee died. Four people were seriously injured and 42 others were slightly injured, and there was considerable property damage to the surrounding buildings. The explosion could be felt as far as downtown Radeberg and window panes were broken. The commission of inquiry that was set up determined that the worker had committed suicide as the cause of the accident.
resolution
The Armistice of Compiègne on November 11, 1918 marked the end of the First World War and thus also heralded the end of the fireworks laboratory. A workers 'and soldiers' council was formed on November 12, 1918, and from then on it decided together with the management on how to proceed. The production of detonators ceased on January 31, 1919. The number of workers and employees was drastically reduced. The Workers 'and Soldiers' Council tried in vain to convert the factory to civilian products such as taps, chairs and even locomotives. In July 1919 it was decided not to continue running the FWL as a state enterprise.
On January 31, 1920, the FWL was sold to Sachsenwerk, Licht- und Kraft-AG . During the negotiations, part of the site was sold to the porcelain factory CM Hutschenreuther AG in Hohenberg an der Eger , which initially operated a factory here as a branch and since 1933 as a formally independent subsidiary Hutschenreuther Zahnwaren GmbH .
Others
On and next to the eastern part of the company premises, in the Radeberger Südvorstadt, the building cooperative “Feuerwerklaboratorium” Radeberg built a residential estate for workers and employees of the FWL. The food shortage meant that in the many gardens of the settlement mainly fast-growing vegetables were grown. In the years between the world wars and after the Second World War , when food was strictly rationed, vegetables were grown extensively. This district was then referred to by the population as Kohlrabi Island . The name for the quarter was retained. In 1998 the Kohlrabi-Inselverein Radeberg eV was founded (1998–2010 as Kohlrabi-Insel eV ). The association has organized the annual Kohlrabi Island Festival since 1999 .
Web links
literature
- Large district town of Radeberg in collaboration with the urban history working group (ed.): Radeberger Blätter zur Stadtgeschichte , Volume 2. Radeberg 2004.
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of cultural monuments of the city of Radeberg, section Radeberg - Heidestraße 70. (PDF; 113 kB) Retrieved on August 5, 2014 .
- ^ The Dresden Feldzeugmeisterei in the main state archive in Dresden. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved January 15, 2013 . ( 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.
- ↑ a b c d Detailed history of the fireworks laboratory, mainly based on files and documents from the Dresden Feldzeugmeisterei in the Saxon State Archives (SHStA) Dresden (pdf). (PDF; 5.8 MB) Retrieved January 15, 2013 .
- ^ History of the Munitionsanstalt Dresden. Retrieved January 18, 2013 .
- ↑ CM Hutschenreuther porcelain factory. In: Handbuch der Deutschen Aktiengesellschaft , 30th edition 1925, Volume 1, p. 1367 f.
- ↑ CM Hutschenreuther porcelain factory. In: Handbuch der Deutschen Aktiengesellschaft , 48th edition 1943, Volume 3, pp. 2907–2910.
- ^ History of the Radeberger Südvorstadt on www.radeberg.de. Retrieved November 14, 2013 .
- ↑ Jens Fritzsche: Under the sign of Kohlrabi. In: Sächsische Zeitung of July 13, 2006.
Coordinates: 51 ° 6 ′ 29.9 ″ N , 13 ° 54 ′ 14.4 ″ E