Karosseriewerke Weinsberg

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KW logo used around 1969

The Karosseriewerke Weinberg (short KW ), today a German tooling -Unternehmen based in Bretzfeld were in vineyard established where they had their headquarters by 2011. You used to work as a body construction company and body manufacturer. They are best known for the motorhomes that they built under the Weinsberg brand from 1969 to 1992.

history

Site of the bodyworks Weinsberg (2006)

Early years

The company was founded in 1912 by master plasterer Gustav Alt and master mason Wilhelm Schuhmacher with a share capital of 80,000 gold marks in Weinsberg. A factory building was constructed on the factory site in the south of the old town of Weinsberg, on what is now known as the Stadtseebach . The first product of the new company was horse-drawn carriages , which were initially made by 35 employed saddlers , joiners and wagons by hand. In the same year, the production of bodies for automobiles began, which were made as one-offs in a similar way to carriages made of wood and leather. The company's turnover in 1913 reached 119,300 marks. In 1914 , Franz Eisenlohr, who came from a Reutlingen hotelier family and was previously a partner, acquired the business.

In the same year, the First World War interrupted regular production. On behalf of the Royal Württemberg War Ministry , KW manufactured field wagons for military purposes until the end of the war. After the end of the war, the production of these field wagons continued; several hundred went to the French army as reparations . The field wagons were delivered to the Wehrmacht until the beginning of the Second World War .

Between the wars

In 1920 the production of automobile bodies was resumed, initially made of wood and leather as usual. In 1922 the first office building was built. KW's 1924 Goldmark opening balance sheet showed total assets of 340,300 marks. From 1925 onwards, at the insistence of automobile manufacturers , the external plywood paneling attached to the wooden frame was gradually replaced by standardized sheet metal cladding , and saddlers, joiners and wagons joined the plumber . KW were among the first car body construction companies to adopt this new technology. In 1925 they received their first serial body construction order from NSU Motorenwerke in nearby Neckarsulm . In the years that followed, KW produced car bodies for all leading and many smaller automobile manufacturers, including Auto Union , BMW , Citroën , Daimler-Benz , Ford , Magirus , Opel , Wanderer and many others.

From 1930, Fiat also placed large orders in Weinsberg. In 1931, for example, 1,500 powerhouses ( taxis ) were built for Fiat for the capital of Berlin . Further large orders enabled KW to expand; In 1937 a turnover of 3,545,600 marks and a workforce of 699 people were achieved. With around 4500 citizens of Weinsberg, KW was the most important employer in the city.

Fiat subsidiary

NSU-Fiat Weinsberg Roadster,
built in 1940

In 1938 the owner Eisenlohr, who had been largely disempowered in the company management due to differences of opinion with the Nazi state, sold the company to Fiat, which had already taken over the Heilbronn plant from NSU in 1929 . However, KW always remained independent in terms of company law, even in the ownership of Fiat. In the following years, Fiat automobiles such as the Fiat 500 Topolino were manufactured in large numbers in Heilbronn and Weinsberg .

During the Second World War , the KW were used again for military production. In addition to a small series of Kübelwagen , aircraft parts in particular were made from aluminum , including supporting structures for the Me 410 and external supporting structures for the Me 262 .

The number of employees, which was 729 in 1944, fell to 114 in 1945, with sales correspondingly from 4,233,500 marks to 1,093,200 marks. In the years after the end of the war, things like spoons, furniture fittings and signs were made from the leftover aluminum; the joinery made furniture and radio housings, the wagons made agricultural vehicles. Vehicle repairs for Fiat and the US Army and special bodies for US Army vehicles were also part of the program.

In 1946, sheet metal cabs for Büssing trucks began to return to series production. In 1950 the body for the Gutbrod Superior was built in Weinsberg . In the same year, KW's last wooden frame body was manufactured for a Fiat 500 C. In the later 1950s and 1960s, the Fiat 500 variants Fiat Neckar, Fiat Jagst and Fiat Weinsberg (Fiat Coupé Weinsberg 500) were built in Weinsberg. The collaboration with Porsche , which began as early as 1933 with the construction of a prototype Beetle for NSU and Ferdinand Porsche , was continued in the 1950s, for example with the painting of thousands of sports cars in Weinsberg. In 1955, with the manufacture of sunroofs, the establishment of an extensive production of vehicle accessories and individual parts began, which included fenders , storage compartments, taxi partitions and more.

In 1958 KW entered the tool and fixture construction business; Tools had already been made for personal use. In 1969 KW finally brought its first "own" car model onto the market, a motorhome based on the Fiat 238 , which sold well. Other models based on Fiat, Mercedes and Volkswagen models followed under the Weinsberg brand . In 1974 the company entered the construction of special vehicles such as ambulance - rescue - and the ambulance that had been isolated also been built before.

In 1970 Fiat decided to stop manufacturing in Germany and limit itself to a sales and service organization. Karosseriewerke Weinsberg was sold to a German trust company.

Decline and new beginning

Business was good until the late 1980s. After the press shop as well as the tool and fixture construction were relocated to two newly built workshops on a site on the railway line to Heilbronn as early as 1961–1965 , from 1983 the relocation of the rest of the company to three newly built buildings at this location was promoted. This freed up an area of ​​2.1 hectares for new uses in the Weinsberg urban area, which was rebuilt with residential and retail space until 1994 after the move in 1986 and the subsequent demolition of the old KW buildings. The cityscape of Weinsberg was significantly changed.

At the 75th anniversary in October 1987, "a steady upward trend" was noted with a turnover of 85 million DM and a workforce of 550 employees (including two smaller subsidiaries in Heilbronn). At the beginning of 1988, due to the poor economic situation Customers in the automotive industry can already register short-time working for some of the workforce . Even the 50 percent acquisition of Prechter GmbH in March 1988 by German-American entrepreneur Heinz Prechter ( American Sunroof Corporation ), who took over KW 1989 entirely, could not stop the decline.

Weinsberg logo

In August 1992, the motorhome and rescue vehicle division (and with it the Weinsberg brand ) was sold to Tabbert Industrie AG (today Knaus Tabbert ). The company specialized in the manufacture of parts and the construction of fixtures and tools. Due to the persistently poor economic situation, insolvency was filed in April 2002 after constant staff cuts. After more than three years, a new investor was found in Surikate GmbH from Bad Rothenfelde , who took over the company on August 1, 2005. Of the 454 employees at the time of the takeover in 1988, 75 remained by August 2005. The number of KW employees rose slightly to 85 by 2009 after Surikate GmbH joined the company. On March 11, 2009, KW filed for bankruptcy again after major losses in 2007 and 2008 and a drop in sales of over 60% in January 2009. In December 2009, the Wolpert Group from Bretzfeld, with 23 employees left, took over the Weinsberg bodyworks. In 2011 the KW were relocated to Bretzfeld- Schwabbach .

Source for the history section:

literature

  • H. Dieter Schmoll and Ingrid Bartenbach: 75 years of car body works in Weinsberg 1912–1987 . Weinsberg, 1987

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yearbook for the city of Weinsberg 1961, entry March 11; 1965, p. 49 and 1966, p. 39
  2. ^ Yearbook for the city of Weinsberg 1983, p. 89; 1985, pp. 34, 204, 207 and 238; 1986, p. 135
  3. ^ Yearbook for the city of Weinsberg 1987, p. 186
  4. ↑ a b c Yearbook for the City of Weinsberg 1988, p. 93
  5. ↑ a b c Manfred Stockburger: Hanging game with a happy ending . In: Heilbronn voice . August 2, 2005 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on March 15, 2009]).
  6. ^ Yearbook for the city of Weinsberg 1992, p. 127
  7. ↑ Manfred Stockburger: KW Weinsberg again files for insolvency . In: Heilbronn voice . March 12, 2009 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on March 15, 2009]).
  8. ↑ mfd: Operation at KW Weinsberg continues . In: Heilbronn voice . March 14, 2009 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on March 15, 2009]).
  9. ↑ Manfred Stockburger: Wolpert Group buys KW Weinsberg . In: Heilbronn voice . December 10, 2009 ( from Stimme.de [accessed December 27, 2009]).
  10. ↑ mfd: Wolpert brings KW Weinsberg to Schwabbach . In: Heilbronn voice . January 26, 2011 ( from Stimme.de [accessed July 30, 2012]).
  11. ↑ unless otherwise indicated: Schmoll / Bartenbach (see literature)