Michelwerke (mining company)

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The Michel works , colloquially Michel group or Michel Group , were from 1906 to 1945, a German mining company in the legal form of a mining law union , based in Halle (Saale) . The company owned mines , briquette factories and power plants in the Central German lignite district and in the Rhenish district . After the expropriation of the Central German works in October 1945, the shareholders founded the Michel-Verwaltungs GbR with the remaining assets, based in Düsseldorf . The group was sold to RAG in the early 1970s .

history

With the opening of the Rhineland mine near Groß- and Kleinkayna by the Michel union founded by Rhenish entrepreneurs, mining began in the Geiseltal in December 1906 . A short time later, the company acquired three more coal fields in the vicinity of Großkayna, from which the unions Leonhardt (1910), Vesta (1910) and Gute Hoffnung (1911) emerged. In addition to the pits, a briquette factory was built for each union:

  • Großkayna I (Union Michel) in Großkayna (company from 1908 to 1972)
  • Großkayna II (Vesta Union) in Großkayna (company from 1912 to 1972)
  • Geiseltal II (Leonhardt Union) in Neumark (company from 1912 to 1975)
  • Roßbach (Good Hope Union) in Roßbach (company from 1912 to 1968)

The Michel union was thus the parent company of the Michel, Vesta, Leonhardt and Gute Hoffnung unions combined under the name Michelwerke . The Michelwerke was based in Halle (Saale), Dorotheenstrasse 17. The company's main shareholder and chairman from 1906 to 1945 was Düsseldorf banker Georg van Meeteren (* 1880, † 1945). Rheinische AG for lignite mining and briquette production (RAG) and Deutsche Erdöl-AG (DEA) held further high shares . In addition to many mining companies in the Central German district, but only in the Geiseltal, the Michelwerke joined the Central German Brown Coal Syndicate (1909-1913) in 1910 .

Colloquially, especially in the press, the company was also referred to as the Michel Group or the Michel Group . Even the Michelwerke's supervisory board often used these terms in annual reports . Legally and officially, however, the parent company operated under Michelwerke . In fact, the trades (shareholders) repeatedly considered converting the company into a stock corporation . The plans were never implemented for various reasons. Among other things, hostile takeovers of stock corporations were particularly pronounced in the Central German district between 1910 and 1932 . In the Geiseltal in particular, many of the pits were predominantly majority owned by large Bohemian coal dealers who tried to increase their influence by buying shares in various companies in order to eliminate competitors. The risk of so-called foreign infiltration did not exist with companies in the legal form of a mining union . Already in 1906 the founders of Michel works had a lot of the Kuxe scattered at financially strong Rhenish-Westphalian investors, if necessary readily with Zubuße helped out. Kuxe of deceased members caught the Michelwerke as an umbrella company itself.

In February 1921, the Michelwerke acquired the Neurath and Princess Victoria trade unions based in Bedburg (Rhineland). Georg van Meeteren took over the chairmanship of the two lignite mines as early as 1919. In order to secure the coal sales of these two unions, the Michelwerke simultaneously took over a share of 35% in Stahlwerk Becker AG in Willich . However, the stake in the loss-making steelworks was sold to the United Steelworks before 1930 .

In addition, Michelwerke acquired Niederrheinische Bergwerks-AG in Neukirchen-Vluyn in 1928 . Part of this hard coal mine was, among other things, a coal mine power station that fed the excess electricity into the RWE network. The shares and shares in the mines in the Rhineland remained in the possession of the van Meeteren family after 1945. In 1933 the number of employees at all Michel factories was 2,137 and rose to 2606 by 1938. The annual output of raw lignite in 1937 was 4.74 million tons.

During the Second World War, the representative administration building of the Michelwerke was completely destroyed in the air raids on Halle . In the course of the so-called industrial reform in the Soviet occupation zone , the active and passive assets of the Michelwerke in Central Germany were confiscated on October 3, 1945 and transferred to the sole control of the newly founded province of Saxony . In 1949, the Michelwerke pits in the Geiselteil were renamed to Großkayna open-cast mine and the works were incorporated into the VEB Braunkohlenwerk Müelte (from 1966 VEB Braunkohlenkombinat Geiseltal). The open pit mine was charred in 1972. Today's Großkaynaer See emerged from the remaining hole .

With the expropriation, Michelwerke was liquidated and the company ceased to exist. In the post-war period, Udo van Meeteren , the son of Georg van Meeteren, who died in 1945, founded the Michel-Verwaltung GbR based in Düsseldorf with the remaining assets of the family. The Neurath and Princess Victoria trade unions in Bedburg were merged into the Braunkohlen Bergwerk Neurath AG on January 1, 1952, and Udo van Meeteren was appointed to the board of directors in 1956. The company's shares were held by Michel-Verwaltung GbR. In 1959 Michel Bergbau AG and Vesta Bergbau AG were founded. In December of the same year, the brown coal mine Neurath AG was incorporated into RAG .

The shares in Niederrheinische Bergwerks-AG (hard coal mine in Neukirchen-Vluyn), which were also still owned by the van Meeteren family, were acquired by Ruhrkohle AG in 1968 . In the early 1970s, Udo van Meeteren also sold all of the other shares held by Michel-Verwaltung GbR to Ruhrkohle AG. He transferred a large part of his assets to the non-profit foundation van Meeteren , which, with endowment capital of around 45 million euros, serves to promote science, culture, nature conservation, international understanding through youth exchanges, as well as social and charitable purposes.

Web links

literature

  • Peter Schröder: Michel works. Publishing house Düsseldorf Strucken, 1931.
  • Peter Zenker: In Neurath. Mining, settlements, clubs. Pro Business Verlag, 2016.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ LMBV publication Geiseltal, (pp. 8 and 12) LMBV , accessed on October 30, 2019.
  2. ↑ Michel works, headquarters Hall German Digital Library , accessed on 30 October of 2019.
  3. ↑ Kölnische Zeitung of December 19, 1943. In: Press archive 20th century.
  4. ↑ Ludwig Silberberg (Ed.): German Cartel Yearbook. Volume 2. Puttkammer & Mühlbrecht, 1911, p. 93.
  5. ↑ Kölnische Zeitung of December 19, 1943. In: Press archive 20th century.
  6. ^ Walter Herrmann: The capital in the central German lignite mining. Dissertation. Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig, 1930. Georg Weigel publishing house, 1933, p. 39f.
  7. ↑ Peter Zenker: Neurath. Mining, settlements, clubs. Pro Business Verlag, 2016, p. 122.
  8. ↑ Fritz Zschüntzsch: The corporations in the central German economic area and its development over the last two decades. A contribution to the knowledge of the large-scale industrial development in Central Germany. Verlag Meyer, 1931, p. 46.
  9. ^ Bernhard Dietrich: United steel works. Widder-Verlag, 1930, p. 105.
  10. ↑ Kurt Pritzkoleit : Who Belongs to Germany. K. Desch, 1957, p. 340.
  11. ↑ annual reports of Michel works. In: 20th century press archive.
  12. ↑ Michel works, headquarters Hall German Digital Library , accessed on 30 October 2019
  13. ↑ LMBV publication Geiseltal, (p. 8.) LMBV , accessed on October 30, 2019.
  14. ↑ Peter Zenker: Neurath. Mining, settlements, clubs. Pro Business Verlag, 2016, pp. 122–123.
  15. ↑ Werner Tegtmeier: Economic studies. Effects of employee participation. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973, p. 265.
  16. ↑ Always eight balls in the air Handelsblatt dated February 27, 2007, accessed on October 30, 2019.