Kertess chemistry

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The Kertess chemistry or Theodor Kertess & Co. later Theodor Kertess GmbH & Co. KG was, chemicals - trade in Hannover , the multi great environmental damage caused, which were unique to the type and severity and are not fixed to the 21st century could. The location was the site at An der Weide 13 in the Südstadt district and a property on Anderter Strasse in Misburg .

history

The company was founded by Theodor Kertess at the beginning of the Weimar Republic in 1920 and initially had its headquarters as a small chemicals shop on Hainhölzer Straße . After a good deal of business, the company was relocated to the southern part of the city, to a site leased by the Deutsche Reichsbahn . Later, Kertess sons Ulrich and Hubertus continued to run the company. These enlarged the operation to around 20,000 m² with a site also taken over by the Reichsbahn under heritable building rights .

During the Second World War , air raids on Hanover in 1943 caused the first serious environmental damage by bomb hits by the Allies : Around 40,000 kg of leaked carbon tetrachloride contaminated the soil on the company premises .

In 1968, the company, which was last run as a GmbH & Co. KG , expanded again by purchasing a piece of land on Anderter Strasse in Misburg.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the consequences of continued unsafe handling of various chemicals became apparent. From the mid-1970s onwards, the bad news increased , and it was only gradually that it was publicly recognized that the underground had been negligently contaminated with chemicals for many years, especially under Ulrich Kertess's responsibility . To then found contaminants in soil and groundwater included primarily as carcinogenic applicable chlorinated hydrocarbons (CHCs). Often foul smelling fumes annoyed the residents. Numerous emergency drinking water wells had become unusable due to poisoning . A Kertess-workers were in an accident at the legs cauterized . Then children got rashes while playing , and finally even workers building the Hanoverian subway .

"The main culprit, Ulrich Kertess, went abroad in 1982." After the many problems and costs running into the millions brought the company into economic difficulties and the ownership structure of the family business had been changed within the family, the company reported on November 30, 1984 Bankruptcy . Until the end of 1985, the appointed insolvency administrator continued to run the company; but in the end the burden of removing the pollutants and cleaning the groundwater was passed on to the Deutsche Bundesbahn as the owner of the property in the southern part of the city.

On November 19, 1987, the state capital Hanover bought the contaminated Kertess site in Misburg and took responsibility for the proper handling of the contaminated sites .

In spring 1988, Dr. Heinrich Schulz from the municipal regulatory office stated:

"Kertess is nationwide a synonym for all that is bad."

In 1992 the company was deleted from the commercial register. The chemical "[...] groundwater pollutant flag of the damage case 'Südstadt' (Kertess Chemie)" has, however, spread far beyond the boundaries of the district in the last few decades and already extends into the city center, for example. For the development of the Köbelinger Markt , part of the medieval city ​​center of Hanover, which has so far only been archaeologically examined to an extent of around 1 percent, as part of the inner-city renovation project Hannover City 2020 + , this must be taken into account in particular when planning underground car parks .

Archival material

Archival material on the history of the company, people involved and chemicals can be found, for example

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Deviating from this, in the city encyclopedia of Hanover (see there) the area in the southern part of the city is already mentioned in the founding year 1920.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Waldemar R. Röhrbein : Kertess - Theodor Kertess GmbH u. Co. KG. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 344. ( online via Google books )
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Klaus Fesche : Kosaken , Klubb and eight comets , in Ingo Bultmann , Thomas Neuhaus , Jutta Schiecke (ed.): Hannover on foot. 18 city tours through history and the present. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-87975-471-3 , pp. 50-63; here, p. 60.
  3. ^ Waldemar R. Röhrbein: 1984. In: Hannover Chronik . Pp. 289-293; here, p. 290.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Leonhardt : "Hanoverian Stories". Reports from different parts of the city. Working group district history List . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2009/2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-5437-3 , p. 249. ( online via Google books)
  5. ↑ a b Heesch: Development plan no. 1780 - 'Köbelinger Markt' , Annex 2 of March 13, 2014 on the e-government.hannover-stadt.de page
  6. ^ Klaus Mlynek : Stadtarchäologie. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover. P. 584.
  7. ↑ Helmut Zimmermann : Köbelinger Markt , as well as Köbelingerstraße , in ders .: The street names of the state capital Hanover , Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover 1992, ISBN 3-7752-6120-6 , p. 145.
  8. ↑ Compare Hermann Parzinger (responsible): Theodor Kertess & Co., Chemicals, Hanover: Delivery of cold cleaners on the website of the German Digital Library in the version of March 9, 2016.
  9. ↑ Test certificate PA-V-1098 , offered on the website baufachinformation.de of the Fraunhofer Information Center for Space and Building (Fraunhofer IRB) from March 9, 2016 as a paid PDF document

Coordinates: 52 ° 21 ′ 41.2 "  N , 9 ° 45 ′ 57.2"  E