Machine factory and iron foundry Gebrüder Botsch
The machine works and iron foundry Gebrüder Botsch was a machine works and iron foundry in Bad Rappenau . The company existed from 1865 to 1975. It gained importance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through a series of patents for machines and devices for the mechanization of farms. The Botsch brothers' sowing and mowing machines were sold internationally. The former factory site of the Botsch brothers has been part of the Rappenauer Kurpark since the 1970s.
history
The company goes back to the craft business of the mechanic Frey near the Rappenauer Saline , who expanded his company to a factory for agricultural equipment around 1842. The Rappenau brothers Johann Georg Botsch and Johann Jakob Botsch took over the property of the mechanic Frey on July 1, 1865 and continued his production of agricultural machines.
In 1873 the brothers built a new factory building that received a steam engine in 1875 . The Botsch brothers are said to have an innate inventive talent and have applied for numerous patents. Her company's product range initially included chain pumps for water and liquid manure, brewery machines, brick- making machines , fruit and wine presses and fruit mills. The emigration of peasant workers to the cities, which began in the course of industrialization , and the resulting need to mechanize the larger peasant businesses, had an extremely favorable effect on the Botsch brothers' business. One of their most successful early products was the mobile threshing machine , patented in 1876 , which was driven by a mobile column gopel , as well as a chopping machine also driven by Göpel . The construction work of the brothers lay mainly in the transmission of the respective machines.
After the death of Johann Georg Botsch, on September 18, 1889, the company passed to the founder's four eldest sons - Julius, Jakob, Otto and Emil Botsch. In 1894 an iron foundry was opened, and in 1906 an electric power station was added.
From 1892 the company also manufactured grass mowing machines. In the period that followed, sawing and mowing machines became the company's most important products and were sold internationally, with the two world wars leading to restrictions and changes in production.
Since the neighboring saltworks area increasingly developed into a spa area in the 20th century, efforts were made in the 1960s to relocate the machine factory to a newly created industrial area southwest of the Rappenau moated castle . In late 1971, the Bad Rappenau community signed a contract for gradual resettlement. A new factory was built in the industrial area, while the old facilities near the saltworks were demolished and added to the spa area.
The oil crisis of the 1970s and the lack of orders in the agricultural machinery industry, however, led to the company's economic decline immediately after the company's relocation in 1975. The company was eventually taken over by IBR Maschinenfabrik GmbH .
literature
- Gustav Neuwirth: History of the City of Bad Rappenau. City of Bad Rappenau, Bad Rappenau 1978