Opekta
The Opekta GmbH was a 1928 by Robert Feix founded and Richard Fackeldey companies in the food industry with headquarters in Cologne . Under the same name brand , a portmanteau of " O bst pect in from the A apples", it offered especially pectin and pectin products for the production of jams and jellies to - the first manufacturer in pack sizes for private households. Opekta quickly became the generic name for such gelling agents .
For many years it was a family business, later investments and sales to Pfeifer & Langen , Schwartauer Werke , Herbstreith & Fox and finally to Dr. Oetker . In the mid-1990s the company was dissolved. The brand is owned by Dr. Oetker, but not used since then.
history
Beginnings
In 1928 Robert Feix and Richard Fackeldey, who was also the first managing director, founded Opekta Gesellschaft mbH, based in Cologne. Initially, they only moved into a small office and rented a bottling plant. In 1931 the opportunity arose to move to their own premises. The business idea was a complete success. The process of making fruit into jam has been made much easier. The use of expensive and impractical gelatine was eliminated. Likewise, using excessive amounts of sugar when gelatin was not available. This was important in the 1920s and 1930s because many people grew fruit themselves, even in cities where allotment gardening had developed in the late 19th century . The turnover of the company Opekta rose correspondingly strongly and quickly, despite the global economic crisis . Opekta was already mentioned in Meyer's Konversations-Lexikon in the early 1930s . A rather unusual entry as it is a branded product. The success that the company had achieved in the 1920s led Feix to decide to set up trading offices in Switzerland (1929), Austria, Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands (1933).
1933-1945
During the time of National Socialism , the plant was able to continue its operation, as it was categorized as a "purely Aryan operation" by the responsible Gau economic administrations and the responsible chambers of industry and commerce . Finally, in 1943, the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture recognized the company as a military enterprise (urgently vital to the war).
Cologne itself was a constant target during the war, such as the first " 1000 bomber attack " in 1942. Therefore, a raised bunker was built on the company premises of Opekta, which was supposed to protect 1200 people. The city of Cologne was heavily bombed over 31 times during the Second World War . The company site itself was also the target of various bombs. Nevertheless, the production of gelling agents continued. A report confirms the following: "35% damage from incendiary bombs, high explosive bombs and explosive bombs up to the 1st floor" and "still existing building value: 312,737 RM " (converted today about 1,240,000 euros).
In 1943 "The German Labor Front" asked the Chamber of Commerce for an award
Certificate of the importance of the war for the Opekta (1943)
Letter from Cologne (1944)
Reconstruction of the building, which was badly damaged in the war (1948)
post war period
The success remained true to Opekta, especially during the reconstruction after 1945, when the preservation of food was very popular. Opekta remained the market leader in this area.
1982-1995
Takeover by Pfeifer & Langen
With the advent of the newly invented preserving sugar by Pfeifer & Langen in 1965, the success slowly crumbled. In 1967, “Opekta Gelierzucker” came onto the market exclusively for the Tengelmann Group .
The times were not only more difficult because of the competition, but there were also crop failures in fruit in 1972 and 1975. Ready-made jams in many varieties and in good quality penetrated the market, and homemade jams were increasingly out of fashion. Losses were inevitable. Ulrich Feix 1982: "The medium-sized family business would not have survived further setbacks" (annual turnover 8–9 million DM ). That is why Robert Feix's widow and her five children decided to sell to the Cologne-based company Pfeifer & Langen ("Kölner Zucker", Germany's second largest sugar producer in 1982).
Many years before the complete takeover, Opekta and Pfeifer & Langen had already collaborated on the production of "Opekta gelling sugar". This sugar was initially produced in the Brühl sugar factory and, after its closure, in the Elsdorf plant of Pfeifer & Langen. After the takeover, the employees were offered the takeover. Some employees used the time to retire or to move to another company. The majority of Opekta employees, however, switched to Pfeifer & Langen and continued to work for the Opekta brand. Ulrich Feix resigned as managing director with the takeover. The Opekta administration was integrated into the main administration of Pfeifer & Langen in Cologne. The production of the Opekta articles was relocated and the technical systems of Opekta GmbH at the Xantener Strasse location were transferred to the Dormagen plant of Pfeifer & Langen, supplemented and continued to be used for the production of the Opekta articles. The Opekta product range was expanded to include some gelling products in the following years.
Takeover by Schwartau
With the changes in the market for gelling agents, Opekta GmbH was sold to Schwartauer Werke GmbH & Co., Bad Schwartau, at the end of the 1980s. The employees stayed at Pfeifer & Langen KG and took on other tasks there, unless they made use of the opportunity to retire.
“Schwartau is looking for new investments. At the beginning of 1990 the company acquired a 50 percent stake in the Pfeifer & Langen subsidiary Opekta and took over the management of the Opekta products ”.
In 1989 Pfeifer & Langen sold 50% of the shares to Schwartauer Werke. In 1991 the second 50% went to Herbstreith & Fox.
Takeover by Herbstreith & Fox
With effect from April 1, 1991, Herbstreith & Fox KG Pektin-Fabrik Neuenbürg took over 50% of the shares or the limited partnership capital of the following companies from Pfeifer & Langen, Cologne: Opekta GmbH & Co. Köln, Opekta GmbH, Österreichische Opekta- Gesellschaft mbH Ried im Innkreis (Austria).
The investments in the above-mentioned Opekta companies were transferred to Dr. August Oetker Nahrungsmittel KG, Bielefeld.
Takeover by Dr. Oetker
“The Oetker Group, manufacturer of food and luxury foods, with its board member Dr. August Oetker has taken over the majority shares in the company Opekta, a sugar and gelling agent manufacturer based in Bad Schwartau, Schleswig Holstein. "
The enterprise
Business idea
Before the advent of Opekta, the only option was to cook fruit with a lot of sugar for over an hour to make jam. This is where Opekta comes in, which is made from natural pectin. This remedy not only replaced a lot of sugar, but also reduced the boiling time to ten minutes at the beginning, and later to just ten seconds. Thanks to the sugar, time and energy savings, Opekta was even "free" according to the manufacturer and you even saved money. The jam also tasted more like fruit and was less sweet than comparable products.
service
Opekta was a very service-oriented company from an early age. A lot of emphasis was placed on advising customers over the phone and in writing. In the typing room, up to 20 typists answered up to 70,000 queries from housewives on the subject of jam making during the season, up to 1940 by the way in handwriting. There was even the service that you could send in unsuccessful results of your culinary art. In the in-house laboratory, they checked what had been done wrong with the preparation, and advised accordingly. There was also a teaching kitchen where inexperienced housewives were shown how to prepare jams with Opekta perfectly.
production
At first the product range was limited to “Opekta liquid” and in Cologne the pectin delivered in barrels from Austria was processed and bottled. A little later Opekta was already available in powder form.
Barrels with pectin (1931)
Rocking conveyor (1931)
Filling machines for dry opekta (1931)
Packing room (1931)
executive Director
- Richard Fackeldey from May 23, 1928 to October 4, 1938
- Heinrich Papst from November 23, 1937 to October 4, 1938
- Karl Stuhltraeger from December 6, 1938 to 1952
- Eugen Magin from October 4, 1938 to April 30, 1969
- Grete Fackeldey from August 26, 1952 to March 22, 1965
- Günther Lehnen from March 19, 1965 to 1977
- Karl-Ernst Hamm, from March 19, 1965 to 1982
- Ulrich Feix from 1974 to 1982
Robert Feix
company founder of Opekta
Karl Stuhltraeger,
Managing Director
1938–1952
Ulrich Feix,
Managing Director
1974–1982
Locations
Opekta Cologne / Germany
When it was founded in 1928, there was only one office with five employees on 80 m² in the " Hansahochhaus " (known today as Saturn Hansaring , Hansaring 97).
The preparatory work began in 1927 in a 1500 m² warehouse, Stolberger Strasse 370, in Cologne-Braunsfeld . In 1929 there were already twelve office workers there and 28 employees were already working in the bottling cellar / warehouse. In 1930 six employees were added in the office and four in the filling cellar / warehouse. Personnel lists from 1930 show that in addition to a year-round permanent team, up to 320 temporary workers were employed in the bottling cellar and in the packing room from mid-January to August, with great social benefits for the time, such as a separate canteen in which a complete kitchen team worked Day cooked up to 250 lunches. The wages were then the usual 1.70 to 2.70 marks per day.
Due to great business success, the company was looking for new business premises and in 1931 the abandoned and liquidated shoe factory Hoffmann & Frank Kom.-Ges. on shares in Cologne-Nippes , Xantener Strasse 99, find what you are looking for. Office and commercial space were combined. According to Opekta, however, the building was in neighboring Cologne-Riehl .
Opekta remained at Xantener Straße 99 until it was taken over by Pfeifer & Langen in 1982 . From the street one could only see the gatehouse belonging to the site, which also served as a passage to the actual company building. The multi-storey building behind it on an area of over one hectare, built in 1922/23 under the architect Heinrich Müller-Erkelenz , has been a listed building since 1994 .
Headquarters of Opekta from 1927, Cologne-Braunsfeld, Stolberger Strasse 370
Headquarters of Opekta from 1931, gate entrance to Opekta, Xantener Straße 99
Headquarters of Opekta from 1931, Opekta company building, Xantener Straße 99
The former Opekta headquarters
Main entrance of the former Opekta headquarters
The room layout in the main house was as follows in the 1930 / 40s:
- Heating and coal cellar
- Basement: barrel cellar, manufacturing room, men's and women's toilets with washing facilities, red cross room, three vestibules with steam heating system for draft-free loading of the conveyor belts from outside
- Mezzanine floor: expedition room with roofed ramp porches, office rooms, entrance hall, executive offices, reception room, information, archive, cloakroom
- 1st floor: conference room with hall, doctor's station, extensive laboratory with adjoining rooms, domestic kitchen, packing room
- 2nd floor: archive, storage room, mixing rooms, office, dining rooms with kitchen, toilets
All floors were connected by two stairwells and an elevator. The in-house print shop was located in an adjoining building. From there, the advertising mail was also sent to the more than 500,000 registered customers.
Opekta Basel / Switzerland
Erich Elias moved from Frankfurt am Main to Basel in 1929, initially only because of his work as a bank clerk. The rest of the Leni, Stephan and Buddy family - Buddy Elias - followed in 1931. He received an offer from his friend Robert Feix to set up a Swiss representation for Opekta. Elias seized this opportunity and says: "1931 to early 1939 managing director of Opekta AG (and other pectin companies)".
Opekta was a competitor of Unipektin AG (founded in 1936), which sold liquid pectin, and Otto Frank considered selling Unipektin products as an agent in the Netherlands after the war in 1946. However, there was no longer any cooperation because the market was judged to be too small.
Erich Elias later worked for Unipektin AG in Switzerland, which still exists today.
Opekta Amsterdam / Netherlands
The Nederlandsche Maatschappij NV Opekta later Opekta Beheer BV , was a 1933 by Robert Feix established branch of Opekta GmbH Köln . It served as a wholesaler and retailer for Opekta products from Cologne and pectin from the Pomosin plants. The first managing director was Otto Frank , the father of Anne Frank , who wrote her world-famous diary in the rear building of the Opekta branch in Amsterdam, Prinsengracht 263 . In 1982 Opekta was sold and in 1995 Opekta Beheer BV was dissolved due to a lack of profits.
See also
literature
- Janrense Boonstra and Marie-Jose Rijnders: Anne Frank House: a museum with a story . 1992
- Martin Turck, Ute Chibidziura: Architecture and garden art - Festschrift for Henriette Meynen . Cologne 2005
- Carol Ann Lee: The Hidden Life of Otto Frank . 2003
- David Barnow et al. (Ed.): The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition . 2003
Web links
- Opekta on the website about Anne Frank
- Information about the Dutch Opekta employees and helpers on the Anne Frank Guide website
- Information about Anne Frank and her family
- Nitrogen in the cookware . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1963, pp. 64 ( online ).
- Opekta money box in the Money History Museum of the Kreissparkasse Cologne
Individual evidence
- ^ Opekta-Handbuch, 1980.
- ↑ Commercial register entry no. 6644. In: Second commercial register supplement to the German Reichsanzeiger and Prussian State Gazette No. 127 of June 2, 1928
- ↑ This information comes from Ulrich Feix, one of the managing directors and son of the company founder and is reproduced in an article in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from February 10, 1982. The exact year of the publication date cannot be verified.
- ↑ Economic archive of the IHK Frankfurt, letter from the IHK dated May 13, 1938, quote: "Our investigations have not revealed any indications that the above-mentioned company is a Jewish business ..." Economic archive of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce, letter from the NSDAP district leadership in Tübingen from 10 . June 1938, quote "Since the line ... the Opekta GmbH, Cologne are in German hands, I have no hesitation in acknowledging this company as Aryan company." .
- ^ Economic archive of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and Industry, letter from REL dated February 12, 1943.
- ↑ Article Opekta in stranger hands after more than 50 years . In: Oberbergischer Anzeiger , February 16, 1982.
- ^ Correspondence with Rolf Josef Claßen from Pfeifer & Langen, March 2009.
- ↑ Article Spread manufacturer Schwartau: Billion sales in sight . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , August 25, 1990, p. 40.
- ^ Correspondence with Rolf J. Claßen, Pfeifer & Langen, Cologne, March 2009.
- ^ Correspondence with Daniela Bernecker, Herbstreith & Fox KG, Neuenbürg.
- ↑ "Oetker Group, food & drink company, via its subsidiary Dr August Oetker Nahrungsmittel, has acquired a majority holding in Opekta, sugar and other gelling agents producer based in Bad Schwartau, Schleswig Holstein." Thomson Reuters, published May 09,1995.
- ↑ The data are based on the entries in the commercial register
- ^ Economic archive of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Grevens address book, 1929-1933.
- ^ Correspondence with Daniel Schauwecker from Unipektin AG, Zurich / Switzerland, March 2009.
- ↑ Some of the data in the “Opekta Basel” section come from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and were compared with Gerti Elias, daughter-in-law of Erich Elias, member of the foundation board of the Anne Frank Fund in Basel.
Coordinates: 50 ° 58 '1.19 " N , 6 ° 58' 0.23" E