OLEX
The stock corporation for Austrian and Hungarian mineral oil products ( OLEX for short ) was an Austrian and later a German mineral oil company . It was one of the predecessor companies of the German BP .
history
(from: Echo Continental from 1923, company newspaper of Continental Hannover )
The company was founded on July 1, 1904 in Vienna . The name originated as OLEX telegram address from Petr olex port . The focus of activity was initially on the sale of kerosene for lighting purposes, mainly for the Austrian and German railway companies .
In order to gain market access in Germany , in which US companies predominantly dominated the market, it was decided to found seven German subsidiaries. When the Vienna headquarters moved to Berlin , the subsidiaries were centralized in Berlin under the management of the OLEX Petroleum Company .
In order to secure its own crude oil base , OLEX joined forces in 1911 as a subsidiary with Deutsche Erdöl-Aktiengesellschaft (DEA) and its oil wells in Germany and Romania . Their refineries expanded the range from petroleum to gasoline , gas oil and lubricating oils .
OLEX opened the first petrol station in Germany in 1922 , it was located in Hanover on Raschplatz . In the 1920s, the company's gasoline was called Strax and its oil was called Olexol . The petrol-benzene mixture Olexin came onto the market in 1923, one year before the BV-Aral of the Benzol Association .
In 1926, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) pushed OLEX and its competitor Deutsche Petroleum- Vertriebs -Gesellschaft mbH ( DPVG ) to merge and took a 40% stake in the new company. From then on the company was called OLEX Deutsche Petroleum-Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH . The Anglo-Persian Oil Company increased its shares to 75% in April 1929 and to 100% in 1931, thus taking over all the shares of the European Petroleum Union (EPU) and the Deutsche Erdöl-Aktiengesellschaft . The company was renamed again as early as 1930, this time to OLEX German Petrol and Petroleum Company .
In 1935, OLEX was the fourth largest petrol station company in Germany in the Big Five with 6,098 petrol pumps (10.9%) and a sales quota of 10.4%. The petroleum market share was around 25%.
On the occasion of the Summer Olympics in Berlin , Olex had the first advertising film made in color in 1936.
With the conversion to the war economy in September 1939, all mineral oil sales companies were combined in the Mineral Oil Distribution Working Group (AMV) and only unbranded petrol was sold. OLEX continued to be classified as a "German company", was on the list of armaments companies and was given preferential allocation of materials. The Olex shows its entire distribution area including Austria and Sudetenland on its road map from 1939 .
After the Second World War , the Olex fell into Allied hands as " German property " in 1945 and was returned as "British property" to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (the renamed Anglo-Persian Oil Company ).
In September 1950 in Austria from her, the Steaua Romana and the Runo-Everth in Vienna, the Austrian gasoline and petroleum AG , the later BP Austria .
In 1948 the German headquarters were relocated from Berlin to Hamburg and the Eurotank refinery in Hamburg was taken over. In 1950 OLEX merged with Eurotank and was then renamed BP Petrol- und Petroleum-Gesellschaft mbH .
With the color change of the NITAG in Germany from green / yellow to the blue / yellow of the Olex / BP, the German BP and its international parent company (AIOC, from 1954 British Petroleum Company ) could use the color combination green / yellow.
See also
literature
- Rainer Karlsch, Raymond G. Stokes: Factor Oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974 . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2003. ISBN 3-406-50276-8 .
- Bernd Polster: Super or normal. Gas stations - story of a modern myth. DuMont, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-3516-4 .
- Joachim Kleinmanns: Great, full! A brief cultural history of the gas station . Jonas Verlag, Marburg 2002, ISBN 3-89445-297-8 .
Web links
- History of BP in Germany and Austria
- Olex car cards until 1939
- Cover of the OLEX car card around 1935 with the blue and yellow BP sign
- Olex Bavaria brochure from the 1920s
- Olex in pictures
- Early documents and newspaper articles on OLEX in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Footnotes
- ↑ Joachim Kleinmanns: Super, full! A brief cultural history of the gas station . Jonas Verlag, Marburg 2002, p. 46 (quoted from Walter Ade: The gas station problem in Germany . Hamburg, 1936.).
- ^ Rainer Karlsch, Raymond G. Stokes: Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974 . P. 131.
- ^ BP Maps from Germany: Up to 1939
- ^ History of BP Austria