Cyclop machine factory
The machine factory Cyclop was a factory that produced accessories for water works etc. It belonged to the Mehlis & Behrens company. As the Cyclop machine factory, Mehlis & Behrens, which had their headquarters in Wedding , built steam engines, road rollers, pumps, etc. From time to time you can also find manhole covers with the company label “Machine factory Cyclop” in Germany.
History and products
Mehlis & Behrens had been working in Berlin for a long time when the Cyclop machine factory was housed in a new building. The company, which was located at Pankstrasse 14/15, was founded in 1872. According to an advertisement from 1896, it also produced large iron structures such as bridges. Among other things, the dome of the Reichstag, built between 1884 and 1894, came from Mehlis & Behrens. Mehlis & Behrens also manufactured equipment such as cranes and elevators.
In Berlin, steam rollers were used in road construction from 1873. The first copies were bought in England, however, since such devices were only produced in Germany around 1880. The first steam roller manufacturers in Germany included Gotthilf Kuhn in Stuttgart , Maffei and Krauss in Munich, and three Berlin companies, including the Cyclop machine factory. In 1879 they built a steamroller for the city of Berlin, which differed greatly from the models previously purchased. It had a standing boiler and a twin machine that worked on the back roll. Front and back rolls had the same diameter. This first Cyclop steamroller, which Berlin bought, weighed around 14.7 tons. A few years later, Berlin put a second Cyclop steamroller into operation, which weighed around 17 tons. According to its own admission, the Cyclop machine factory had already built ten particularly large and powerful steam rollers by the time the trade exhibition was held in 1896. At that time the Cyclop machine factory employed around 500 workers. In 1901 the factory delivered a unit for street lighting in Frankfurt (Oder) .
The machine factory Cyclop gave its name to the only Cyclopstrasse in Germany, in which it was only located for a few years: In 1910, the Cyclopstrasse was laid out in Berlin, and in 1912 the machine factory was relocated there in new buildings. Apparently, it did not survive the First World War in these buildings, because after its end the Berlin tram moved its main warehouse to the former factory site.
Nothing has been preserved of the factory halls of the Cyclop machine factory on the grounds at Cyclopstrasse 9-27, which were apparently still used by the Berlin tram. They were demolished in 1982 and replaced by new buildings.
The northern part of Cyclopstraße, which once ran parallel to the Nordbahn from Göschenplatz to Waidmannslust S-Bahn station , was renamed Jean-Jaurès-Straße in 1987 and in between it had probably already been called Parallelstraße. The southern part of the street has kept its original name.
Products received
Drawings by Paul Lehmgrübner for the restoration of the Marienkirche in Mühlhausen / Thuringia have been preserved in the architecture museum of the TU Berlin . Among them is a representation of a screw winch made by the Cyclop machine factory, which had a load capacity of 40 tons.
In a former pumping station in Vehlgast there is still a pump that was manufactured in the Cyclop machine factory in 1900. The historic pump, which is unique in Saxony-Anhalt, is to be preserved as a technical monument. It was initially powered by steam. Albert Gieseler speculated whether the centrifugal pump, which was initially connected to a steam engine, could have been converted to an electric drive in 1926. Ingo Freihorst, on the other hand, reports in a newspaper article that the pump was powered by wind power from 1927. Towards the end of the Second World War , the wind turbine was dismantled in order not to offer a target for air raids. According to Freihorst, the boiler house and its chimney existed until 1977, but the pump was used a year longer.
In the Henrichenburg ship lift , which is part of the LWL industrial museum, there is still a pump manufactured in 1914 from the Cyclop machine factory. The boat lift itself is older; It was inaugurated as the first facility of its kind in 1899, but was supplemented in 1914 by a shaft lock with several saving basins.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Illustration of a steam roller from the Cyclop machine factory from 1880 on www.dampfkultur.de
- ^ A b Michael Gündling, company portrait I. 'Cyclop' machine factory - Mehlis & Behrens, Berlin, Pank-Strasse. Berliner Actien-Gesellschaft für Eisengiesserei und Maschinenfabrikation formerly JC Freund & Co. In: DWCS-Info , December 2005, pp. 14-17 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and still Not checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ 100 years of Wedding , on: www.berlinstreet.de
- ↑ From the AEG to the Allgemeine Lokalbahn , on: www.svf-ffo.de
- ↑ The history of the Cyclop machine factory and the Cyclopstrasse at www.cyclop9.de ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Lehmgrübner's drawing of the screw jack on architekturmuseum.ub.tu-berlin.de
- ↑ Altes Schöpfwerk Vehlgast , on: www.altes-schoepfwerk-vehlgast.de ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Maschinenfabrik Cyclop, Mehlis & Behrens: Steam pump , on: www.albert-gieseler.de
- ↑ Ingo Freihorst, license agreement for the renovation of the old pumping station is ready to be signed , January 31, 2012, at: www.volksstimme.de
- ↑ Henrichenburg ship lift in the Waltrop lock park, at: www.route-industriekultur.de
