Consumption, construction and savings association "Production"
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The consumer, building and savings association “Production” registered cooperative with limited liability , based in Hamburg, was founded in 1899. It was essentially a consumer cooperative . It was one of the socialist consumer cooperatives of the Hamburg direction .
founding
The "production" was a result of the industrial action. The idea for the foundation came about during the Hamburg dockworkers strike of 1896/1897, which lasted 11 weeks and included up to 17,000 strikers. The organization of dock workers and seafarers was poor, and there were practically no strike funds. The money for support had to be collected. The founding assembly of July 28, 1898 in the Hamburg Lessing Hall (before 1906 the central location of the Hamburg trade union movement) at Gänsemarkt 35 elected a provisional board of directors and supervisory board. The constituent general assembly took place on January 24, 1899 in Schwaff's Hamburg Ballhaus . There were 700 people present who had declared in writing that they would join the cooperative to be founded. The registration of the consumer, construction and savings association “Production” took place on February 3rd. This means that preliminary work spanning two years was successfully completed. The first general assembly took place on May 5, 1899 in the Hamburg Ballhaus . 520 members were present. By May 1st, the new cooperative had 1,580 members. The working capital consisted of about 15,000 marks. A special feature of the Pro were their emergency funds to finance housing and support in the event of strikes. The first sales point was opened on July 17, 1899 at Groß-Neumarkt .
On December 3, 1901, the topping-out ceremony of the first own storage facility was celebrated. A document was built into the threshold. It was signed by the board of directors Reinhold Postelt , Ferdinand Wolff and Josef Rieger, by the chairman of the supervisory board Friedrich Lesche and his deputy Adolph von Elm , by the secretary of the supervisory board Max Mendel , and the other members Paul Frenzel, Ernst Kretschmer, Gustav Lehne, Joseph Berkowitz Kohn , Helma Steinbach , Gustav Segnitz and Heinrich Stühmer.
On March 17, 1902, the building and facilities were put into operation. This also included its own coffee roastery .
In 1906, the PRO apartment block (" Hamburger Burg " style) with over 200 apartments, shops and an inn on Schleidenstrasse in Barmbek was completed. Later a stronghold of the work movement culture. The Barmbeker Volkschor , Barmbeker Fortbildungsverein , arose in the apartment block . Here is the origin of the parents 'councils, the child protection commission, the workers' welfare and many other organizations.
The founder of the production , Adolph von Elm, wanted to overcome capitalism through cooperatives. "The goal can only be achieved by uniting all those who suffer from the yoke of capitalism in a unified consumer organization! Those who want to fight capitalism economically are not allowed to rest or rest; the rage of agitators in Hamburg against production proves this." that it is on the right path. Production has given the Hamburg workers more than words can say: belief in their strength!
In 1913 it had 73,000 members. The PRO had over 100 sales outlets and around 1,500 employees. It achieved a turnover of 20 million marks. In December 1923 the membership had risen to 134,541.
A children's and recreation home of the PRO in Haffkrug on the Baltic Sea in 1916/1917 was financed from the profits of the war production of the butcher's shop of the cooperative . In July 1919, Reich President Friedrich Ebert and Reich Defense Minister Gustav Noske and members of the board of directors of the “Production” cooperative visited the children's and convalescent home and paid tribute to the exemplary social institution. Henry Everling House of the PRO Foundation since 1948 and senior recreation facility since 1974.
Development of the number of sales outlets
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In-house production 1930
In 1930 production had the following 15 own operations
- 1 meat factory
- 4 bakeries
- 2 mills
- 2 dairies
- 1 coffee roastery
- 1 mineral water factory with beer bottling
- 1 chemical-technical factory
- 1 furniture and coffin factory
- 1 brick factory
- 1 estate .
The chemical-technical factory was shut down in the summer of 1930 and production was transferred to the GEG factory on the Peute, Hamburg. The estate was sold in 1930 because the cooperative was technically unable to cope with the management.
Synchronization
In May 1933, the companies and businesses were the consumer cooperative movement into line : first the bulk buying Society German Consumvereine mbH (GEG), Hamburg on 4 May 1933. On 17 May 1933, for the production appointed a state commissioner, the district leader of the NSDAP for South -Hamm, Otto Becker. He appeared in a large uniform with an adjutant.
Consumer cooperative production after 1945 to 1989
After the Second World War , production was rebuilt as a consumer cooperative production . On July 3, 1946, approval of the re-establishment was given by the British Military Government. The 160 shops destroyed by air raids in 1943, the headquarters, warehouse, meat factory and residential buildings had to be rebuilt. In 1948 the business share for comrades was set at DM 50 and remained unchanged at this level until the company was converted into an AG in 1974. In 1949, the first self-service shop of "Production" was opened in Hamburg. In 1954 the reimbursement limit of 3% suspended by the military government was reintroduced. On the street at the straw house at Berliner Tor there was a multi-storey department store with a self-service restaurant and the administration of the PRO. From the late 1960s, the self-service shops were run as the "PRO market".
With the advance of discounters and large retail chains, the climate for the consumer cooperatives changed fundamentally. More and more cooperatives came into economic hardship. The productivity lead has been caught up and overtaken. A major reform debate began, which in the 1960s led to an optical modernization with the introduction of the "co op" brand.
With the establishment of the first plaza markets (in Hamburg by the straw house, today real ), the response to the advancement of large-scale offers. At the same time, a discussion about the question of the correct legal form took place, which ended with the fact that many leading consumer cooperatives considered the stock corporation to be the better legal form than the cooperative.
As the first consumer cooperative, the Saarland-based Asko was transformed into an AG in 1972, followed later by the Hamburg PRO. In 1973, the PRO's hopes for changes to cooperative and tax law were dashed, the return on sales had dropped to below one percent and the reimbursement had to be financed from reserves. It was feared that if no more reimbursement is paid, membership resignations and capital outflows would result. On October 31, 1974, an extraordinary meeting of representatives decided to switch from rebates to discounts, and at the same time approved the conversion into a consumer stock corporation. When the conversion came into effect at the end of 1974, PRO had 246,495 members who participated in the new share capital of DM 17 million based on their assets as of December 31, 1973. Employees 1973 before conversion: 4,935 (before leasing to co op) (1981: 3,782), 1973: 240 PRO stores (1981: 138 PRO stores, 68 discount stores), 1973: 1 hypermarket, 1973: 3 department stores (1981: 4 Plaza department stores), 1973: 1 furniture store (1981: 3 hardware stores), 9 restaurants and 1 car dealership were given up after 1973. Sales area 1973: 93,000 m² (1981: 140,000). The turnover in 1973 was 675 million (1981: 1.05 billion) DM. In 1975 the concentration on the sales lines PRO, Comet, basar and plaza began.
Comparative figures for the business development of PRO
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Since the conversion was not well prepared, 78,300 shareholders sold their shares in 1975. Within one year, the number of PRO shareholders fell by 43% to 102,090. In 1981 the number of shareholders fell to 78,856. The share was not traded on the stock exchange, the purchase and sale was organized by the PRO.
It turned out, however, that the change in legal form from sick cooperatives did not make a healthy AG, so that an ever faster merger movement set in, which finally led to the fact that by far the largest part of the former consumer cooperative trade was finally gathered in the Frankfurt co op AG . This co op AG no longer had anything to do with the old cooperative principles. It got more and more into economic distress, also due to criminal machinations around the CEO Bernd Otto . To the bankruptcy avert one in 1989 compared with the 143 creditor banks closed, the de facto means the end of the co op AG. What was left of them went to the Metro group as Deutsche SB-Kauf AG .
According to insiders, the downfall of the PRO was "homemade". Not only the strong competitive pressure from the discounters and the huge losses through diversification (car dealership, restaurants), but also the lack of qualified board members with visions have made the company a "tumbling" giant. The renovation of the shops and businesses was neglected and losses were offset by short-term property sales.
See also
literature
- Josef Rieger, Max Mendel, Walther Postelt: The consumer cooperative “Production”, 1899–1949, history of a cooperative consumer association from the foundation to the fiftieth business deal and its predecessors , Hamburg 1949.
- Wilhelm Fischer : 60 years versus 60 years of service to consumers. 1894-1954 . Festschrift Hamburg 1954. 362 pages.
- Korf, Jan-Frederik: From the consumer cooperative movement to the joint venture of the German Labor Front, between conformity, resistance and adaptation to the dictatorship , Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-7304-3
- Ulrich Bauche : High-profile visitors in the group picture in front of the “Produktion” children's recreation home in Haffkrug / Baltic Sea at the end of July 1919. Questions about this photo document. In: 125 Years of the Cooperative Act. 100 years of the First World War. Norderstedt 2015, ISBN 978-3-7392-2219-6 , pp. 79-88.
Web links
- Chronicle of the consumer cooperatives and the ZdK ( Memento from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), PDF file with images, 1.7 MB
- PRO foundation
- Early documents and newspaper articles on the consumer, building and savings association “Production” in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Guide to the sites of persecution and social-democratic resistance in Hamburg - Die Innere Stadt, publisher. Working group of formerly persecuted social democrats (AvS), Hamburg 2005 p. 32
- ↑ From the PRO block to the Schleidenhof - history (s) of an extraordinary apartment block, documentation of an exhibition at the Barmbek history workshop, October 2018
- ↑ Johannes Schult: History of the Hamburg Workers 1890-1919, Hanover 1967, pp. 183-189
- ↑ Wertevolle social work, lecture by A. von Elm, held on 20 October 1919 Gewerkschaftshaus Hamburg, in: The social side of the cooperatives, the Central Association of German consumer cooperatives eV Hamburg of 2005.
- ↑ Dr. Franklin Kopitzsch : From the repeal of the socialist law to the beginning of the Weimar Republic in From the Hamburg Party Congress, publisher: SPD Hamburg 1988.
- ^ Annual report of the PRO from 1921, report of the board, p. 6
- ↑ Reinhold Bengelsdorf: The PRO as a stock corporation until the end of 1982, pp. 49–53, p. 85, in Becoming and Working of the PRO Foundation Hamburg, author R. Bengelsdorf, Hamburg 1990.
- ^ Burchard Bösche : Brief history of the consumer cooperatives, publisher: Central Association of German Consumer Cooperatives, undated.
- ↑ Klaus Albers (more than 20 years on the supervisory board of PRO and COOP): Representation of interests in the works council and supervisory board of PRO and coop AG, 11th conference on cooperative history, October 28, 2016