Lenz & Co.

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The GmbH Lenz & Co. (from 1924 Lenz & Co. GmbH ) was a German railway construction and operating company that was founded in 1892 and liquidated in 1970.

history

The company was founded on July 30, 1892, with its headquarters in Stettin , two days after the Prussian Small Railroad Act was promulgated . Together with its subsidiaries, it quickly grew into the most important branch and small railway group in Germany and played a major role in the transport sector until the end of the 20th century. Ultimately, it was also the basis for the development of competitive private railways in the course of the regionalization of the railway system in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Small railroad construction in Prussia

The history of the Lenz Group began at the end of the 19th century when the network of the main railway lines in the German Empire was completed and a large part of the branch lines were already in operation. However, at that time many regions - especially in agriculturally structured areas - were still without rail links. Above all, the largest German state, the Kingdom of Prussia , found itself unable to fulfill all of the legitimate wishes of the affected population by virtue of the Prussian State Railway itself acting as the builder and operator.

Seal of the Pomeranian Operations Directorate in Stettin

The Prussian government therefore pursued the plan to have the local railways built and operated in a simplified manner by private companies in which the state, the provinces, the districts and cities, as well as local interested parties from the economy could participate.

For this purpose the Prussian Small Railroad Act was created, which was promulgated on July 28, 1892. In a good two decades, this law led to the construction of branch and small railways in the Kingdom of Prussia to an extent of more than 12,000 km. The railway network was thereby compressed from 6.99 km to 13.7 km per 100 km²; so it had almost doubled. The share of the non-state railways in the total route network in Prussia rose from 6% in 1892 to 26% in 1914.

Lenz & Co. GmbH was one-third involved in this construction project with around 100 railways. The founders of this company had apparently recognized the trend in good time and fully exhausted the possibilities offered by the new law.

Lenz Group

The share capital of 4 million marks was distributed among the following shareholders:

The sole managing director was Friedrich Lenz.

Initially the focus of the company's construction activities was in Mecklenburg , then in the Prussian province of Pomerania . After the activities had expanded to all of Prussia, the company's headquarters were relocated to Berlin in 1899 .

In addition, construction and operations departments were set up in Altona , Berlin, Breslau , Halle (Saale) , Cologne and Stettin so that operations could be carried out effectively for the railways, to which Lenz & Co. is committed to most of the new buildings for the first Years of operation.

The strong construction activity of the company in the first decade of its existence led to considerable capital requirements at the house bank . Although the company received shares in the newly founded railway companies, it was not able to sell them cheaply on the capital market because the companies involved were quite small and yielded very different returns. So it was decided to combine these values ​​in a holding company whose shares would offer an interesting investment opportunity for the public.

These considerations led to the founding of the AG for Transport (AGV) in June 1901. It immediately took over all shares in the GmbH Lenz & Co. , which had given the group its (unofficial) name. From then on, the new subsidiary was only one of the operating management companies for railways in which AGV was involved. Other management companies founded by Lenz & Co. were the Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft in Königsberg (1893) and the Westdeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (1895), each with several subsidiaries.

However, it was the most important. As early as 1905, the operational management included lines of 2137.3 km in length, of which 1113.0 km were in standard gauge . The establishment of the Pomeranian Provincial Association's small railway department in Stettin, which took over 18 Lenz small railways in 1910, caused a sharp decline ( Pomeranian narrow-gauge railways ). But this was soon compensated for by working for new railways.

In 1928–1929 a new administration building was built in Berlin according to plans by the architect Heinrich Straumer .

After the restructuring of the AGV Group in 1928/1929, the size of the Lenz & Co. company reached a peak in 1931 with a total length of the 30 operational management routes of 1118 km. That was more than a quarter of all railway lines within the AGV's sphere of influence. They were administered by operating departments in Berlin, Breslau and Halle and used the workshops in Herzfelde and Jauer .

This situation did not change significantly in the years up to the beginning of the Second World War . At that time, the AGV group owned railways totaling 3475 km.

Railway lines

Lenz & Co. built and operated the following railways:

Central Germany

Silesia

Austrian Silesia

Pomerania and Mecklenburg

Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein

After the end of the Second World War in 1945, only the three railways in Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein remained under the control of the company. Its management was transferred to the Deutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . The company Lenz & Co. GmbH retired from the transport activities of the AG for Transport . He was given stakes in consumer markets, the business development of which, however, did not meet expectations. The shareholders' meeting decided on December 31, 1970 to liquidate the company .

vehicles

The Lenz company ordered vehicles that were as uniform as possible for all railways so that the machines could be produced inexpensively. Except for the Lenz type "m", the designs of the individual series differed considerably from one another depending on the manufacturer.

Lenz steam locomotives:

literature

  • Public transport manual 1940. Berlin 1940.
  • Henning Wall: The Geilenkirchener Kreisbahn. Schweers & Wall, Aachen 1987, ISBN 3-921679-70-2 , pp. 14-20.
  • Wolfram Bäumer, Wolf-Dietger Machel: Friedrich Lenz. A pioneer in regionalization. In: Die Museums-Eisenbahn ( ISSN  0936-4609 ), Issues 2/1987 and 3/1987, pp. 24–33.
  • Wolfram Bäumer: small train pioneer. In: Eisenbahn Magazin , issue 12/1996, p. 43.
  • Henning Wall: Designation of the locomotives on Lenz-Bahnen. In: Die Museums-Eisenbahn , issue 4/2004 ( online as PDF file, 221 kB)
  • Henning Wall: The Lenz Group. The GmbH Lenz & Co. and the public limited company for transport. From Lenz to Connex and Transdev . Schweers + Wall, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-89494-108-6
  • Andreas Christopher, Walter Söhnlein: History and railways of the public transport company, Volume 1: History and railways in the east. Arge Drehscheibe, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-929082-35-7
  • Andreas Christopher, Walter Söhnlein: History and railways of the corporation for transport, Volume 2: Railways in the west and in the colonies. Arge Drehscheibe, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-929082-36-4

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