Motor factory Oberursel
| Motorenfabrik Oberursel AG | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1898 |
| resolution | 1930 |
| Reason for dissolution | fusion |
| Seat | Oberursel (Taunus) |
| Branch | Drive technology |
| Website | GKMO.net |
The Motorenfabrik Oberursel (abbreviated MO) is today a production plant for complex engine components of the Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd & Co KG company; the MO was named "W. Seck & Co ”founded, was a stock corporation from 1898 to 1930, after which it was owned by different owners; The MO and the successor owners manufactured piston engines and gas turbines to drive land, sea, rail and air vehicles, and until the 1920s, light rail locomotives as well.
prehistory
The history of the engine factory in Oberursel goes back to Wilhelm Seck, who in March 1882, together with his wife Adelgunde, bought the property of the former Wiemersmühle in Oberursel / Taunus with the Urselbach as an operating employee and established a branch of his Bockenheimer mill construction company Gebrüder Seck & Co. here . In his factory, which was set up with extensive construction measures, Seck mainly manufactured roller mills , which at that time replaced the mills in the grain mills that had been common for centuries . This production required, unlike the Oberursel textile factories, which mostly used semi-skilled workers, skilled workers. Wilhelm Seck brought some of these with him from Bockenheim, but he also resorted to craftsmen from Oberursel. Just two months after purchasing the property, he took on the first locksmith apprentices. His company was the first mechanical engineering factory in Oberursel to work in industrial production and organizational forms and also established the training of skilled workers in the city. This upgrading of the industry with the improved traffic and communication connections also led to the formation of a technical and commercial management layer that supported the factories, settled in the up-and-coming town of Oberursel and made it more attractive. When Wilhelm Seck relocated his company to Darmstadt in 1886, the Oberursel plant initially fell asleep until Willy Seck, the eldest son of the Secks, appeared here in 1890.
1892 - The Oberursel engine factory was founded
After studying mechanical engineering, Willy Seck continued the development of a single-cylinder stationary motor in his father's Oberursel machine factory , which he called GNOM because of its stable and compact design. This engine, which works with solar oil (a fuel obtained from lignite), gas or petroleum, was presented to the public at the end of 1891. For its construction and further development, Wilhelm Seck founded the Oberursel engine factory under the company name “W. Seck & Co ”. The Royal District Court in Homburg set the beginning of the company and thus the date of foundation on January 15, 1892. The engine, which met with great interest in agriculture and small businesses, found good sales and won many prizes and medals at the important exhibitions of the time. After the death of the company's founder Wilhelm Seck, the company was converted into a GmbH in January 1896 . At that time, one thousand Gnom engines had already been produced, as well as the first “ Lokomobile ”, and the Frenchman Louis Seguin had already acquired the license to build and sell the engine in France. This period also saw the development of marine winds fell on the then flourished experiencing tall ships brought Oberurseler engines around the world.
The bustling Willy Seck also wanted to develop a "motor vehicle", but his co-partners refused to do this, and so Willy Seck left the engine factory and Oberursel in the spring of 1898. He continued his engineering career with the development of various, mostly short-lived types of automobiles and then turned new tasks, in particular engine ignition and mixture formation. In 1955 he died in modest circumstances in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . Willy Seck's exit as a shareholder in the engine factory was one of the impulses for the company's transformation into a stock corporation . In 1900 the engine factory started building motor locomotives, which soon made a name for themselves in tunneling projects in the Alps. They were also widely used as mine, shunting, factory and light rail locomotives. Around seven hundred military field railway locomotives were produced in the First World War alone . With a total of around two thousand units built by 1922, the engine factory rose to become the second largest manufacturer in Germany after the Deutz gas engine factory . At the beginning, many of these locomotives were equipped with alcohol engines, the introduction of which the Oberursel engine factory assumed a pioneering role in Germany from 1899 on. The use of alcohol as a fuel was strongly encouraged by the state at the time, which wanted to curb the consumption of spirits.
1912 - A new factory is built
With the growing business, the buildings of the factory, which dates back to 1882, were expanded again and again. In 1911 these possibilities were exhausted and the foundation stone for a new factory complex was laid below the previous plant. The "diesel engine hall", which was put into operation in 1912, was followed in 1913 by the wing of the aircraft engine hall attached to it. Further hall wings and the impressive new administration building were built by 1918. This ensemble of buildings, which still shape the image of the engine factory today, was declared a cultural monument in 1980. The architects of the building ensemble were Julius Zinser (Karlsruhe) and Philipp Hufnagel (Offenbach).
The aircraft engines in World War I - the rise and fall of the engine factory
In April 1913, the Oberurseler Motorenfabrik acquired the license to replicate and market the successful French Gnome rotary motors from the Société des Moteurs Gnome of the Seguin brothers in France. One of the brothers is Louis Seguin, who owed the boom in his company, founded in 1895, to the construction of the Gnom stationary motors licensed by Seck. Soon afterwards the First World War broke out and the rapid development of military aviation led to profound changes in the Oberursel engine factory. By the end of 1918, the plant had produced around three thousand "Oberurseler Umlaufmotoren", which was a further development of the French Gnome. The best known of Oberurseler nine-cylinder engine UR-II was Fokker triplane Dr I . With this triplane, Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen , the most successful German fighter pilot in World War I, achieved 19 of his 80 aerial victories until he was shot down on the Somme on April 21, 1918 . In addition to the approximately three thousand newly built engines, hardly a smaller number were overhauled in the factory. Almost five thousand soldiers visited the engine school set up in the factory, where they were instructed in the operation and repair of the Oberursel aircraft engines in a four-week course.
In the difficult times after the First World War, the Oberursel engine factory was unable to build on the earlier sales success of its engines and machines for civilian use. Even a small built-in motor for bicycles, the “Oberurseler Gnom”, could not stop the decline. Incidentally, the engines of the legendary motorcycle brand HOREX were created from him . Because of its economic problems, the Oberursel engine factory was forced to enter into a syndicate with the older and much larger Deutz gas engine factory in Cologne at the end of 1921 .
1922 to 1945 - The almost forgotten engines
In the company, which has meanwhile been controlled by Deutz, engines from the Deutz range were produced almost exclusively from now on - a few types, but in large numbers. The exception was the truck engine model 35, from which the successful family of Deutz aggregate and vehicle engines should emerge. The flow production introduced in the mid-1920s soon made Oberursel the most profitable plant in the new group of companies. In 1930 the previously existing Motorenfabrik Oberursel AG was extinguished. It went completely under the name “Werk Oberursel” in the Humboldt-Deutzmotoren AG, which was created in 1930 from the merger of the gas engine factory with the Cologne-based locomotive builder Maschinenbauanstalt Humboldt . Two years later, after nearly twenty thousand engines had been manufactured here in a decade, the lights literally went out both in the factory and in the town of Oberursel. The plant was closed due to the effects of the global economic crisis . The loss of trade tax income led, among other things, to the switching off of the street lighting in Oberursel and the closure of the municipal lyceum in Oberhöchstädter Strasse, which the city administration moved into a year later. All production facilities of the engine factory but only a few of the employees were transferred to Cologne.
Operations in Oberursel could not be resumed until May 1934, and the plant, which from 1938 onwards belonged to what is now Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz AG (KHD) after a merger of the parent company with Duisburg's Klöckner-Werke , produced around sixty thousand by the end of 1944 Aggregate and vehicle engines, the technical origin of which was in Oberursel. Deutz's own tractors - such as the legendary "11er Deutz" or the " Deutzer Bauernschlepper " - as well as corresponding types from a number of other manufacturers who advanced the mechanization of German agriculture in the 1930s were equipped with the smaller of these engines .
The engines that have almost been forgotten include the DZ 710 aircraft engines, which were developed in Oberursel from 1941 onwards. For this development program, the plant was fundamentally modernized from 1941 onwards and, for example, the tower test facility building was added. At the beginning of October 1943 the first run of the approximately 2,700 hp sixteen-cylinder aircraft engine took place. The only two copies made were transported by the Americans to the USA after the war, where they are lost.
1945 to 1958 - a difficult start again
On March 30, 1945, US troops occupied the city of Oberursel and the engine factory, which they did not vacate until mid-1956. They used the plant as a barracks and as a vehicle repair depot, as well as for the driving duties of their US military intelligence services stationed in nearby Camp King . By the decision of the Allied Control Council, the modern machinery and equipment at the plant had been completely dismantled for reparation purposes by the end of 1947 and transported on over two hundred railway wagons mainly to Belgium and France, but also to India. As early as the spring of 1948, modest component production for the Cologne parent company (Klöckner Humboldt Deutz AG) could begin in a small factory area that had been wrested from the Americans, and the following year it was able to move into the tower test facility building that had been saved from destruction. Here the company with the production of components for Cologne and Ulm engines grew in ever tighter conditions until the plant was released in mid-1956 to three hundred employees. But it would take another two years until the derelict buildings were repaired and work could be resumed there.
1958 to 1990 - four decades of small engines and aviation equipment
In November 1958, the development and production of exhaust gas turbochargers and small gas turbines , which had started five years earlier in Cologne, relocated to the restored and spacious Oberursel plant. After the T16 industrial gas turbine with an initial output of 80 hp, the T112 auxiliary gas turbine was developed for the German VFW-Fokker VAK 191 B vertical take -off aircraft . This was initially done in cooperation with Bristol Siddeley , a company that was taken over by Rolls-Royce in 1966 . This was followed by the T212 air supply turbine for a reconnaissance platform.
At the beginning of the 1970s, the development of the auxiliary gas turbine T312 and the transfer case G119 for the auxiliary energy system of the combat and reconnaissance aircraft Tornado began , which from the beginning of the 1980s became the backbone of the air forces in Great Britain, Italy and Germany and also of Saudi Arabia. Even today, four decades after the first flight of a tornado, spare parts are still being manufactured at the Oberursel site, equipment is being repaired and other technical and logistical support services are provided.
The move into turbine development was followed by entry into license production of aircraft engines in 1959. It all started with the production and support orders from the German Armed Forces for the Orpheus turbojet engine from Bristol Siddeley. This was followed by other aircraft engines that were manufactured, serviced and repaired under license or in cooperation. These included the Lycoming T53 engine for the Bell UH-1 D helicopter , the Larzac 04 engine for the Franco-German training and reconnaissance aircraft Alpha Jet , and the repair of a helicopter engine with the name Gnome, which is very common in Oberursel. This Rolls-Royce Gnome engine has been looked after in Oberursel for the German Navy and other users for four decades.
When KHD, the world's oldest manufacturer of internal combustion engines, began looking into the possibilities of the gas turbine as an alternative drive unit for heavy trucks and other heavy vehicles in the early 1970s, engineers from the gas turbine factory in Oberursel played a leading role. The first driving tests with a modified aircraft engine were followed by the entry and participation in the development of the 550 hp vehicle gas turbine GT601 in a consortium of four gas turbine and truck manufacturers, which took place predominantly in the USA.
In the mid-1970s, a new chapter was opened in Oberursel: the development of a jet engine with 1,000 Newtons of thrust for the Franco-German reconnaissance drone CL289 . The small T117 was the first aircraft engine developed in West Germany after 1945 that went into series production.
The end of the 1970s saw the formation of the gas turbine division within the drives division of KHD AG, from which KHD Luftfahrttechnik GmbH emerged in 1980.
The very busy 1980s were determined by the manufacture and maintenance of the Larzac engines in German-French cooperation, the series production and maintenance of the auxiliary gas turbine and the gearbox of the multi-purpose combat aircraft Tornado, and the business and production participation in the engines of CFM International . This is a joint venture between the engine manufacturers General Electric and Snecma . This closed a circle again, because the Snecma was the successor company of the Société des Moteurs Gnome of the Seguin brothers, which had laid its foundation with the licensed construction of the Oberurseler Gnom-Motoren in 1895. With the CFM program, Snecma has now become the stirrup holder for the future of the Oberursel engine factory. Because with its qualifications and the operating licenses of the civil aviation authorities, Oberursel-based KHD Luftfahrttechnik GmbH optimally fulfilled the conditions of BMW AG for its planned re-entry into the aircraft engine business at the end of the 1980s .
1990 - A new era begins with BMW and Rolls-Royce
In 1990, BMW AG, which was founded in 1916 as a manufacturer of aircraft engines, took over the Oberursel site from KHD AG, which was in a tailspin, with the business of the previous KHD Luftfahrttechnik GmbH. At the same time, BMW and the British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce founded the new company BMW Rolls-Royce AeroEngines, based in Oberursel.
Immediately after it was founded, BMW Rolls-Royce AeroEngines began developing the core engine for the new BR700 engine family , which was continued in 1993 in the newly built development and assembly center in Dahlewitz , Brandenburg . The turbofan engine with the type designation BR710 achieved its international approval in 1996 as the first German jet engine to go into civilian use. Parallel to the development of the BR700 engine family, BRR entered into a stake in the development of an auxiliary gas turbine for regional aircraft under the leadership of Allied Signal in Phoenix in autumn 1993. This APU was urgently needed for the business jets equipped with the BR710. BRR Oberursel was responsible for the development of the compressor section of the APU RE220, in which the Oberursel centrifugal compressor technology was used for the last time.
The first Boeing 717 passenger aircraft , powered by the more powerful BR715 engine, came into service from 1999. At the end of 1998, the management of BMW Rolls-Royce moved from Oberursel to Dahlewitz on the southern Berliner Ring. In July 2000, the company's headquarters were also moved there.
As the competence center for twin-shaft engines within the Rolls-Royce Group, the Dahlewitz site is responsible for the BR700, Tay , Spey and Dart engine series . A total of around 7,000 engines were manufactured by the beginning of 2017, almost half of which belonged to the BR710 series, with which over 1,600 long-haul business jets from the manufacturers Gulfstream and Bombardier are equipped.
The IAE V2500 twin-shaft engine, which is used in short- and medium-haul aircraft of the types Airbus A319, A320 and A321 as well as in A319 corporate jets , is also being finally assembled and tested in Dahlewitz; by the beginning of 2017 there were over 2,100 units. In addition, around eight thousand engines in service around the world are supported from Dahlewitz.
The plant in Oberursel was fundamentally modernized and expanded by the new owners in the course of the 1990s, and the production capabilities of the production of complex engine components were aligned. In order to fully utilize production, from 1991 onwards, with the production of variable camshaft controls (VANOS) for BMW vehicles, practical experience was also gained with the operation of production islands.
2000 - BMW Rolls-Royce AeroEngines becomes Rolls-Royce Germany
Another boost set in when Rolls-Royce plc. At the beginning of 2000 the company took over completely. The Oberursel site of the new Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd & Co KG has since been consistently expanded into a modern competence center for the manufacture of rotating engine components and is firmly established in the globally operating Rolls-Royce Group as a competitive and competent production site. State-of-the-art manufacturing technologies are used here to manufacture high-tech components for numerous Rolls-Royce engine programs and assemble engine modules. The location is also a support and maintenance center for small gas turbines for various applications.
The predecessor and successor companies of the Motorenfabrik Oberursel AG
- 1882: Wilhelm Seck acquires the Oberurseler Wiemersmühle and establishes a branch of the "Mühlenbauanstalt Gebrüder Seck & Co." here to manufacture roller mills.
- 1890: Willy Seck, the son of Wilhelm Seck, starts developing the stationary engine "GNOM" here.
- 1892: Wilhelm Seck founds the Oberursel engine factory "W. Seck & Co ”.
- 1896: After the death of the company's founder Wilhelm Seck, the company is converted into a GmbH: Motoren-Fabrik Oberursel “W. Seck & Co. GmbH ”.
- 1898: In this year the company is converted into a stock corporation - the "Motorenfabrik Oberursel Actien-Gesellschaft" (MO AG).
- 1921: The Motorenfabrik Oberursel AG and the Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz AG establish a community of interests, which virtually leads to the loss of the independence of MO AG.
- 1930: The engine factory is incorporated into Humboldt Deutz Motoren AG and becomes the "Oberursel plant"; the Motorenfabrik Oberursel AG is dissolved.
- 1938: The name is changed to Klöckner Humboldt Deutz (KHD) AG, the location is now called "Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz AG, Oberursel plant".
- 1980: KHD founds "KHD Luftfahrttechnik GmbH" in Oberursel.
- 1990: BMW Rolls-Royce GmbH: BMW acquires the Oberursel plant and the KHD Luftfahrttechnik business and establishes the joint venture “BMW Rolls-Royce AeroEngines” with Rolls-Royce.
- 2000: BMW withdraws from the joint venture. The name is changed to "Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd & Co KG".
The buildings of the engine factory Oberursel in the cityscape
One of the more impressive of the historic buildings in the city of Oberursel is undoubtedly the administration building of the Oberursel engine factory on Hohemarkstrasse.
Along with the successful economic development of the Oberursel engine factory, the factory facilities were also steadily expanded. The construction of the first workshop away from the main factory (originating from the former Wiemersmühle) began as early as 1911.
In 1913 the construction of aircraft engines began. The growing demand due to the war made it necessary to further expand the factory facilities, including the impressive administration building. These buildings, which were built in several construction phases between 1911 and 1918, have shaped the image of the Oberursel engine factory ever since.
Together with a new assembly hall below the previous factory, a new factory entrance with a branched freight track was built in 1911. The factory hall, which went into operation in 1912, had already been significantly enlarged during the construction phase, and in 1913 the aircraft engine hall with the superior operations offices was added and put into operation. These workshops and the upper part of the current administration building were built from 1911 to 1913 according to the plans of the Karlsruhe architect Julius Zinser in a neoclassical style.
The extensions to this workshop and the main part of the new administration building, on the other hand, were planned by the Offenbach architect Philipp Hufnagel. The redesign and expansion of the neoclassical building on the right of the factory entrance, which was started in 1915, can also be traced back to Philipp Hufnagel. The execution of all these buildings erected between 1911 and 1918 was entrusted to the Oberursel-based company "Baugeschäft" TAUNUS "JJ Meister". At the request of the client, the architect Hufnagel designed an administration building with sophisticated architecture. The architectural language is committed to representation, the facades are designed in the splendid neo-baroque style with elements of Art Nouveau on the portal, which is probably why the vernacular has also called the building the "Schauspielhaus Oberursel".
Inside, too, the administration building in the central area around the entrance hall has been designed in a lavish and representative manner. The marble staircase with a large mosaic wall of windows, the four wood-paneled director's offices and the wood-paneled boardroom with carved decorative elements on the first floor still bear witness to this today. The paternoster elevator installed at the time has not survived the times. The dining rooms in the basement and the kitchen of the company canteen are still there; they have of course been redesigned and modernized several times over the years. The original separation and different furnishing of the dining rooms for directors, civil servants (= employees) and workers have not existed for a long time.
The two-storey administration building with its slate mansard hipped roof with window dormers and the Belvedere is located along Hohemarkstrasse and has a gross floor area of around 5,300 square meters. The tram shelter, a small solid building with a mansard roof, stylistically adapted to the administration building, was built as a unit with the administration building. After the two-track expansion of the underground line at the end of the 1980s, the “Motorenfabrik” stop was given up and replaced by the “Lahnstrasse” stop. The bus shelter has lost its original function. However, behind the splendid facades along Hohemarkstrasse there are simple and purpose-oriented industrial buildings. The buildings were constructed using concrete, steel and glass, which was quite new at the time, with an artificial stone facade that imitates a masonry structure made of natural stone blocks, with gray granite on the basement and tuff with a beige to ocher base tone on the floors above.
Despite its eventful history - with multiple changes of ownership, the Second World War, the dismantling of reparations for the occupation and use by the US Army, and despite renovations inside the building that were repeatedly required due to technical developments and changing usage requirements, the external appearance of the historic buildings of the The engine factory has changed little during its 100-year history. They shape the cityscape of Oberursel here.
It is therefore hardly surprising that these buildings, created by the former Motorenfabrik Oberursel AG, were listed as historical monuments as early as 1980. The monument property is described in the official monument book as follows: "High quality, representative in the structural design of the administration building, whose sophisticated architectural forms have an effect on the enclosure, the tram shelters and the facade design of the production halls:"
That is how it is seen and categorized today, it was not always that way. In 1928, 10 years after the administration building was completed, experts judged it differently. In a review of the work of the architect Philipp Hufnagel, it says: “To round off the overall picture, regardless of the further development, some (...) buildings are shown which, even if they are far from us today in terms of taste, place high technical demands on the architect . It is made easier for the non-specialist to recognize the path that leads out of the architectural house, which is viewed as a question of style, through the industrial building to the modern functional functional building. "
The time of the neo-baroque architectural style was over and was replaced by the "architecture of the new objectivity", so-called rationalism. Much has been built in the long history of the Oberursel plant; the administration building is still the only building that has been designed, constructed and equipped from a representative point of view. All other buildings erected on the factory premises over the years were purely functional buildings with no recognizable uniform architectural style.
Connection to rail traffic
After the engine factory Oberursel AG was stop engine factory in 1899 opened mountain railway to the Frankfurt local railway named. The on May 31, 1910 taken for passenger transport in plant expansion of the local railway - track line 24 led from the Frankfurt Schauspielhaus through to after Hohemark. The route taken over by the Frankfurt am Main tram on January 1, 1955, was integrated into the Frankfurt U-Bahn network on May 27, 1978 . In addition to passenger traffic , freight traffic to the network of the German Federal Railroad was also handled via this route until October 27, 1981. In 1989, the Motorenfabrik stop was replaced by the Lahnstraße stop.
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| Oberursel Altstadt (until 1989: Oberstedter Straße until 2010: Oberursel Portstraße) |
 U3 underground line A |
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literature
- Achim S. Engels: The rotary engines of the Motorenfabrik Oberursel AG . Schorndorf 1996, ISBN 978-3-930571-55-0 .
- Rolls-Royce Germany: thrust for the world - 20 years of Rolls-Royce engines “made in Brandenburg”. Dahlewitz, 2013
- Helmut Hujer; 125 years of Motorenfabrik Oberursel - 1892 to 2017; Self-published by Usingen
Web links
- Company history
- Geschichtskreis Motorenfabrik Oberursel eV
- http://www.gkmo.net/index.php?downloads-show-94
- Documents and newspaper articles on the Oberursel engine factory in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 50 ° 12 ′ 41 ″ N , 8 ° 33 ′ 55 ″ E