Kyffhäuser Hut Artern
The Kyffhäuserhütte Artern was a company of engineering in Artern / Unstrut ( Thuringia ).
history
The history of Kyffhäuserhütte goes back to the company founded in 1881 as a sheet metal and coppersmith's forge by the Thuringian industrialist Paul Reuss , who also founded the Eisenacher Hörselwerke and owned shares in the Stadtlengsfeld porcelain factory . As early as the mid-1880s, this company began manufacturing agricultural machinery, among which the feed steamers and, from the mid-1890s, the milk centrifuges became a focus. In 1897 the Reuss machine factory, which had meanwhile grown to around 500 employees, was converted into a stock corporation called "Kyffhäuserhütte Artern". Paul Reuss led it until 1915 and then resigned for health reasons.
The company continued to grow in the first decades of the 20th century by expanding the production program, which at times also included combustion engines and motorized portable plows, and by taking over several companies, and in 1938 it had more than 1,000 employees.
Arms production dominated both wars. In the First World War these were mainly grenades and field kitchens, in the Second World War these included anti-aircraft gun mounts 2cm, special trailers for mounts, bolt mines, rifle cleaning devices and grenades.
At the end of 1945, the largely undamaged company came under the administration of Soviet occupation organs and was given the company name “Maschinenfabrik der SAG Transmasch - formerly Kyffhäuserhütte Artern”. Under these conditions, the company was spared dismantling and developed very well in the first post-war years on the basis of its traditional products, which (as before the war) were sold under the brand name AKRA. In 1950 it had almost 1,400 employees.
In 1952 the company was handed over to the GDR and converted into the state-owned company Kyffhäuserhütte Artern. Initially it belonged to the area of food machine construction , but was assigned to the VVB agricultural, construction and woodworking machines as early as 1953 . In 1958 there was a change to VVB Food Goods Machinery ( Nagema ). With the merger of agricultural and food machine construction in 1970, the Kyffhäuserhütte Artern became an operation of the Impulsa Elsterwerda combine and, with the formation of the combine in 1978, a company of the Progress Agricultural Machinery Combine . Kyffhäuserhütte Artern had around 2000 employees in 1970 and around 2500 in 1978. In 1984 she came back to the food machinery industry (Kombinat Nagema).
In 1990 the company with its 3000 employees came under the administration of the Treuhandanstalt and was converted into a GmbH. In 1992, SÜDMO Schleicher AG Riesbürg bought Kyffhäuserhütte Artern GmbH with around 400 employees. The latter filed for bankruptcy in 1998. In 1999 the Kyffhäuser Maschinenfabrik Artern GmbH was re-established at the same location ; it mainly produces separators .
Products
The company began repairing machines and equipment for distilleries, breweries and sugar factories. The company's first own products were feed steamers and potato washers and crushers in the mid-1880s.
In addition to the further development of this program, including the combined squeezer and tilting damper, the milk skimming machines came from the mid-1890s and were marketed under the names KAHA, Planet and Zenit. Other products from this period were low-pressure steam boilers and fertilizer mills.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the product range was expanded to include tillage equipment, hay and straw blowers, feed processing machines, grist mills and liquid manure pumps. In 1905 the construction of internal combustion engines began. In the period from 1912 to 1927, Kyffhäuserhütte Artern developed and produced various models of motorized plows with the type designation "AKRA", which were initially equipped with 80 hp engines and later with 30 hp engines.
After 1945 the agricultural and dairy machine programs were resumed and expanded. In the case of agricultural machinery, this included slurry tanks, mobile steaming columns, electric steamers and haymaking machines, and in the case of dairy machines, milk separators, milk can washing machines, butter makers, plate heat exchangers and large centrifuges.
At the end of the 1950s, the agricultural machinery programs were discontinued. From this point on, the development and production of machines and equipment for the dairy industry became the focus of the company and subsequently led to an internationally recognized high level with high export rates. The focus was on the milk cooling systems with heat recovery (storage and flow cooling) and the automated milk processing systems. The separators and pumps from Kyffhäuserhütte Artern were also used in other areas of the food industry and liquid treatment.
In addition, from the mid-1960s onwards, the company also focused on the production of mesh belt ovens for large bakeries and the cutting units of the self-propelled swather of the combination of progress agricultural machinery from 1982.
literature
- Klaus Krombholz: Agricultural machinery in the GDR - light and shadow . DLG-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-7690-0717-6 .
- Florian Möller, Sebastian Hübner: History of the Kyffhäuser Hut Artern . In: Golden Plow. Journal of the German Agricultural Museum . Issue 23. German Agricultural Museum, Hohenheim 2006, p. 33-36 .
Web links
- Website of the Kyffhäuser Maschinenfabrik Artern GmbH
- Early documents and newspaper articles on the Kyffhäuserhütte Artern in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ^ Sabine Landmann, Stefan Wolter, Jensen Zlotowicz: Villas in Eisenach , Rhino-Verlag Arnstadt 1997, pp. 192–197
- ↑ a b www.artern-stadt.info
- ↑ kma-artern.de/geschichte